Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to the East Timor question, I am happy for the minister to respond as these things unfold. There are a number of UN Security Council resolutions which then followed between 2003 and 2005. When you look at UN Security Council resolution 1543 of May 2004 you will see that again the question is: why did the government make a decision to further reduce Australia’s military commitment to that peacekeeping force? What particular representations—and these are questions to the minister—did he or the government make through our mission in New York to the United Nations on the composition of that force, any reduction to it or any change in the scope of its operations? Did the government of East Timor at the time of Security Council resolution 1543 in May 2004 express any contrary view about the need to retain the force as it was prior to that date?

Finally, on the question of East Timor, we come to the most recent resolution—UN Security Council resolution 1599 of April 2005. This is of course where we see the radical wind-back of the remaining elements of the military commitment to East Timor and a number of statements were made at that time about whether or not that was a wise course of action. One thing which has struck us, and which I would appreciate the minister’s response on, is: given that those forces were finally withdrawn in about May 2005 and given that we began to see the outbreak of significant instability in the East Timorese defence force by the end of that year or early the following year, does the minister regard that as having been a wise course of action given the role played by the PKF over a long period of time in stabilising arrangements on the ground in Dili—a stabilising force both in the perception of various sides of East Timorese politics and in the capacity of the East Timorese defence force to continue to resolve their own internal difficulties in the absence of the stabilising presence of the United Nations peacekeeping force which had been there from 2002 onwards?

Again, in the consideration of each of the Security Council resolutions of 2003, 2004 and 2005, the question arises: why did the government on each of those occasions decide to roll down Australia’s military commitment? Did the government of East Timor, in the consideration of any of those individual resolutions in New York, express a contrary view about that roll down? Did the foreign minister of East Timor express a contrary view, and why did Australia decide ultimately to pull its troops out, given that instability erupted so soon after?

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