Before the invasion: what I said in March 2003

From the dwindling number of people who still think that the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a good idea, there is beginning to emerge a self-justifying little spin line that the critics of the war are taking advantage of “20/20 hindsight”. Mainstream media outlets that are either lazy or happy to excuse their failings in relation to their own analysis and reportage are more than willing, as they have been for more than a decade, to facilitate this approach to exculpation.

So in the interests of getting my own position on the record (again), I reproduce below the notes from which I spoke in launching the anti-invasion video clip The Real Face of War, on 6 March 2003, 14 days before the commencement of the full-scale invasion was announced.

The Real Face of War

Ladies and gentlemen

Thank you for joining us for the official launch of The Real Face of War, a function which I am honoured to have been invited to perform.

The core message of The Real Face of War is that war is the wrong response to the current crisis, and before launching the piece I would like to say a few words in support of that proposition.  I want to comment on three issues:

-  The appropriateness of war as a response in the conduct of relations between states

-  The real face of war

-  The outcomes we are seeking and might expect from embarking on military operations against Iraq

War is a last resort

For a democratic nation proclaiming civilised values, war should always be a last resort.  In the plain English meaning of that phrase, one goes to war when there is no other choice.  Clearly there remain other sensible and less destructive choices for achieving the objective of containing Saddam Hussein, and many important member states of the UN advocate them.

We need to understand the gravity of what is at stake here.  We are talking about putting the sons and daughters of fellow Australian citizens in harm’s way, to contribute to an armed attack on another country.  As far as I am aware, it will be the first time we will have participated in an unprovoked invasion of another country.

To the extent that our justification for this relies upon the new doctrine of the “right” of pre-emptive attack, I would respond that this new doctrine is an extremely dangerous one that will ultimately be destabilising to world peace.

The real face of war

No matter how precise the weaponry, the overwhelming majority of the killed and injured will be innocent Iraqi civilians, the very people we now say we want to liberate from the tyrant who rules them.  It is not for us to decide that the deaths of some numbers of Iraqi people is an acceptable price to pay in order to improve the lot of the rest.

And the numbers will be huge.  Respectable estimates put the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the Gulf War at 150,000.  With the scale of opening bombardment that is being openly canvassed in the media, it is impossible to imagine that civilian casualties will be small.

We should also bear in mind when we go off to fight oppressive regimes that many of the people in uniform who are opposing us will be conscripts who would rather be somewhere else.

The objectives

One of the foundations of successful military operations is a clear objective – a very clear definition of the end state that the operations are designed to achieve.  Indeed, one of the stated reasons why the coalition allies did not go on to Baghdad in 1991 was the avoidance of “mission creep”.

We had a clear objective in Operation Pollard in 1998.  This was the operation in which we sent an SAS contingent and two B707 refuellers to the Gulf following Saddam’s expulsion of the previous weapons inspectorate – UNSCOM, led by Richard Butler.  When then Defence Minister Ian McLachlan put to the combined civilian and military leadership the question of what they would regard as a successful outcome, the response he received was unanimous and immediate:

-  Saddam Hussein does what we want him to do – lets the weapons inspectors back in

-  All of our personnel come safe home

-  Not a shot is fired in anger.

This is pretty much the way Operation Pollard turned out.  The clear objective enabled the mission to be accomplished.  Saddam Hussein did let the inspectors back in.  On 8 May we announced that our forces were being scaled down, and in June we withdrew our contingent completely.  This is what I would call a successful military operation; the most successful military operations are the ones you manage to avoid by skilful handling of the situation.

In the present crisis the objectives are most unclear, they seem to change from time to time, and four distinct possible objectives seem to be being conflated:

-  The war against terrorism

-  Elimination of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein

-  Resistance to radical Islam of the sort promoted by Osama bin Laden

-  Creation of a democratic society in Iraq, perhaps as the first step in democratising the Arab world.

We need to sort out which of these it is, because they are in fact distinct and conflicting objectives, and confusing them could make a bad situation worse.  For the record, I share the view of Professor Avishai Margalit, Schulman Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, that the real enemy is Osama bin Laden, that fighting Saddam will greatly help this enemy rather than setting him back, and that accordingly, this is the wrong war.

