Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me first say how pleased I am to be able to speak in this chamber about the commitment of Australian troops again to East Timor. Whilst I welcome the commitment by the government—and it is widely supported within the community—I do want to express my concerns about how it might, in the longer term, stretch the capacity of the Army to do its work.

I was fortunate to be in Timor-Leste in October-November 1999, just after the Australian troops began their task in that first fateful period after the independence vote when, as a United Nations sanctioned force, they were leading a multinational force of troops which was more than ably led by General Cosgrove. I had the fortune of meeting General Cosgrove and some of his commanders whilst I was there, very early on in their task, and the commitment of those senior soldiers, the officers and General Cosgrove, was then a great tribute to all of us, as I am sure it is now with the current group of senior officers—the commanding officer and his officers—and the soldiers who are present in East Timor.

I want to make the observation that, some while ago, I was fortunate enough to visit Australian troops in Iraq at Al Muthanna. We hear now that it is proposed that the Iraqi forces will take over the security task which was then being undertaken by the Australian Army, and I commend the Iraqi armed forces for doing that. Whilst the Australian government has said that it is proposing to maintain the deployment of the current set of troops or those who would be in the next rotation of the same size as the group at Al Muthanna to do other functions, I would like to know what those functions are and just would proffer the question as to whether or not we will be able to maintain that task group when, at the same time, we have committed ourselves—certainly in the short term, and I suspect in the medium to longer term—to a new force in East Timor.

I also want to make the observation that it is a grave disappointment that we have been required to go back in force to Timor-Leste. It is a grave disappointment to those of us who were involved prior to supporting the resistance forces in the years after 1975 and subsequently to be in a position where Australian troops are now being recommitted there. I want to express my disappointment at the inability of the Timorese armed forces and the Timorese government to maintain its own security, but I do not put the blame upon them. I suspect it is a lot more appropriate for us to contemplate the position and the decisions taken by the United Nations when it decided to withdraw the United Nations forces, including the Australian forces, previously.

Whilst I know there was great debate about whether or not the East Timorese should have a standing army, I do make the observation that I was in New York at the time that representations were being made to the United Nations by the Timorese diplomats and by the Timorese foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, about prolonging the stay of the United Nations, and there was much debate about how long that stay should be, what sort of force structure it should entail and whether or not we should have armed forces of the type that were there previously continuing on. I know that the Australian government took the position that it was no longer an appropriate thing for us to be doing, that it was their view and the view of the United Nations generally, the Security Council, that it was time to scale down the United Nations occupation.

I have to say that I think in hindsight that has proven to be a very poor decision. I would say to the government that they should err on the side of caution when discussing these issues now and in the future in the United Nations and just perhaps reflect that the East Timorese are in a very good position to judge what is in their own interests. If the East Timorese ask for more, I would rather give them more than less, whether that be Australian troops or other foreign troops, or Australian police or other foreign police.

As we lead up to the next election in Timor-Leste some time early next year, it is very important that there is a sense of peace and harmony in the community, that we do not have thugs wandering around the streets disturbing the peace or, more importantly, putting lives at risk and killing people. We need to have an election in a peaceful environment. Whilst making that observation, I would also say there has been much comment over the last month or so about Prime Minister Alkatiri and his government.

I make no judgment about the capacity of that government, but I do make this observation. You will recall that there was a Fretilin conference at which Prime Minister Alkatiri was reindorsed as president of Fretilin, apparently on a show of hands. However, there was no secret ballot. This, of course, was disparaged by the international media, certainly the Australian media, as a sign that the country and the Fretilin were not committed to democracy. I note that over the weekend this government took great pride in the fact that it subverted an attempt by the Japanese at the International Whaling Commission to have a secret ballot and was able to claim victory as a result of the decisions taken at the International Whaling Commission. I make no observation other than to say that one man’s meat is another man’s poison and, in this case, the government ought to understand that I do not think it does it well for it or some of its officials or, indeed, the media, to make the sorts of observations and judgments that were made in the case of Timor-Leste and not make similar judgments in similar sets of circumstances in other forums. It seems to me it is a contradiction that also shows some sense of hypocrisy.

In any event, we have a task ahead of us to secure the community of Timor-Leste to ensure that they have a long and viable future as a stable democracy. We need to do everything we possibly can to assist them. The Australian troops, I know, will do their job well. They are well equipped. We want to make sure that they can maintain their ability to do the task that they have been set. We need to make sure that decisions taken by the Australian government are in accord with what the international community believes is important for us as a community, but also most importantly for the international community, in terms of sustaining this small new democracy into the future.

I know that the Australian government at the moment is not thinking about this because it believes that the Australian forces should be based there on a bilateral arrangement with the Timor-Leste government—but I wonder whether it would perhaps be more appropriate if they were there under blue berets and that they were not a leader of a coalition of the willing, if you like, but in fact a United Nations sanctioned occupation force under United Nations rules and regulations and under the blue beret, where Australia might be the lead nation. I know that that could well be something of great debate, but I think it is important that we understand our position and realise that in the longer term it probably does not suit us to be seen as an occupying force. It would be far better to be seen as being part of a United Nations sanctioned force rather than just on a bilateral arrangement.

