‘Palace decision’: Anthony Albanese distances himself from Ben Roberts-Smith award

Anthony Albanese says his government had no role in King Charles bestowing the disgraced former soldier and VC recipient a further award.

Anthony Albanese has distanced himself from an award given to disgraced former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith by King Charles.

The ex-SAS soldier was welcomed to Western Australia’s Government House on Thursday to receive an honour from King Charles III, Nine newspapers reported.

This comes after Roberts-Smith was last year found by a Federal Court judge, on the balance of probabilities, to have been involved in the unlawful killings of four detainees while on deployment in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister told Channel 9 on Saturday morning that “this isn’t a decision of the government”.

“This was the decision of the palace to give all VC (Victoria Cross) recipients a further award.

“There’s ongoing legal action – potentially – on these issues. So given the government’s engagement, it’s important that there not be interference in that.

“But it certainly wasn’t a government decision.”

In the same interview, Mr Albanese also declined to weigh into US president Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance yesterday.

“I’ve worked very closely with him and every interaction I’ve had with him has been very positive,” Mr Albanese said when asked whether he thought Mr Biden was “too old”.

“I’ve sat around the cabinet table with not just President Biden, but the Defence Secretary and the Secretary of State and the Commerce Secretary and others. And we have forged a really important relationship, going forward with the US administration. We’ll work with whichever government is elected.”