Carr, Andrew: I’m here for an argument: why bipartisanship on security makes Australia less safe

Andrew Carr

I’m here for an argument: why bipartisanship on security makes Australia less safe‘, The Australia Institute, 22 August 2017 updated

While bipartisanship seems to be an innocuous idea it is actually making us less safe by restricting policy creativity and accountability, reducing public engagement with critical issues, and sapping national unity.

This paper argues that given the growing instability of Australia’s strategic environment, it is urgent that our political class fulfil their responsibility to openly debate what principles this country stands for, how we will act and what costs we will pay to protect other states and ourselves. By rejecting the potential to even disagree about the right way forward in these uncertain times, the demand for bipartisanship leaves us all less secure.

For more on these arguments, look in our tagged list, ‘Getting on with the world‘. Carr’s paper is discussed by Katharine Murphy in Guardian Australia and by Nicholas Stuart in Fairfax.

The author is at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra.

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