Today marks 100 days since David McBride was imprisoned. Australia be not proud.

It has been 100 days since David McBride faced his biggest day in Supreme Court on May 14th. The sequence of events that bring us to the 100th day have been nothing if not turbulent.

In a detailed video about David's Sentencing, Jeff Morris (Banking Whistleblower) describes the moments just before David is sentenced, where even the corrective services staff appeared zealous to take him away - entering the courtroom much earlier than normal in preparation to move him (David) to Alexander Maconochie Centre.

"...these four Corrective Services guys there, waiting to take him (David) into custody before the judge even took the bench. So they were letting David know that you're going to jail, that's where this (sentencing) is ending."
- Jeff Morris - David McBride YouTube video "How Did We Get Here?"

Other members of the public gallery also witnessed David's service dog Jake become restless and distressed as the sentence was handed down. Jake had to be separated from David at the very last moment knowing something was wrong as the public gallery began to stir with cries of outrage.

Buried by the Budget

David McBride's sentencing occurred on Tuesday May 14th, 2024 which is also the same day of Labor's Federal Budget 2024 - ensuring that mainstream media's attention was away from David's sentencing as much as possible - being drowned out by less than impressive, luke-warm budget policies.

Afghanistan Inquiry Implementation Oversight Panel

Prior to Mcbride's sentencing, consistent pressure by Senator Malcolm Roberts against defence to produce the Afghanistan Inquiry Implementation Oversight Panel's final report was being delayed by spurious reasoning. Despite repeated requests through Senate orders, this final report (that was submitted in its final form in November 2020) was still not available. The report has been finally released.

Malcolm Roberts didn't stop there - continuing to apply a lot of pressure following up the results of the report in the Senate, and the reasons why FOI requests were refused with unusual grounds:

For the ABC journalists that weren't distracted by Jim Chalmers budgets -they did a pretty decent job of summarising the final report, though brief:

Defence chiefs face fresh calls to be held ‘accountable’ for command failures over alleged war crimes in Afghanistan

An independent panel found a lack of accountability from Australia’s military top brass over alleged war crimes has generated “anger and bitter resentment” among troops and veterans.

ABC NewsMAnalysis by Mick Ryan

In summary, the Oversight Panel's final report provided a detailed account pointing a finger squarely at the needs for leadership accountability, including notes criticizing the Brereton Report.

This accountability theme is well documented throughout all of the quarterly updates.

Issues with ADF leadership was the very thing that brought McBride to disclose documents to ABC journalists in 2015. This detailed, independent report independently verifies some of McBride's issues.

What is most disappointing about this final report is that it conveniently became available within days after McBride was placed behind bars. But based on Defence's website, you wouldn't know that this was the case, as they only list the date of submission in November 2022. Only when you follow Malcolm Robert's repeated requests in the Senate does this display a clear disregard for the facts that may have been beneficial to McBride's case.

David's welfare

Since being in prison, information about David's status has been quite thin. We have had brief updates on Twitter including concern for his welfare after an incident requiring segregation:

David isn't in a prison with a few white collared criminals doing a few years for some tax fraud misdemeanors. David is alongside murderers, rapists and paedophiles - many of them called "lifers", in reference to the length of their prison sentence.

Getting McBride out

So this all begs the question - where to from here?

As time progresses, it is continuing to become more apparent that David's claims about ADF top brass is more than just Mcbride "...(becoming) obsessed with the correctness of his own opinions as to the conduct of the organisation for which he worked..." as outlined by Mossop in his judgement.

Without a doubt, the fastest way we can ensure David fights back is to donate to his appeal on Chuffed.

McBride's legal team can't do this alone and need as much help as possible to get his appeal underway.

For a more comprehensive update to David's sentencing, you can watch the whole video on McBride's YouTube Channel:

You can also expect more videos on David McBride's YouTube channel soon, which will outline more aspects of David's case that has not been fully shown in detail before.