{"id":74784,"date":"2022-08-29T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=74784"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:36:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T00:36:07","slug":"creating-parliamentary-conventions-for-the-australian-way-to-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/creating-parliamentary-conventions-for-the-australian-way-to-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating parliamentary conventions for the Australian way to war"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia\u2019s parliament has little chance to place legal limits on the profound prerogative<\/a> of the prime minister and the executive to take the country to war.<\/p>\n

Instead of pushing against the constitution, look to build new conventions into the Australian way to war. Seek to \u2018parliamentarise\u2019<\/a> the war powers.<\/p>\n

Aim for a checklist if not a legal check when war is launched. And use the checklist for greater parliamentary oversight of the way war is waged.<\/p>\n

Stronger conventions in the House of Representatives can offer more detailed benchmarks at the threshold moment when the prime minister and cabinet mobilise the Australian Defence Force. Benchmarks can then be used by both houses of parliament, especially the Senate, to monitor and review the course of military action.<\/p>\n

Over the past two decades, prime ministers as diverse as John Howard, Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have offered footholds on which parliament could build conventions.<\/p>\n

To use those footholds, parliament must edge closer to the strategic and diplomatic space dominated by the prime minister and cabinet.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed is more \u2018creative tension\u2019<\/a> between the executive and parliament, the phrase used by former Liberal senator and international relations scholar Russell Trood and ASPI\u2019s Anthony Bergin in their 2015 paper. It was also at the conceptual heart of the Senate lecture on parliament and national security<\/a> Bergin delivered in 2017 after Trood\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

To get closer to the profound prerogative, parliament has to build more day-to-day muscle. Move the needle in the direction of change, Trood and Bergin argued, to:<\/p>\n