Australia's Chief of the Army has vowed to take action over a private Facebook group of Defence Force members which contains racist, sexist and abusive material.The site, which is used by more than 1,000 former and current members of the Royal Australian Regiment, refers to Muslims as "ragheads", suggests immigrants are unwelcome, and one post says "all women are filthy, lying whores."
Lieutenant-General David Morrison has launched an probe to find out if any of the obscene comments were posted by serving members. He says any serving members involved will be reprimanded.
Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James says, "Everyone should be horrified. I mean we had this problem in March last year with some racial postings on YouTube, and as the Defence Association said at the time, this type of things lets down your soldiers because it just provides propaganda to the enemy."
Dr Mark Drummond, a retired Navy officer and former lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy, says there should be no excuses for this type of activity.
He said, "The whole reason for being of the Defence Force is to uphold those values of freedom, democracy and justice and so on. It is the ultimate hypocrisy if the very institution responsible for upholding all of those values, breaches those values so blatantly."
Defence brass was alerted to the Facebook group and its contents eight months ago, when a member of the group contacted the Chief of Defence and the Department Secretary. He also took his concerns to the Defence Minister's office more than once.
The online group also serves a decent purpose, conducting fundraising for serving soldiers. Its administrators have warned members repeatedly to avoid overtly offensive material, but finding the right balance has presented a challenge.