{"id":15526,"date":"2014-09-01T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=15526"},"modified":"2014-09-02T18:10:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T08:10:18","slug":"readers-response-a-parliamentary-vote-on-military-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/readers-response-a-parliamentary-vote-on-military-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader response: a parliamentary vote on military action?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"House<\/a>Heath Pickering argues<\/a> that \u2018in the interests of democratic scrutiny and ensuring that any intervention occurs with broad political support, RAAF air strikes in Iraq (and potentially Syria) must be supported by a parliamentary vote in both houses\u2019.<\/p>\n

He cites the precedent of the UK where David Cameron lost a non-binding parliamentary vote last year (285\u2013272) to support a British intervention in Syria. Prime Minister Cameron wasn’t legally required to hold the vote, but chose to do so (to avoid a repeat of the country’s swift backing for the invasion of Iraq). No British government has previously lost a vote over matters of military involvement since at least the mid-19th century<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d support Heath\u2019s call for greater information to be provided to parliament on decisions about defence deployments. That might include governments providing a statement to parliament outlining the basis of the decision and reporting on the progress of military operations.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019d reject the idea of parliament voting on decisions to go to war. Governments need the capacity to react quickly to events. Sometimes they won\u2019t be able to disclose all secret intelligence that supports a decision. Most critically, where the government of the day doesn\u2019t have control of the Senate\u2014now the norm in Australian politics\u2014the executive would be hamstrung in acting, regardless of the political, diplomatic and military circumstances of a crisis. The current Ludlam bill<\/a> would, if accepted, simply hamstring the government of the day to the whim of minor parties.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the practical issue of the time delay this will create in engaging personnel. That\u2019s a big enough problem now for the ADF, without the added complication of having to get both houses involved, possibly out of session.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that in a two-chamber system any government that\u2019s required to get the approval of both houses for overseas conflicts will simply be a hostage to fortune.<\/p>\n

A one-chamber system might be workable if a vote on troop deployments was thought necessary. But we have that already in the House of Representatives, where members can change a government or the majority party can change a leader if they oppose a war strongly enough.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a fundamental question of \u2018what\u2019s a war?\u2019 for the purposes of a vote. The US system is relevant here: the US Congress has ‘war powers’ but the president has authority to exercise right of self-defence which has seen several wars\/armed conflicts launched by the president<\/a> without any reliance on Congress.<\/p>\n

In any event, it\u2019s not clear who in Australia would decide when parliament is to have a say on troop commitments, nor define the precise circumstances that would count as a \u2018war\u2019.<\/p>\n

By the way, even if we introduced a vote to go to war I don\u2019t think it would make any practical difference to the actual outcome. I can\u2019t think of a single example where it would have changed a decision on Australia\u2019s commitment to send our troops to war.<\/p>\n

Anthony Bergin<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is deputy director of ASPI. Image courtesy of Flickr user Alison Young<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heath Pickering argues that \u2018in the interests of democratic scrutiny and ensuring that any intervention occurs with broad political support, RAAF air strikes in Iraq (and potentially Syria) must be supported by a parliamentary vote …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":15527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,416,159,191,399,239],"class_list":["post-15526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-australian-government","tag-intervention","tag-iraq","tag-parliament","tag-warfare"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReader response: a parliamentary vote on military action? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/readers-response-a-parliamentary-vote-on-military-action\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reader response: a parliamentary vote on military action? 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