Australian veterans say government will 'delay, deny until we all die'

Australian veterans who served at the Butterworth air base in Malaysia between 1970 and 1989 feel the government is deliberately delaying recognition of their service as "warlike."

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There were attacks going on all around that part of Malaysia. There were police being killed by the terrorists. There was a curfew in place for the Malaysian citizens.

Graeme Mickelberg, a platoon commander in 1975, recalled the tense atmosphere during the deployment, citing attacks on police and a curfew in place for Malaysian citizens. The base was considered a potential target, leading to the deployment of the Rifle Company Butterworth (RCB). About 9,000 Australian troops rotated through the base during a communist insurgency known as the Second Malayan Emergency.

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Everyone was trained in counter-insurgency warfare, the same sort of warfare that was conducted in Vietnam. We deployed with our weapons, we were issued live ammunition, we had orders that permitted us to use lethal force if the base was attacked.

Despite being trained in counter-insurgency warfare, issued live ammunition, and having orders to use lethal force, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) maintained that RCB's service was "peacetime" in nature. Veterans like Mickelberg argue that the presence of armed troops and the intelligence assessment of the base as a target indicate warlike conditions. A Malaysian intelligence officer's submission to an inquiry suggested the base was spared attack because terrorists knew Australian troops were present.

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There's a submission made by a Malaysian intelligence officer to the inquiry who said probably the reason the base was never attacked was because that the terrorists knew we were there.

Stan Hannaford, a machine gunner at Butterworth, stated that then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam framed the deployment as routine training, downplaying its risks. Hannaford has been part of a group advocating for recognition since the early 1990s. In 2023, an inquiry by the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal concluded that deployments between 1970 and 1989 were neither "peacetime" nor "warlike," a decision veterans strongly dispute, feeling their service is being dismissed until they die.

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They [Malaysian forces] were fighting a war; they never had time to train with us. Whitlam won the election by bringing the troops back from South Vietnam, pulling them out of South-East Asia and abolishing national service. The last thing he wanted to do was to be seen putting combat troops back into South-East Asia … there was a lot of secrecy about it.