To the extent that the motivation of the looming military campaign is to build a better Iraqi society, I would say that it is not up to any “coalition of the willing” to go around righting all the wrongs visited on unfortunate populations by oppressive regimes. If that is to be the new international agenda, then the Australian Defence Force and its more powerful allies will be very busy indeed.  In any event, I am very sceptical about the prospects of an occupying power imposing democracy at the point of a gun, and I don’t see the kind of commitment to post-war reconstruction that would make that a realistic prospect.

Once we cross the threshold from the threat to the actuality of armed force there is inevitably a loss of control of the situation, no matter how certain the final outcome might seem.  Backed into a corner, a dangerous and callous adversary like Saddam Hussein might well take actions that we would find extremely regrettable, including for example destroying the Iraqi oil fields, blowing up some of the dams on the Tigris and/or Euphrates, and using such chemical or biological capability as he might have.  Certainly he would not shrink from any of these steps out of regard for the impact on his own people.

I fear that the prevailing atmosphere is that Iraq faces armed attack no matter what it does.  This is counter-productive to any aim of coercing Saddam Hussein into peaceful compliance with the objectives of Security Council Resolution 1441.

So, without any illusions about Saddam Hussein, what he stands for, or what he is capable of, I say that war is not the appropriate response.  I think there are some very important lessons to be drawn about Saddam Hussein from the events of early 1998, and indeed from the entire twelve-year period since the Gulf War of 1991.  These are:

-  In pursuit of his own agenda Saddam Hussein will go right to the brink, and in that sense he is a risk taker.

-  Nevertheless, he is a calculating, rational and skilful operator who is all about regime survival, and hence exercises caution about the risks he takes.

The events since the Gulf War show quite clearly that while he will twist and turn and is completely untrustworthy, he is quite able to be deterred.

In fact my views are neatly summed up by a line of a poem read by Les Murray on Radio National on Tuesday:

The blow struck now will be weaker than the blow not struck.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your attendance here this morning and now declare The Real Face of War officially launched.

Paul Barratt AO

Former Secretary, Department of Defence

6 March 2003

War Powers Bill: submission by the Submarine Institute of Australia

In its submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee inquiry into the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2008 [No. 2], the Submarine Institute of Australia (SIA) raised a matter to do with submarine operations:

The submarine’s greatest strength is its ability to operate undetected in sea areas controlled by a potential adversary. It goes without saying, therefore, that the success of submarine operations relies on strict security – disclosure of submarine operational plans negates the submarine’s primary advantage – potentially putting the submarine at greater risk and leading to deterioration in strategic circumstances.

The Institute expressed concern that that the draft Bill would require public disclosure of submarine

operational plans in order to meet the Parliament’s requirement for approval of “warlike” operations. SIA’s solution is “that the Bill be amended to make provision for the Prime Minister to determine that covert operations are excluded from the requirement to achieve Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service”.

While the issue raised by SIA is an important one I do not agree that the Bill is a problem in this respect.  Section 50C (11) of the Bill expressly states that service beyond the territorial limits of Australia “does not include service by members of the Defence Force ... on an Australian vessel or aircraft not engaged in hostilities or in operations during which hostilities are likely to occur”. 

The whole point of most covert operations is to avoid hostilities; they cease to be covert once the shooting starts.  So if we really are talking about operating “undetected in sea areas controlled by a potential adversary”, I think that the government of the day would be perfectly entitled to consider such operations to be operations during which hostilities were not likely to occur.

Another concern expressed by SIA was:

It is also possible that the threat level for a submarine operation currently underway could be reassessed to ‘warlike’ due to deteriorating circumstances. If that led to public disclosure in the Parliament then that operation could most likely not continue.

The relevant section of the Bill is Section 50C (10), which requires the Minister to report regularly to Parliament on the status of each deployment, what efforts are being made to resolve the circumstances which led to the deployment, and whether there is any reason why Parliament should not resolve to terminate the deployment.

It is a matter for argument how a covert operation that was overtaken by “deteriorating circumstances” would be impacted by the provisions of the Bill. I would be inclined to argue that if the deployment were not a reportable one at the time it took place then it would not be the subject of the regular reports on deployments authorised by the Parliament contemplated by Section 50C (10).

Be that as it may, these are questions of the drafting of the Bill, and whether some particular provisions need to be modified. They do not go to the question of whether or not the control of the war making power should pass to the Parliament. Nor did SIA oppose the central purpose of the Bill – it simply asked for the Bill to be amended to make provision for the Prime Minister to determine that covert operations are excluded from the requirement to achieve Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service.

