Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to support the statements made by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the House. It is appropriate that the parliament should consider this matter, and members of parliament should be able to comment on the very significant contribution Australia is making to the situation in East Timor. The commitment of 2,600 troops is a serious and substantial contribution. As with our troops serving anywhere in the world, they have our support and best wishes. They are amongst the best and most professional military in the world and we know that they will do us proud.

I have been fortunate enough to have spent some time in Timor Leste before I entered the House. I was honoured in 2001 to be able to visit the Australian peace enforcement team at Balibo and I was, of course, impressed with their professionalism and the obvious respect the locals had for them. As somebody who has spent some time in Timor Leste and has a reasonably significant Timorese population in their electorate, I have been particularly upset and moved to see what is happening there. When I visited East Timor there was devastation but also hope. There was hope as the nation rebuilt after the looting, the rioting and the destruction of those terrible days. There was hope for the future, hope in their oil and gas reserves, hope to build a tourism industry and hope that I think was, and is, well placed. Timor Leste could become a tourism destination of some note for Australia, which would bring revenue and important resources into Timor Leste.

I know that President Gusmao is sharing the frustration that many of us feel that the future of East Timor is in doubt. You only have to meet President Gusmao and his wife, Kirsty Sword Gusmao, to know that he has an unbelievable commitment to his nation. This means we need to examine what we can do in the future for Timor Leste. There has been much commentary on the quality of the East Timorese government. I do not propose to go into details of personalities in the East Timorese government, but you cannot expect a people who have lived under oppression for decades to automatically know exactly how to run a government. We need to do more to assist. I note that AusAID has been spending $43 million to assist the East Timorese government in building capacity and building knowledge in public administration. I think we can do more. I think $43 million is an amount which could be added to, that we could do better.

It does not just come down to money, but I was particularly disappointed with the attitude of the Australian government in the negotiations over gas and oil reserves and the maritime border between Australia and Timor Leste. I think that was a particularly unfortunate approach for a government like Australia’s to take. On the matter of capacity building, I was interested to read the comments of Sidonio Freitas, of the Timor Sea Designated Authority, who pointed out:

Below the level of ministers, the country lacks people with enough experience to fill essential jobs in order to run things on a day-to-day basis.

But we should recognise progress. According to the World Bank’s post-conflict performance indicators, Timor Leste leads a group of nine post-conflict countries on almost every indicator: public security, disarmament, demobilisation, management of inflation, education, health, and budgetary and financial management. At the same time, inflation has been brought under control and has been very low for the last two years. The President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, recently visited Timor Leste and he said:

The country is at a critical moment, as you know. With the first oil revenues starting to flow and the promise of more to come in the years ahead, the stark reality is that in almost all cases oil wealth has been a curse for developing nations more than it has been a blessing. It has often been associated with corruption, entrenches social divisions, increased poverty, and even violence.

That is what Paul Wolfowitz had to say. They are comments which do need to be taken note of in light of the current debate over the future of Timor Leste. We need to have a proper dialogue internally in this nation and with the government of Timor Leste on what role Australia can play in the ongoing redevelopment of Timor Leste. We have a particular obligation. Not only are they our close neighbour but we played a prominent and important role in their move to independence. Also, there is an emotional and moral basis in that the people of Timor Leste played an important part in the defence of Australia in our darkest days in World War II. We need to ensure that the people of Timor Leste can take their proper place amongst the first rank of the nations of the world. As somebody who, as I said at the outset, has spent time in Timor Leste and has been to visit President Gusmao in his home in the hills, I was particularly upset and devastated to see the road to his home in the hills lined by militia taking pot shots at people on their way to visit the president.

Reluctantly, but I feel essentially, I have to raise the issue of the government’s failure to recognise service in East Timor as warlike. I say reluctantly because I am reluctant to bring in a partisan political point on a motion to support our troops, which we all do. But I thought that if I did not raise the issue of warlike service, what I say would be empty rhetoric unless supporting those troops. The case for making service in Timor Leste warlike service has been most eloquently made by the member for Cowan, as is often the case. We need to learn the lessons of history. The government in 1993—and it is true that it was a Labor government—did not recognise service in Rwanda as warlike service. That was a bad decision. It is a decision which has now been corrected. Just a little while ago, this year, the decision was overturned. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the honourable member for Dunkley, said that the classification was ‘probably not an accurate account of the threat, hardship and danger’ that faced ADF personnel. Why should we wait 10 years this time? We can correct this error now. This is a terrible decision. The Prime Minister in his statements in the House told the House that this was a dangerous mission.

See this speech in context