Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: New wave of bank closures hitting the regions, Australia rocked by war crimes report, and ten years since Pike River marked. A massive wave of bank branch closures is coming, with BNZ shutting down 38 locations over the next year. They’re in both cities and towns, … Read more
The current inquiry into allegations of Australian Special Air Service war crimes in Afghanistan highlights the far from admirable culture in our own defence force, writes Nicky Hager. The reports have gradually been coming out for years: repeated killing of civilians and mistreatment of captives by Australian SAS troops, people who believed they were above … Read more
The SAS soldiers involved in a raid where civilians died did nothing wrong, a government inquiry into Operation Burnham found. Instead, it concluded the worrying failures weren’t in Afghanistan but at defence headquarters in Wellington. A decade ago New Zealand’s elite SAS raided villages in Afghanistan’s Tirgiran Valley as part of Operation Burnham. A number … Read more