Derek Woolner
Visiting Fellow, Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies
Email: derek.woolner@netspeed.com.au
Biographical statement
Derek Woolner was Director, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group of the Information and Research Services in the Australian Commonwealth Parliament until January 2002. He led a group of 12-14 policy and information specialists in providing advice and information to all Senators and Members of the Parliament. He was a policy adviser to Defence Ministers Lance Barnard and Bill Morrison and over three decades provided advice to Senators, Members and Parliamentary committees on a wide range of defence and national security issues. From 2002 to 2004 he was Visiting Fellow at the Australian Defence Studies Centre of the Australian Defence Force Academy where he did extensive work on homeland security in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Research interests
Derek Woolner's research interests focus on analysis of the mechanisms for the implementation of policy as much as the processes of policy formulation. He has written on military capability development and systems performance, financial and procurement management, maritime border security and Papua New Guinea. Woolner's major project at the SDSC over the next two years will be as co-author of a history of the Collin's class submarine project.
Key publications
He is the author of many works in a variety of areas, of which the most recent include- "Integrated Maritime Enforcement and Compliance in Australia", with Sam Bateman, Anthony Bergin and Martin Tsamenyi, in Towards Principled Oceans Governance: Australian and Canadian Approaches and Challenges, Edited by Donald R. Rothwell and David L. VanderZwaag, Routledge (forthcoming, 2006).
- "Seguridad en Oceania en la era del terrorismo global y la hegemonia de la superpotencia" (Security in Oceania in the age of global terrorism and superpower hegemony), in Seguridad Hemisferica e Inseguridad Global: entre La cooperacion interamericana y la guerra preventiva (Hemispheric Security and Global Insecurity: Between Inter-American Cooperation and Preventive War), Maria Cristina Rosas (ed.), National Autonomous University of Mexico, August 2005.
- "Australia's approach to homeland security-problems and prospects", with Anthony Bergin, Reform (journal of national and international law reform), Issue 82, April 2003.
Derek Woolner is a graduate of the Joint Services Staff College.