I want to complete my contribution by making some observations about a book I recently read about the occupation of East Timor by Australian forces in 1942—the 2nd/2nd commandos. I feel passionately about this issue of Timor-Leste and the importance of us supporting this community into the future—supporting its government and supporting the President with the Prime Minister and the foreign minister. President Gusmao has, I understand, only last week or a week or two ago made Jose Ramos Horta defence minister as well as foreign minister. It is important that we support them in their roles, ensure that they can work together and ensure that we do not do anything to undermine their capacity to govern appropriately.

I go back to 1942 and this book which is called All the Bull’s Men. It is about the 2nd/2nd commandos who were in East Timor trying to rebuff the Japanese occupation, working with the Dutch and the Portuguese—the Dutch in West Timor and the Portuguese in East Timor. It is about the trials and tribulations of that force, the support they received from the East Timorese community and the punishment that was meted out to the East Timorese community by the Japanese as a result of their assisting the Australian forces.

The Australian troops never forgot that, and I know that some of the most strident supporters of the quest for independence by the East Timorese have been members of the 2nd/2nd Commando Association. I say that because my father was a member of that association—not that he served in East Timor, but he was a member of the 2nd/2nd commandos subsequently. I knew many of those men, many of whom have passed on. What they told me in the time that I knew them was of sacrifices that were made for them by the East Timorese. I think that we, as a nation, can never forget it. Despite the disparaging comments that might be made about certain individuals in East Timor—the Prime Minister in East Timor or whoever—we have an obligation as a community to understand the sacrifices which were made on our behalf by the East Timorese in the Second World War and that saved many Australian lives at great cost to themselves.

It is asserted that up to 40,000 East Timorese died during the Japanese occupation. I think the Australian force was somewhat less than about 300. They were able to frustrate the Japanese for 12 months by running a very effective guerrilla war with the support of the East Timorese community. We must never forget that and, when we are contemplating what our role should be—now and into the future of East Timor—we must ensure that whatever happens, whatever the outcome, we sustain the desire for independence, the desire for democracy and that we do everything we possibly can to support them.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This House would do well to heed the remarks of the member for Lingiari in his current role and in his former role as member for the Northern Territory. The member for Lingiari has had probably the most long-standing involvement with the East Timorese community in Australia of any parliamentarian, and he has had a record of speaking about the circumstances of that country—formerly when it was part of Indonesia and as it went through its turmoils—that every other member of this House could learn much from. I think those remarks are ones which we ought to reflect on.

I might make my own comments about the deployment of Australian forces in East Timor. The member for Lingiari put his finger on one of the greatest errors that was made in the judgment of the international community but more particularly the Australian foreign affairs establishment when it proposed and then executed a decision to wind down the UN presence after independence. It was a decision taken against the wishes of the government of East Timor, which was concerned about the stability of the new nation and looked to the international community to have an ongoing presence beyond that which was ultimately mandated. I think that the member for Lingiari is too gentle when he reflects on those that participated in the decision, because largely the international community took its lead from the advice tendered by Australia—that is, the United Nations brought its engagement and deployment to an end because the Australian government pressed it to do so.

The problem that we face now is similar to the circumstances and lack of foresight that applied in the Solomons. In both instances the Australian government took a short-term decision—in the case of East Timor to wind down a deployment that prevented an escalation of violence and in the case of the Solomons not to involve itself in making any effort to prevent the breakdown of civil order in that country. They were decisions which in the end resulted in Australia having to commit far greater resources of far greater substance at far greater risk than would have been the case had earlier decisions been made on a more sustainable basis.

There is an old proverb that we all know and that was drilled into us as kids if we come from an Anglo-Saxon background: a stitch in time saves nine. Two instances have confronted the Australian foreign affairs establishment in our own backyard, in the South Pacific and in our near north, where we have failed, where we have not understood the dynamics of the local community and where we have not applied ourselves intelligently to the security circumstances of those countries.

In East Timor after independence we were part of an international force deployed on the ground to assist in the building of a new nation. The nation had been riven by internal conflict in the past, where the actions of elements previously loyal to the Indonesian regime had been in conflict with Fretilin and other forces seeking independence for East Timor. That conflict saw a huge proportion of the population of that now independent nation killed in circumstances which were vividly displayed in a recent fictionalised series that the ABC put to air about those tragic events.

When we were pressed by that government in its frailty to continue to have troops and a presence on the ground from the international community, we took a short-term, penny-pinching decision: ‘No, let’s go home. It’s time to go home. Leave that country to its own resources. Let’s withdraw.’ The tragedy is that, when we did that and then the tensions that were inherent and under the surface bubbled to the top, we had to come in with a military solution, which was inefficient because it was not effectively a policing solution and which came in after lives had been lost.

