Paul Barratt

Paul Barratt AO is the President, Australians for War Powers Reform; former Secretary, Department of Defence.

Paul's recent articles

Not much for Australians to feel 'relaxed and comfortable' about in US policy towards China.

Many of the problems in our relationship with China are of our own making the consequences of our own inept diplomacy and we should seek to resolve them bilaterally. Attempting to resolve them by snuggling up closer to Uncle Sam and miscellaneous US allies with different agendas and history will only make matters worse.

Defence legislation re call-out of Reserves should not proceed

As currently drafted, the legislation to facilitate the call-out of the ADF Reserves contains too many risks for too little benefit. It should not proceed in its current form.

We Need a Freestanding Trade Department

Our difficult relationship with China in recent years highlights once again the need for a free-standing Department of Trade, led by a very senior Minister, to ensure our trade and commercial relationships with other countries are adequately represented in any Cabinet deliberations.

PAUL BARRATT.-War in Afghanistan: 18 years of lies and obfuscation.(War Powers Bulletin 68, 1.3.2020)

The real story behind the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001

Morrisons Public Service reforms do us no favours

The mergers of Australian Public Service Departments announced by Scott Morrison on 5 December will do nothing to advance the cause of good government. The claims of efficiency gains that invariably accompany such announcements always turn out to be illusory, and, far more importantly, result in matters that ought to be debated out in full Cabinet being tucked away in individual portfolios.

PAUL BARRATT. Its too easy to take us to war

Where we are today is that the practice of the last twenty years has purportedly taken the power to send Australia to war away from the Governor-General and placed it at the disposal of junior ministers in the Defence portfolio. This cannot be allowed to stand. The war powers must be relocated to the Australian parliament.

PAUL BARRATT. What are we to make of Irans nuclear program?

Irans nuclear program, never out of the news for long, is on the front pages of the world with President Trumps insistence that his belligerence towards Iran is driven by a desire to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. The facts are that there is no reason to believe that Iran has made any moves even to acquire a nuclear weapons option since 2003, that Iran has good reasons to maximise the independence of its nuclear electricity program, and that until the United States ripped them up, there were robust arrangements in place to ensure that Iran didnt...

PAUL BARRATT. Australia should not participate in conflict with Iran.

Australia should not participate in any military action against Iran. The current tensions have been created by the Trump Administration, and the ANZUS Alliance creates no obligation for us to assist. President Trump may think that a war against Iran would not last very long, but any significant military action really would set the Middle East ablaze. Irans antagonists would be taking on a country the size of Queensland, one with a population of 80 million. Iran itself has substantial capacity to resist and retaliate, Iranian proxies elsewhere in the Middle East could be expected to retaliate, and there could...

PAUL BARRATT. Ten Neglected Issues that Australia21 Believes Should be Addressed During the Election Campaign.

The 2019 election campaign having begun, I wish, on behalf of Australia21, which I chair, to draw attention to a number of issues that require proper attention and debate in order to enable Australian voters to make an informed choice about the candidates and parties they wish to support.

PAUL BARRATT. Time for a new Royal Commission into the Australian Public Service

On 7 March Pearls and Irritations published my Are all those consultancies really necessary? This dealt with the $129 billion spent by the Commonwealth over the last five years on services the content of which no doubt include a great deal that would traditionally have been regarded as core business for the Commonwealth, and for which both the Public Service Act 1999 and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 would indicate agency heads have prime responsibility and accountability. Outsourcing on this scale can only be understood in the context of the changing status and powers of agency heads,...

PAUL BARRATT: Time to involve Parliament in decisions about sending the ADF into combat.

Today 20 March is the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the so-called Coalition of the Willing which was led by the US and included the UK, Australia and others. Far from making the world safer, and establishing Iraq as a shining beacon of democracy as its proponents proclaimed it would, the invasion has left in its wake violence, instability, the rise of ISIS (directly attributable to the invasion and occupation) and a permanent reshaping of the political order in the Middle East. We never undertook a Chilcot-type inquiry here, but one lesson is clear we cannot...