Practical questions such as that raised by SIA could have been addressed in the course of hearings had the major political parties agreed to hearings being held.

Referring to the SIA submission and a submission from the Navy League of Australia, the Committee Report made the remarkable observation (page 12) that:

... although only two submissions expressed reservations about the use of classified material, both were in a position to have sound knowledge about the nature and extent of such information and the likely security implications should it be disclosed.

They neglected to say that the joint submission from a former Defence Secretary (myself), another former senior officer of Defence (Andrew Farran) and a former diplomat with a deep background in intelligence (Garry Woodard) saw no such difficulties. They failed to notice the dog that did not bark. Again, this is a question that could have been tested had the Bill been taken seriously enough for the Committee to hold formal hearings.

For the text of the Bill click here.

Afghanistan is a wicked problem

Over the last thirty years there has emerged a substantial literature on so-called “wicked problems”. This is the class of problems that may be considered highly resistant to solution, by contrast with so-called “tame” problems, those that might be technically complex to solve but can be tightly defined and a solution fairly readily identified or developed.

The terminology was originally proposed by H. W. J. Rittel and M. M. Webber, both urban planners at the University of California, Berkeley, USA in 1973. In a landmark article, the authors observed that there is a whole realm of social planning problems that cannot be successfully treated with traditional linear, analytical approaches. To the extent that they can be modelled mathematically the mathematics is non-linear: everything is connected to everything else, and there is acute sensitivity to initial conditions.

There is a good succinct summary of the characteristics of wicked policy problems on the Australian Public Service Commission website here. In brief, these characteristics are:

-  They are difficult to define clearly: different stakeholders have different versions of what the problem is, and there is usually an element of truth in each of those versions.

-  They have many interdependencies and are often multi-causal. Often, there are also conflicting goals and objectives within the broader policy problem. This means that solving them requires coordinating inter-related responses, and accepting trade-offs between conflicting goals.

-  Attempts to address wicked problems often lead to unforeseen consequences. This arises from the complex connections between the component elements of the problem.

-  Often they are not stable: the nature of the problem is changing while the attempt is being made to fashion and implement a solution.

-  They are socially complex and it is their social complexity that often overwhelms the efforts to solve them.

-  They hardly ever sit conveniently within the responsibilities of one organisation.

-  The solution to wicked problems involves changing behaviour of some or all of the stakeholders.

-  Some wicked problems are characterised by chronic policy failure.

A most important characteristic of wicked problems is that they have no stopping rule, i.e., no mechanism for deciding whether to stop or continue a process on the basis of present and past events. Another is the fact that every attempt to solve a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation” because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error; every attempt is significant.

Some researchers make a distinction between wicked problems and super wicked problems. The latter have the following additional characteristics:

-  Time is running out.

-  There is no central authority.

-  Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it.

I think there will be ready agreement that the Afghanistan problem has the above three characteristics, so if it really is a wicked problem, it is clearly a super wicked problem.  When one looks at the characteristics of wicked problems as outlined at the beginning of this essay, it is easy to discern the key elements in the Afghan situation: different perceptions of what the problem is, multi-causality of the origins of the problem, interconnectedness between the important elements of the problem, conflicting goals and objectives within Afghan society, the nature of the problem keeps changing, they are socially complex, they don’t sit within the responsibilities of any one organisation, there is a fundamental need for behavioural change amongst most of the stakeholders, there is certainly chronic policy failure, and there is certainly no “stopping rule”, no protocol that tells us when it is time to give up and go away.

The question is what to do about it, and the purpose of this essay is to try to establish a basis for thinking about the problem in a manner that might point the way to a solution.

If it is accepted that Afghanistan is a wicked problem, it may well be productive to consider the generic approaches that have been taken to the solution of such problems.

Efforts to solve wicked problems usually involve one of the following three approaches:

-  Authoritative, in which an attempt is made to reduce the complexity of the problem by placing responsibility for solving it in the hands of a few people

-  Competitive, in which the opposing ideas are left to battle it out, with a requirement that the adherents of each viewpoint put forward their preferred solutions

-  Collaborative, in which an attempt is made to engage all stakeholders in order to come up with a solution that is best for all.

