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Parliament must be given power to vote on whether Australia goes to war, inquiry hears


Australia’s decision to ramp up spending on military hardware makes it even more important that parliament is given the power to vote on whether the country goes to war, a former defence secretary has said.

Paul Barratt, who headed the Australian defence department from 1998 to 1999, has also warned that Covid-19 could drive some countries to further pursue automated warfare – a trend that would increase the risk of conflict.

A joint parliamentary committee is investigating the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for Australia’s foreign affairs, defence and trade, with some of the early hearings focusing on the country’s reliance on “fragile” offshore supply chains.

A group known as Australians for War Powers Reform, which is led by Barratt, has used a submission to the inquiry to say the pandemic will have “profound effects upon the balance of power and influence in the world, and in our region in particular”.

The submission further argues that leaving it in the hands of the executive government to decide on deploying the Australian defence force into international armed conflict is “not a safe and secure basis for Australian defence policy”.

“Accordingly, the so-called ‘war powers’ should be relocated to the federal parliament, subject to adequate provision for the government of the day to take emergency action in response to direct threats to Australia,” it says.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Barratt said the announcement last week that Australia would spend $270bn on new and upgraded capability for the ADF over the next decade made the call for war powers reform “even more important”. He said the strategic update kept the door open to Australian participation in US-led military coalitions outside the Indo-Pacific region.

“So why is it more important now for parliament to have a say? A) Let’s all agree that whatever it is the US wants to do is something that actually is in our national interest, let’s agree across the spectrum that it is in our national interest. B) Let’s be sure that we’re all agreed that we can afford to sacrifice the availability of Australian defence units for our own defence by committing them to operations of unknown duration somewhere else.

“So to use a much-rehearsed phrase these days: we’re all in this together. When we go to war, we’re all in it together, and we ought to decide together whether we’re going, where we’re going and alongside whom we’ll be fighting and why.”

Barratt also said he was “concerned by the effective nomination of China as the enemy” in the strategic update last week.

“Governments used to be very coy about that,” he said, arguing the focus should be to control the approaches to Australia.

“When you say we’ve got to be prepared for problems with China, then China is bound to see everything we do elsewhere in the region through that lens. If we were to improve defence cooperation with India, what’s that about – is that about containing China? And if we were to improve our defence cooperation with Japan and South Korea, it’s the same story. Why do we want to raise those questions?

“I think the planning of the shaping of the defence force was broadly OK to me, but the diplomacy is dumb.”

Barratt’s group’s submission to the the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade also says the emergence of such an infectious and potentially lethal virus has profound implications for defence capability.

Defence equipment has previously been designed for military effectiveness rather than crew comfort, it says, meaning that personnel may be in confined spaces for extended periods.

“Social distancing is not an option on a submarine,” the submission says.

The group says the pandemic may “tend to accelerate the development of autonomous weapons systems using artificial intelligence” – but adds such “artificial intelligence is only as good as the people who designed it”.

“Such weapons not only carry dangers for civilian populations in cultures and environments for which the decision-making capabilities of the weapons were insufficiently prepared; they also carry the danger of inadvertently triggering responses that lead to military escalation,” it says.



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