PAUL BARRATT. Are all those consultancies really necessary?

The Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit is currently conducting an inquiry based on any items, matters or circumstances connected with Auditor-Generals Report No. 19 (2017-18). This report reveals enormous expenditure on consultancy contracts, and the matters being inquired into by JCPAA include the effects on APS capability and capacity; the extent to which consultancy contracts are being used to deliver core APS outcomes; the associated benefits and risks; and unforeseen and unintended consequences.

PAUL BARRATT. Growing momentum for drug law reform. Part 1 of 3.

The war on drugs has failed. There was a buzz across Australia in March 2017, when former premiers, police chiefs, prison officers and lawyers stood side-by-side with drug users and their families, to throw down the gauntlet on drug law reform. They called foran end to criminal penalties for personal use and possession and a new focus on addressing the health and social issues associated with drug-taking.

PAUL BARRATT. Howards War a continuation of politics by other means

For the discerning reader the Palazzo Report, the classified internal report on how we got into Iraq and how we fared, prepared by Army Historian Dr Albert Palazzo and now released in redacted form, is a remarkable document. Although heavily redacted in places, it offers a rich store of information about how the Howard Government conducted itself in the lead up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Governments intent, and the state of the Army it sent to war.

A transformational foreign policy

Some of Australia's most experienced former foreign policy and defence bureaucrats have issued an open submission to the Foreign Minister calling on her to rethink the Australian-US alliance now that president-elect Donald Trump is set to lead the US.

PAUL BARRATT. Managing ANZUS in the age of Trump. Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS. Summary. Australia should do a 'really deep stocktake of what is in our vital national interests and what we are prepared to sign up to'.

PAUL BARRATT. Would war powers reform really leave national security in the hands of the minority parties?

During a segment on war powers reform on ABC TVs current affairs program Lateline (25 August see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-25/mps-call-for-iraq-war-inquiry/7786424 ) Australian Strategic Policy Institute Executive Director Peter Jennings expressed opposition to parliamentary involvement in decision-making about deployment of the ADF, saying: If you look at how parliaments are structured, you're really saying that you're going to leave decisions to go to war to a handful of crossbenchers in the Senate, he said. So if we were to have a debate today about deploying, that means it's going to be Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and her supporters. It's going...

PAUL BARRATT. Faulty intelligence, or a war pre-ordained?

In releasing his momentous report on 6 July Sir John Chilcot stated that the judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraqs weapons of mass destruction WMD were presented with a certainty that was not justified. He also said it is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments, which should have been challenged.

PAUL BARRATT. Attorney-Generals move to control access to Solicitor-General

On 4 May 2016, the last sitting day before Parliament rose for the forthcoming election, Attorney-General Senator Brandis tabled new guidelines in the Senatewhich ruled that noone in government, including the Prime Minister, could seek the Solicitor-General's advice without getting permission from SenatorBrandis.

Paul Barratt and Chris Barrie. The case for building the future submarine in Australia

When charting a trajectory to a desired end point it is as important to have an accurate fix on the starting point as it is to know where one wants to end up. So it is with SEA 1000, the Future Submarine (FSM) project. Much of the commentary is based on a politically inspired perception that the Collins Class submarine project (Beazleys subs) was a disaster characterised by cost over-runs, delayed delivery, intractable technical problems, and chronic unreliability once introduced into service. The facts are that the submarines were built to within 3-4 per cent of the original...

Paul Barratt. Goodwill between countries matters.

In his Australia Day post Abbotts relations with China Australias first Ambassador to the Peoples Republic, Stephen Fitzgerald, begins 'Can you believe the Abbott government has any idea where its headed on relations with China? Whatever you think of Chinas politics, you cant just take sides against China or meddle in the tense and volatile issue of China-Japan relations without there being some consequence for our bilateral relations. But the government doesnt seem to care. From what you can divine from the little it says publicly, it thinks the Chinese will back down under Australias glare, and get over it....

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