Invited, uninvited, reinvited: Journalist will deliver controversial speech

Acclaimed journalist Chris Masters will deliver the 2026 CEW Bean military history lecture at a new venue after the organisers uninvited him due to fears that his selection would offend the Australian War Memorial.

Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead [MOTH], a volunteer group that organises the annual lecture in honour of war reporter Charles Bean, issued Masters with a fresh invitation on Monday after local MP David Smith promised to find a neutral venue for the event.

The managers of Tuggeranong Homestead had kiboshed the selection of Masters over concerns that it would end their chances of establishing a commercial relationship between their function centre and the war memorial. Masters has been persona non grata at the Australian War Memorial since this masthead published stories by him and Nick McKenzie that exposed decorated SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith as a war criminal.

MOTH chair Jenny Horsfield said the lecture would be held at a school in Smith’s electorate, and the group remained on amicable terms with the managers of the homestead where they continued to carry out cultural and community education programs.

“We’re very pleased about this,” Horsfield said.

“I suppose, looking back, I could have [adopted this solution in the first place], but at that stage I was concerned that it would create a breach with the managers.”

MOTH’s original decision to rescind the invitation to Masters followed the war memorial’s retrospective change to the criteria of the Les Carlyon military history prize to disqualify Masters’ book, Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes, from contention. A panel of external judges had voted it the winner.

Masters said the experience had left a bitter taste, but he felt a commitment to the community that had nominated him to deliver the lecture. He planned to talk about Bean and his influence on war reporting, as well as his own experience as a correspondent reporting from war zones, the telling of history and what was happening at the Australian War Memorial.

“I thought, I can’t be churlish,” Masters said. “I have a lot to say, and I have an opportunity to say it, and I shouldn’t duck it.”

Peter Stanley, a former principal historian with the war memorial who has become its most outspoken critic, said MOTH’s reversal had persuaded him to re-engage with the group, after he earlier cut ties in protest at its treatment of Masters.

“It’s what MOTH should have done in the first place, and I’m delighted they’ve reconsidered,” he said. “They’re a wonderful organisation, they just lacked a bit of nous when it came to this decision.”

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