Among the lead actors was Peter Finch, who\u2019d also been a former pupil at North Sydney Boys.<\/p>\n
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A Peter Finch movie changed the course of Chris Barrie\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I got home, I announced that I wouldn\u2019t be a brain surgeon any longer, I might join the navy,\u201d the urbane 78-year-old recalls. His banker father said \u201cno bloody way\u201d but his mother said \u201cthat\u2019s perfect\u201d. By the age of 15, he\u2019d signed up with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and headed off for the naval college at Jervis Bay to complete his schooling.<\/p>\n Barrie would go on to have an extraordinarily distinguished naval career, rising to become Vice Admiral in 1997, followed by promotion the next year to chief of the defence force (or CDF as it\u2019s known in Canberra), where he presided over all three services.<\/p>\n He was \u2013 and remains \u2013 the youngest person ever appointed to the role. After retiring from the defence force aged only 57 (there being no other rank left he could rise to), Barrie went on to a second career as a strategic leadership consultant, with stints at Oxford University and the National Defense University in Washington DC along the way.<\/p>\n The threat of climate change dwarfs that of China, admiral Barrie believes.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Nick Moir<\/cite><\/p>\n In 2008, he had a second \u201clightbulb\u201d moment when he was asked by one of the country\u2019s then leading climate scientists, the late Will Steffen, to join an expert panel advising the Climate Institute at the Australian National University. As he was reading up in preparation, Barrie came across Our Final Hour<\/em>, a book by the former UK Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, which among other potential catastrophes warns about the profound threat of global warming and climate instability.<\/p>\n Barrie became convinced this threat would eventually eclipse all others. \u201cTaiwan is a fatal distraction,\u201d he tells me over lunch. \u201cChina is a fatal distraction. Climate change will get us before China.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re sitting on a late spring day at an outside table at Fratelli Paradiso, close to the unit which he and his wife own in nearby Elizabeth Bay. (The couple divide their time between Sydney, a \u201csmall home\u201d in Canberra, and a holiday house on the Greek island of Kythera, which they visit annually.)<\/p>\n We decide on the hearty agnello (lamb cutlets with a polenta crust, butter beans and salsa verde) for a main course, and so keep our entree simple: mixed olives and freshly baked rustic bread (dipped in fine olive oil), with a glass of Italian red for the retired admiral.<\/p>\n Former head of the ADF Admiral Chris Barrie at Fratelli Paradiso.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Nick Moir<\/cite><\/p>\n How does someone who spent 42 years inside one of the country\u2019s most tradition-steeped institutions emerge as a climate campaigner? The synergies are stronger than you might think, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cCulturally the navy made you think ahead. We used to have a thing called the weather eye, always having an interest in the weather and what might happen and what you might need to do. It\u2019s all about thinking and preparing for what lies ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2021, frustrated at the inaction of successive Coalition governments, he and a group of former senior military and emergency service leaders, together with some like-minded people from the business world, set up the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group to agitate for faster action.<\/p>\n In the run-up to the May 2022 election, meetings with then opposition leader Anthony Albanese and climate change spokesman Chris Bowen \u201call sounded very positive\u201d as his group lobbied for the development of a national climate risk assessment, Barrie says. But since then, he\u2019s been disappointed at its slow progress. (Bowen\u2019s department says the assessment and an adaptation plan will be delivered over two years, from this year.)<\/p>\n Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen at COP28.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cHere we are now, halfway through their term of office, and guess what?\u201d Barrie says. \u201cBy the end of 2024 they are going to finish this thing we thought might be done in the first year of the Albanese government. They are back to the old paradigm, the old power politics, the two-party system.\u201d<\/p>\n In September, Barrie briefed teal MPs (who share his desire for stronger climate action) in Canberra. They told him they felt resented by the major parties for having \u201cdisturbed the system\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I said, \u2018well, let\u2019s disturb the system even more\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n What would he be saying to Albanese now if he had the prime minister\u2019s ear? \u201cThat we have no time now in which to delay getting things done,\u201d he replies. \u201cIt has been squandered. Before he died, Will Steffen used to say, \u2018In 2030 we will know the answer about extinction or survival\u2019. I think he was wrong. It will be earlier than 2030, and I think we are starting to see now what I call \u2018planet fightback\u2019 in a way that we could not have comprehended 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n The lamb at Fratelli Paradiso.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Nick Moir<\/cite><\/p>\n Much as he enjoyed his naval career, Barrie says there was a striking lack of professionalism in the RAN when he first joined up, recalling \u201cextraordinary hijinks\u201d on board the first ship he sailed in.