“[The War Memorial] are running that process, and it’s now concluded, and they communicated that with people that were involved in that competition, and they’ll keep doing these education programs in various different ways,” Keogh said.
A spokeswoman for the memorial said advertisements for the 2024 prize were inconsistent and some excluded a rule requiring that entrants be new authors.
“When this was brought to council’s attention in June 2025, they unanimously restated their intention that the award remain for emerging writers and were not privy to the shortlist or longlist,” the spokeswoman said.
“The memorial will be writing to all entrants to apologise for the delay and any inconvenience,” she said. “Entries already submitted by emerging authors for their first major publication relating to Australian military history, social military history or war history will remain under consideration in any future process.”
The spokeswoman said the council was conducting a review to ensure the integrity of future competitions.
The Guardian reported that the memorial had allowed established authors to enter the prize since 2022 and the judging panel was unaware of any reversion to the previous rules.
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The head of the judging panel, Karl James, wrote to memorial director Matt Anderson after the council reinstated the first-time-author criteria, warning that failing to award the prize to Masters risked “greater reputational damage … than awarding it to a controversial winner”. The memorial did not make an exception.
In an opinion piece for this masthead, Masters writes that his relationship with the memorial – which he admired as an institution that could show how war brings out the best and worst in people – deteriorated as Stokes defended Roberts-Smith.
And he writes of the council’s decision to kibosh the judges’ decision to award him the Carlyon prize: “How is that an Aussie fair go, to change the rules at half-time?”