Authoritative approaches would seem to be ruled out if it is agreed that Afghanistan is a super-wicked problem. There being no central authority sitting above the whole problem (unless perhaps all the parties were to agree to place the problem in the hands of the United Nations and to abide by the outcome), there is no-one to select the smaller number of people who will come up with the solution on behalf of all stakeholders.

That circumstance could change, of course, if there were to be a genuine ceasefire and the various parties appointed a number of delegates to negotiate a solution that everyone would be prepared to accept and abide by.

The competitive approach is in effect what we are locked into at the present time, with the different ideas about the preferred solution being backed by force of arms (often financed by the drug trade or covert assistance from foreign governments pursuing their own agenda) and organised violence.

A collaborative approach seems to represent the only hope. As Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told Congress in September 2008, we cannot kill our way to victory.  What is needed, Admiral Mullen said (see Fox News report here):

... is better Afghan governance, more foreign investment, a viable alternative to the poppy farming, greater cooperation with Pakistan and more U.S. nonmilitary assistance.

That sounds to me like the start of a collaborative solution, with the notable absence of any reference to engaging the opposing forces, especially the many insurgents (David Kilcullen’s “accidental guerrillas”[1]) who are not fighting us out of religious or ideological antipathy – they are fighting us because we are in their country, or their valley, or their village.

In future posts I will attempt to explore in more depth what a “collaborative approach” in the relevant sense might look like.

One point I would make at this stage. The NATO forces have to make a clear choice between a collaborative solution and a competitive one. In a competitive solution the focus of the military effort will be on attacking the opposing forces. In a collaborative one, the focus will shift to protection of the population and avoidance of the collateral damage and collateral recruitment to the opposing forces occasioned by “targeted” military strikes gone wrong. We cannot have a collaborative solution with a little bit of killing our way to victory thrown in. If we want to solve this thing we are all going to have to take a deep breath and deal with some very unpleasant people. But then, we have done that before.

Reference:

[1] David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford University Press 2009.

Biden on dismissal of Blackwater charges

The New York Times reported on 23 January that United States Vice-President Joseph Biden has promised Iraqi leaders that the United States would appeal the dismissal of manslaughter charges against five Blackwater International security contractors involved in a 2007 shooting at a Baghdad traffic roundabout that killed 17 Iraqis including women and children (see report here).

Investigators concluded that the contractors, who had been employed by the State Department to guard US diplomats, had fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified attack. In December a US Federal Judge threw out the five guards’ indictment on manslaughter charges, citing misuse of their statements that violated their constitutional rights. 

Some comments and observations:

(1)  As a simple matter of justice to the innocent Iraqi civilians who were killed, it is to be hoped that the United States Government can successfully appeal against the dismissal of the charges. In view of the detailed and scathing judgement handed down by the judge, this seems to be an unlikely outcome.

(2)  One has to wonder at how it was possible for self-incriminating statements to be taken from the contractors straight after the incident, in violation of their civil rights, and how the prosecution came to rely on these statements. What was at work here – was it straight legal incompetence, or was something else going on.

(3)  Apart from the question of justice to the dead and injured Iraqi civilians and their families, it is to be hoped that the contractors can be brought to trial, because the case underlines the catastrophic effect of trying to wage war using mercenary soldiers. For make no mistake about it, these private contractors are mercenaries. Under international law it is only the armed forces of the state who have legitimated power to use, or threaten to use, lethal force, and then only under lawful direction from their chain of command.

(4)  Aside from the matter of legitimacy, anyone who thinks that the deployment of mercenary soldiers represents a saving is seriously deluded.  It is now settled United States policy that success in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq requires the support of the people – that the issue is a “hearts and minds” campaign, and that is what the supreme US commanders in both theatres are about. The deployment of trigger-happy private contractors who appear to blaze away not because they need to but because they can, with no apparent accountability to anyone, fatally compromises the capacity of the US commanders to do what they are trying to achieve. Losing wars on the cheap is far more expensive than winning them on the basis of legitimate forces under proper lawful command.

HMAS Kanimbla returns from Padang

Below is the text of a Defence Media Release of today’s date reporting on the return from Padang of HMAS Kanimbla following the completion of its humanitarian mission:

KANIMBLA RETURNS FROM HUMANITARIAN MISSION

Six weeks after sailing for the earthquake affected region of Padang, Indonesia, Royal Australian Navy ship HMAS Kanimbla has returned to her home port of Garden Island, Sydney.

