Former defence minister Linda Reynolds says the Australian public deserves greater transparency from military leaders about cultural changes within the forces following a damning report on war crimes and a high-profile court case.
She's said there can be "no legal or moral excuses for war crimes" and such issues cannot be swept "under the rug".
The Liberal senator was defence minister when findings from the Brereton war crimes inquiry were handed down in 2020.
The inquiry examined allegations of war crimes committed by Australian Defence Force units during the war in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
The report found evidence to implicate 25 current or former ADF personnel in the alleged unlawful killings of 39 individuals in Afghanistan.
Following the report former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith brought defamation proceedings against several media outlets but he lost his case last week, with a Federal Court judge finding he had committed war crimes as alleged by the outlets.
Ms Reynolds, in an interview published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, said current senior officers within Defence needed to be more open with the public about any improvements made to the organisation's culture after the Brereton report.
“There is still an attitude in some quarters that if you raise these issues, it is a slight against all veterans, that somehow what happens in war should stay in war, but we can’t sweep this under the rug," she said.
"There can be no legal or moral excuses for war crimes."
Ms Reynolds said leaders within Defence should better detail their responses to the issues raised in the report, which she said made her feel ill when she read it.
“As the chief of Defence Force acknowledged at the time, there was a serious breakdown of chain-of-command leadership.
“There were certainly indications all was not well, but a blind eye was turned.”
Ms Reynolds said far more transparency is now needed beyond the criminal justice process.