<\/p>\n Sixteen young midshipmen graduated in the year ahead of his in 1963. Twelve months later, eight of those young men were dead in naval accidents (one of which was the notorious collision between HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager in 1964).<\/p>\n \u201cOur navy changed dramatically after [that] when its association with the US Navy began from the mid-60\u2019s onwards,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n His straight-talking style wasn\u2019t always appreciated by higher-ups. \u201cI\u2019ve [still] got two letters that I received when I was in New Delhi [on a defence posting], telling me to go and find another job.\u201d<\/p>\n Barrie ignored them and stayed on, gaining himself two university degrees on the side including an MBA from Deakin University. These days he is an honorary professor at the Australian National University\u2019s Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions (and Australian chair of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change).<\/p>\n John Howard had command of his job, Barrie says.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Jacky Ghossein<\/cite><\/p>\n Despite John Howard\u2019s climate change scepticism, Barrie says he found him easy to deal with during the years he was defence chief. \u201cHe never swore at anyone, he never threw things at anyone, he was in control of the job. I hear a lot of stories about people who get that job and lose the plot.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Military men who\u2019ve seen action tend to be more cautious than politicians and desk warriors about sending young soldiers, sailors and air crew to war and Barrie, who saw active service during the Vietnam War, is no exception.<\/p>\n He\u2019s critical of the way Australian leaders seem to almost automatically follow the US into any conflict our powerful ally embarks on.<\/p>\n He believes Iraq was a mistake because the UN had not sanctioned the action, and not enough troops were provided to stabilise the country afterwards. When Australian troops went to East Timor, he says, they were there at the \u201cinvitation\u201d of the Indonesia government, \u201cso we were not invading that country\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201c[But] when we went into Iraq in 2003 we had invaded somebody else\u2019s country. If I know anything from broad history it\u2019s that when the invader arrives, the people who live there busy themselves working out how to get rid of the invader.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor does he think we should be in Ukraine, Europe\u2019s latest land war. \u201cIt\u2019s not our war [and] we are a small power.\u201d<\/p>\n He is more circumspect on whether Australia should join the US in any future military clash over the future of Taiwan.<\/p>\n \u201c I think that depends,\u201d he says. (He knows Taiwan well, having gone there several times in the 2000s.)<\/p>\n Barrie in the Balibo area of East Timor in 1999.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n The Americans would expect us to get involved, I suggest. \u201cYeah, I\u2019m sure they do. But would we make much difference? No. It\u2019s totally symbolic,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n I ask for his reaction to the landmark Brereton inquiry, which found \u201ccredible information\u201d pointing to war crimes being committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan on 23 occasions, with 25 soldiers implicated.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to know what advice was given to the government about the successive combat rotations [of SAS troops], about these guys going back in 12 times\u201d he says. \u201cPersonally, I think that was unconscionable\u201d.<\/p>\n The bill<\/span><\/p>\n As for the AUKUS deal engineered by the Morrison government and signed up to by Labor \u2013 under which Australia is meant to get eight of its own nuclear submarines \u2013 Barrie is sceptical on that front too. He is not opposed to nuclear submarines per se. He says he and onetime head of the defence department, Paul Barrett, spent several years \u201cchasing the nuclear submarine option for Australia\u201d. But their thinking back then was premised on a domestic nuclear industry, which is not the case with the AUKUS deal.<\/p>\n That means \u201cwe are taking some risks\u201d, he says. \u201cWhere will the continuity of nuclear engineering be if we don\u2019t have nuclear power stations? We\u2019re going to have to rely absolutely on the Americans \u2013 or the British.\u201d He adds that if Trump were to win next year\u2019s presidential election and renege on the submarine deal, \u201cthat will be the end of it\u201d.<\/p>\n Barrie believes the fast-intensifying interoperability of Australia\u2019s forces with the US military is \u201cpractical [because] we will always be a small defence outfit, we are never going to be a world shaker\u201d.<\/p>\n But the challenges lie in \u201cwhat I call the great seduction of America\u201d, he says. \u201cYou need to be in the room and eyeball people, and you need to have a brutal talk about what you are prepared to do and what you are not prepared to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Coming back to climate, he fears that on current trends, limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees has disappeared \u2013 \u201cnow it may be two, but it\u2019s much more likely to be three\u201d. When I phone him this week for an update as COP28 (the global climate conference) grinds to an end, he\u2019s disappointed. There has been progress, but it\u2019s weak, he believes. \u201cLike the 2015 Paris commitments to take action to hold to 1.5 degrees, it will likely suffer a similar fate\u201d. Has he lost hope then? \u201cMaybe we need to find another way\u201d, the grandfather of three replies. \u201cI think you have got to keep trying. You simply owe it to the future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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