From Padang, Kanimbla transported 446 ADF personnel back to Australia and arrived in Sydney with 256 aboard, having disembarked some personnel in Darwin and Townsville. Many of the families of those still aboard were dockside for reunions with their loved ones. 

Kanimbla deployed as part of the Australian Government’s response to the earthquake, transporting two Sea King helicopters, nearly 145 Army Engineers and construction personnel, equipment and 15 pallets of reconstruction stores.

While in Padang, the combined ship’s company and embarked force of around 350 ADF personnel completed a number of remediation tasks.

“The engineers embarked in Kanimbla undertook a range of tasks which enhanced safety and helped the community re-establish itself,” said Commanding Officer HMAS Kanimbla, Commander Timothy Byles.

“Tasks included clearing debris and making safe two local schools, repairing a bridge to allow safe passage through town and access to the local market, diverting water back into the rice field irrigation system and building a temporary road to facilitate safe access through landslide affected areas.

“The ship’s company were proud to work alongside our Indonesian counterparts and to make a difference to the Padang community in their time of need,” Commander Byles said.

This is what the Navy’s website says here about HMAS Kanimbla:

HMAS Kanimbla was built for the United States Navy as USS Saginaw and was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy in August 1994. She has under-gone extensive modifications for her new role as a helicopter capable amphibious transport ship.

Kanimbla's primary role is to transport, land and support a force of up to 450 personnel, their vehicles and equipment. Kanimbla is fitted with a helicopter hangar capable of supporting up to four Army Black Hawk or three Navy Sea King helicopters. Army landing craft can also be carried on the forward flight deck to provide ship-to-shore transport. Accessed through a stern door, storage space is available on the vehicle deck for Army vehicles and other large items of equipment. 

The ship has operations and planning rooms and a comprehensive array of communications equipment to support joint operations. Kanimbla is fitted with the largest and most comprehensive medical facilities in the Fleet, with a 40-bed hospital incorporating full surgical and recovery facilities.

The point of commenting on this is in the post, apart from noting the sterling humanitarian service that the Australian Defence Force invariably provides to our regional neighbours in natural disaster situations, is to make a point about the looming obsession with acquiring military capabilities “off the shelf”, rather than acquiring purpose designed equipment, as a way of stretching the defence budget to fit the Government’s ambitions.

The project to commission HMAS Kanimbla and its sister ship HMAS Manoora was in its later stages when I was Secretary to the Department of Defence in the late 1990s. It was what in today’s parlance would be called a “project of concern”, with over-runs of both cost and schedule.

The facts are:

- Manoora and Kanimbla were decommissioned US Navy ships which were purchased on an “as found” basis, which meant that they came with no warranties, express or implied. The price paid reflected that.

- When their refit began they were found to have somewhat more rust than had been anticipated by the Navy survey team that had inspected them prior to purchase, which inevitably added time and cost – but again, the price reflected the fact that they came on an as found basis.

- The planning and operations rooms, communications facilities supporting joint operations and medical facilities were not part of the original platforms that were purchased. They were, very sensibly, added to the scope of the refit in order to give us a much more flexible capability for the variety of circumstances our relatively small Navy might encounter in our theatre of operations. The United States can afford to build large fleets of highly specialised ships; we need to maximise flexibility of operational capability.

The capabilities that were added to these transport vessels mean that Manoora and Kanimbla have served the ADF well in a variety of operations, and it is hard to imagine some of our operations being conducted without them. The press had a field day at the time, revelling in yet another tale of Defence’s incompetence, but this is a story that turned out very well in the end.

The key point is that Defence took some risks to give us this capability – the risk in the original purchase, and the risks involved in the ambitious scope of the refit. We need to be very careful that the current pressures to place more reliance on off-the-shelf purchases does not leave us with capabilities that are less than we need. When it comes to putting people in harm’s way, we owe the ADF and ourselves equipment that is as fit for purpose as it can possibly be. Winning is everything in this game.

Jim Molan on Afghanistan

The 13 November 2009 edition of The Age contains an important op-ed piece (see here) on Afghanistan by Major-General (Retd.) Jim Molan, author of Running the War in Iraq.

I would take a lot of convincing that this war is actually winnable (whatever that means), but it is hard to disagree with General Molan’s overarching thesis that we need to get serious or get out, and with the main elements of that thesis – that if we are there to impress our allies, we need to have enough troops there to impress them, and if we are there to protect the local population we need to have enough troops there to protect all of the people all of the time, not just some of the people some of the time.

