Praised by Peter Dutton as an “outstanding candidate”, Benjamin Britton made a series of controversial comments on right-wing podcasts before his preselection, including a view that women should not serve in combat positions with the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
Britton, the Liberal Party candidate for Whitlam, claimed the ADF “need to remove females from combat corps” in order to “fix” our military, pointing to the 2013 federal government decision to lift gender restrictions on frontline combat positions as an issue.
About 20 per cent of military personnel are women and the ADF has made efforts to increase recruitment in recent years. There’s no evidence that standards have been lowered to increase the number of women taking on frontline roles.
Having served Australia in the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, Britton told right-wing figure Joel Jammal’s podcast he had served alongside “tremendous” women in the ADF, but that he believed they should be removed from combat due to “heavy loads”.
“Their hips are being destroyed because they can’t cope with the carrying of the heavy loads and the heavy impacts that’s required from doing combat-related jobs,” Britton said in the July interview.
“I knew some of the toughest men I’ve ever met in my life, absolute nails. War left them a shaking mess. Drug addicted. Can’t go outside the house because they have panic attacks.”
“If war can do that to them and destroy them, why would you want to send your beautiful women? Your females – the ones that are the backbone of your society. Your society only exists because of women … Why would you want to sacrifice them in war, on the altar?”
Talking about the frontline in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britton said women soldiers were killed because they “didn’t stand a a chance and “should never have been there in the first place.”
“You’re seeing all the bodies in there – braided hair … Can barely hold up a rifle, and they put them on the frontline to just be killed,” he said. “You’re throwing away one of the most precious things that you have in your society.”
Other controversial views Britton has expressed include blaming “diversity and equity quotes, Marxist ideology and woke ideologies” for weakening Australia’s defence. He has also claimed exposure to pornography leads to gender dysphoria and “transgender desires”, and said the Labor party keeps some electorates poor to have a better chance of winning them.
In addition to this, Britton has said the education system has “brainwashed” young Australians with Marxist ideology, and that Australia should “look to the Isle of Man” for lessons on introducing a flat tax rate to attract billionaires.
At the 2022 federal election, Britton ran unsuccessfully for the United Australia party.
In December 2024, Britton was preselection to run for the safe Labor seat of Whitlam, with the opposition pitching him as a champion for small business and housing ownership.
In January 2025, Dutton posted a picture of himself and Britton on Instagram during a visit to the Moss Vale Hotel. Dutton has not said whether he agrees with Britton’s views on women in ADF combat roles.