More than two years after Myanmar’s military staged a coup d’etat and plunged the country into a new round of bloody civil war, Australia’s policy towards the dictatorship is in the doldrums. Diplomatic efforts, from the United Nations to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have failed to reach a breakthrough of any kind.

The junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), is responding to widespread resistance to the coup with increasing levels of violence against civilians – using air strikes, forced displacement, widespread arson, including over 60,000 houses torched – not seen since the atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in 2017. Thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and more than 17,000 dissidents arrested.

The Myanmar army has kept perpetrating the same playbook of abuses against the people since international human rights groups started documenting them in 1987.

There is no doubt this conflict has fallen off the international media scope, policy consideration, and the global conscience. Australia’s Labor government has been notably unmotivated in its Myanmar policy. If Canberra believes the situation is stabilising, it is wrong.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured the release of economist Sean Turnell in November last year, ending the hostage diplomacy of the SAC. On the second anniversary of the coup on February 1, the government imposed sanctions on military officers and two military business entities. But Australia hasn’t joined the United States, European Union and Canada in co-ordinating sanctions.

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Australia spent a decade engaging with the Myanmar military, both “military to military” and in broader Australian aid to the nationwide peace process and governance reforms. How effective was that relationship?

A parliamentary inquiry could establish what has worked in Australia’s approach, what has failed, and what was completely missed. This shouldn’t be seen as a human rights investigation into the military. The inquiry should be designed around a key central question: why the persistence of military engagement given so much evidence of institutionalised atrocity? What were the envisaged gains and what progress was made? What is an evidence-based assessment of Australian influence over the military?

An inquiry would create the space not only for the usual assembly of activists and lobbyists but for all the defence attaches posted to Yangon over the past decade, ambassadors, key diplomats, aid workers, academics and specialists on the Myanmar military and how it acts, not only at an elite level in a workshop but during counter-insurgency operations.