Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, I think I have canvassed the issue of the decision that the United Nations Security Council made to downsize the UN presence in East Timor. Of course, there has been an ongoing UN presence there in the form of UNOTIL and that has included a small number of military advisers and UN police advisers. The Security Council made that decision for the reasons I described earlier, so I will not bore the Committee by going back over that.

In relation to the East Timor defence force, which the honourable member raises, I suppose it is fair to say that this is a point of some disagreement between us. I am not sure about advice from other people, but as the minister I am entitled to my own view—funnily enough. All sorts of people give me advice. You should see some of the advice you get from the opposition. My view has been that it was a mistake for East Timor to have a defence force at all. The reason I think it was a mistake for East Timor to have a defence force is that a defence force in an emerging, developing country can have implications for internal security. I rest my case: my advice and my view were right—it has had implications for internal domestic stability. The East Timor government sacked 595 members of the East Timor defence force. That is two-fifths of the East Timor defence force. The implication by the opposition that somehow Australia, of all great countries—or, for that matter, the United Nations Security Council or Kofi Annan—is responsible for what has happened in East Timor is simply preposterous, as everybody knows.

I was not in favour of them having a defence force. The East Timorese wanted a defence force because they wanted to ensure that the Falantil people, the people who were on the military wing of Fretelin and had been fighting in the hills against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, had a role. Those people wanted to be in a defence force, so that is why they did what they did. But it was the wrong call and now they are stuck with a defence force, or what I could only describe now as the remnants of a defence force, and with those remnants they are going to have to work out what they will do. The East Timorese must take responsibility for their own decisions and their own actions. The East Timorese are responsible for the fact that they have a defence force. They are responsible for the sacking of 595 members of that defence force, not the United Nations and not Kofi Annan. Not even George W Bush is responsible for that, funnily enough. The East Timorese are responsible for that.

The third question is the old canard about Iraq. We actually had 2,000 troops in Iraq during the initial invasion, not 20,000. Of course there was no advice that we should downsize in East Timor because of our commitment to Iraq. We progressively downsized—I think the largest number of troops we had there was around 5,700 at one stage. The opposition may think we should have kept 5,700 troops in East Timor. If they do not think that then they must have been in favour of downsizing. They were in favour of downsizing but not of downsizing so much—not that they ever said so or ever criticised the downsizing or the decision of the Security Council at the time. No, not at all. In fact, when it comes to Afghanistan, the opposition leader put out a press release congratulating the government on its decision to withdraw the special forces we had in Afghanistan at that time. Governments make decisions on the basis of the information they have at the time and judgments they make at the time. If we were all able to foretell the future—all of us—we probably would not be here; we would probably be at the races. This kind of constant strategy of the opposition saying, ‘We, the opposition, were able to foretell the future; the government wasn’t,’ is summed up in one word: childish.

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