War Powers: what the PM said

In War Powers Bill I outlined the provisions of the Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Approval of Overseas Service) Bill 2008 [No. 2], which was introduced in the Senate by Western Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam on 13 February 2008, and in War Powers Bill: Senate Inquiry I noted that the Senate had referred it to the Senate Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee for inquiry and report by 19 November 2009.

Regrettably but not surprisingly it does not look as though we can expect much help from the Government in progressing this matter. On 26 February 2008 Mr Gary Quinlan, the Prime Minister’s Senior Adviser (Foreign Affairs, National Security, Defence and Trade) responded to representations from Dr Kristine Klugman, President, Civil Liberties Australia, in the following terms:

The Government takes its responsibility in committing to any military operation extremely seriously. The process is legally valid and has been followed by successive Australian Governments. Any decision to commit Australian Defence Force personnel into a conflict involves extensive consultation with various organisations and agencies. The emphasis of all parties in this robust and enduring process is to safeguard Australia’s national interest. The government is satisfied with the existing procedure and has no intention of revising it.

Apart from being a classic example of the stuff-off letter, this letter follows the modern political practice of addressing any issue but the one that has been put. Let us take it point by point:

The Government takes its responsibility in committing to any military operation extremely seriously.

- This is reassuring news but what on earth does it have to do with whether or not it is a good idea to consult the Parliament?

- Mr Quinlan can only speak on behalf of the current Prime Minister and the government Mr Rudd leads. The proposition before the Parliament is to change the war-making procedure not only of the present government but of all governments into the future until such time as one of them is able to persuade the Parliament to hand the power to commit troops to combat back to the Executive.

- Many people feel that the previous government did not take its responsibilities seriously enough when it decided to commit Australian forces to Iraq. A group of 43 former senior officers, civilian and military (of whom I was one) said so at the time. The Australian public was never at any stage given a clear answer as to what the objective of the invasion of Iraq was, and it was known that the Opposition was opposed to the invasion.

- This raises a very important issue concerning the accountability of individual members of Parliament to their electors and the public generally. Because the decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq was a decision of Cabinet, we will never know what was the attitude of each and every member of the Coalition parties to that question. If the matter had had to come to Parliament, Government members would have had to decide whether or not they agreed, and if they disagreed, whether they put the question of principle on a matter as grave as going to war ahead of or behind their obedience to their political party. Opposition members who thought the invasion a good idea would have been placed in a similar position. Everyone would have had to vote on the matter, we would all know where every one of them stood. Perhaps that is why both sides of politics find the proposal so unattractive.

The process is legally valid and has been followed by successive Australian Governments.

- The motive for bringing forth this Bill is not a doubt about the legality of the current process. On the contrary, the explicit intent is to change the law to move to a different, more accountable process.

- The fact that the process has been followed by successive Australian Governments has no bearing on the question of whether the current practice is the best practice. In light of the events of 2003, we deserve better.

Any decision to commit Australian Defence Force personnel into a conflict involves extensive consultation with various organisations and agencies.

- This sounds to me like an argument in favour of the Bill; it is certainly unconvincing as an argument against. If the Government is in the habit of consulting Uncle Tom Cobley and all, why not take the elected representatives of the people into its confidence and consult them as well? At least we can now be sure that consultation with the Parliament would not occasion problematic delay, because there is “extensive consultation” going on anyway.

The emphasis of all parties in this robust and enduring process is to safeguard Australia’s national interest.

- That may or may not be the case, but again, what does it have to do with the question of whether or not it is a good idea to consult the elected representatives of the people?

- An important part of the critique of the Howard Government’s approach to the invasion of Iraq is that it had at least as much to do with the perceived interests of Mr Howard’s political party as it did with the national interest.

The government is satisfied with the existing procedure and has no intention of revising it.

- As Mandy Rice-Davies so insightfully remarked all those years ago, he would say that wouldn’t he?

- The question is not whether the Government is satisfied with the procedure, the question is whether it satisfies the rest of us.

- It is always fascinating to watch people of a purportedly republican persuasion clinging to the ancient prerogatives of the sovereign when it comes to the crunch. I would have thought that a willingness to put the matter in the hands of the Parliament would have been more consistent with the republican notion that all authority flows from the people.