Defence secretary’s collision with accountability

Greg Moriarty’s final appearance before the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide included an edifying moment with a grieving mother, some prickly questions about his performance as a senior leader of the systems that had punished so many men and women after they left the ADF, and a concession bad culture was still letting people down.

The theatre of any legal proceeding sits somewhere between eye-watering boring, entertaining and deeply moving.

Too much of one element at the expense of another can reduce what is designed to be a comprehensive fact-finding inquiry, with forums to listen and respond to oftentimes very serious experiences of harm, to a voyeuristic spectator sport.