In a recent podcast appearance, comedian Jim Jefferies accused the Australian government of “covering up” the death of his nephew in 2023.
During a defence training exercise on July 28th, 2023, his nephew, 23-year-old Lieutenant Max Nugent, along with three peers, Captain Danniel Lyon, Warrant Officer Class 2 Joseph ‘Phillip’ Laycock, and Corporal Alexander Naggs, died when their Taipan helicopter crashed into the water.
The incident happened during military war games in Queensland, near the Whitsundays, which involved over 30,000 military personnel from 13 countries. The pilots struggled through poor weather and low light.
Last month, Commonwealth prosecutors said no charges would be laid over their deaths, despite the national work health and safety and workers’ compensation authority Comcare finding alleged breaches to the Worldplace Health and Safety Act. According to Comcare, these related to fatigue and the use of controversial night vision devices, worn by the pilots.
An Aviation Safety Investigation released in May 2025 found human error to blame. It said the cause of the crash was spatial disorientation, which is when a pilot is “unaware” of their orientation in relation to the Earth’s surface.
Jefferies spoke out against the prosecutors last month, and again on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast last week.
“There’s been a cover up by what I believe [is] the Australian government… Within a matter of a couple weeks, Australia had decommissioned the helicopters, taken them apart and buried them in the desert. The Ukraines said ‘We’ll take the helicopters’ and the Australians went ‘No, no, no, no, don’t you worry about that,'” he told Von.
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“Then my brother, and my niece, and my sister-in-law had to sit through an inquiry that went on for almost two years, [on] whether the government was responsible or not, where the test pilots stood up and said those helmets were defective and would end in industrial manslaughter… It’s like watching ‘A Few Good Men,’ like talking about the military and the government trying to cover its ass.”
He said the inquiry was full of “so much bullshit,” and was angry that the ruling came just five days before the two-year statute of limitation to file a civil suit was due to expire.
“Who has five fucking days to get a lawyer, they dragged it out on purpose,” he said.
“I get that the world’s going to war… the Australian military might be going into a war scene pretty soon… so they can’t be paying out every soldier who dies. But this was war games, there were things that weren’t followed, helicopters that have been buried.
“The only reason I’m bringing it up is you’ve got such a big platform and I want to get this information out. I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy, but it seems pretty shady to me.”