In his role as administrator, Barton led the Maralinga people in their campaign to get the land cleaned and restored so that they could safely return to living there. He represented his people before many enquiries and commissions, in both Canberra and London. A royal commission into the nuclear tests was done by the Australian government. This was the McClelland Royal Commission, for which Barton helped provide evidence. Ten years later, in 1995, the government paid the community AU$13.5 million in compensation. Barton and two elders travelled to London in 1991 and 1992, to negotiate with the British government. They met with the leader of the House of Lords, Viscount Cranborne, to whom Barton presented two bags of soil from Maralinga, tainted with plutonium.