In the same manner, if we go to the instance of the Solomon Islands, I was part of a joint delegation of this parliament that went to the Solomon Islands. We were confronted with a request from the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands that Australia make available seven Australian Federal Police officers to be part of a regional group—that is, from Papua New Guinea, Australia, Vanuatu and perhaps Fiji; I cannot remember the precise break-up that they were speaking off—to assist in law enforcement because they felt that circumstances were becoming so frayed that their country might be on the brink of something quite terrible. What surprised me as we left that meeting with the Prime Minister, and as I turned to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who were hosting us, was that we had gone into that meeting without that important knowledge being made available to us. As parliamentarians we were not supposed to know that the government of the Solomon Islands had made that request. It was an embarrassment to our high commission that the Prime Minister had made that embarrassing request to us.

The delegation was not stupid. The delegation had subsequent meetings. We met with the Leader of the Opposition and we said, ‘What do you think about the Prime Minister’s request?’ The Leader of the Opposition said: ‘We support it. This country is facing the possibility of breakdown and whilst we, of course, oppose the government of the day and would like to see ourselves replace it, we recognise that we are on unsound ground and we need some local police to prevent an outbreak of violence in our community.’ Then we went to the chief justice of the Solomon Islands and we asked the same question. The chief justice said, ‘The constitutional position doesn’t leave this in my hands, but my personal view is that our country faces the prospect of disintegration unless we have such assistance.’

On coming back to Australia I immediately wrote to the Minister for Foreign Affairs drawing attention to these requests and saying, ‘There was a foreign affairs, but also a national interest, imperative in us responding constructively to those requests.’ Again, sadly, we did not; we did not take the stitch in time. When the country fell into the chaos that it did with loss of lives, with an insurrection, with a coup, we then had to bring in the military and a stabilisation force. We withdrew it and we had to go back again. We have had these patterns of not anticipating, not thinking through the kinds of engagements that we are so vitally involved in in our own backyard.

If there is one place where Australian diplomatic intelligence and diplomatic strength on the ground matters, it is in the South Pacific. Here we are the regional superpower. It may be in the order of status within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that a posting to Italy or a posting to Vienna is infinitely more desirable, but in terms of our national interest such postings should be significantly less important in their status and in their resourcing than those in our near neighbourhood, where we actually are the superpower, where what we do matters, where the countries actually request of us assistance and where our decisions either to grant that or to refuse it have the kind of profound implications that they have had in the Solomon Islands and in Timor-Leste, and may have in Papua New Guinea and other countries where the potentiality for discord, and even for breakdown in civil governance, cannot be entirely discounted.

That is why I am concerned in this instance to use these reflective moments to, firstly, say we honour those who have responded to the call in our military to go to East Timor. We make no criticism of them, but they have had to come in after the Australian foreign affairs establishment dropped the ball in terms of its decision and got out cheap. In the same way we had a much higher cost in the Solomons, where we did not take advantage of an opportunity before the country descended into chaos to stabilise situations, and we have had two military interventions which have had significant costs to that country and to the relationship generally between the peoples of it.

These are important lessons that we need to learn. We need to be ready to anticipate and to act with some understanding of our regional importance. I think that the time has long ceased where we can have an order of priority in terms of our diplomatic establishment that allows our postings to be determined on the old traditional method, where the greatest seniority applied to people holding European and old-world positions.

This is our sphere of influence. This is where what Australians do matters. We also have to think carefully about the point that the member for Lingiari spoke about—that is, we have to beware of becoming an army of occupation. If we do go into these countries, we have to carry the international community with us and be blue-hatted where that is possible. We also have to beware that we do not find ourselves in exactly that situation in Iraq, where we are now being invited to reconsider our mission. The Prime Minister of Iraq has said that he expects foreign forces to be out of the country by November 2007, and in all but two provinces he expects foreign troops to be out by the end of this year. Those provinces do not include the provinces in which Australia currently has its troops. A good friend knows when to leave. When a host starts making hints like that, you start making plans to get out. The Australian government has to listen to this; otherwise it will be perceived not only by the extremists in Iraq but also by large sections of the population that Australia is overstaying its welcome. Sadly, Bush and Blair seem to have a tin ear. They have not responded to what is a signal of growing national impatience in Iraq about a perceived foreign occupation of that country.

If we do not have a little more sophistication in our response, but simply go along as clones of the Bush-Blair strategy of saying there is an indefinite occupation and an indefinite commitment of our troops—notwithstanding the judgments of the local national government—then we will risk being seen as an army of occupation, and not only by the al-Qaeda related people or even the former Saddamist loyalists but also by a widespread group of persons in that country. In the same way, if we do not build a coalition that presents us in Timor under blue helmets—

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ah, Timor!

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

then we risk the same outcome. The member for Lingiari makes a sensible and substantial point, and the dopey minister at the table, who cannot make a connection between two foreign engagements in which Australia faces the same risk, demonstrates the incapacity of this government to be other than politically narrow in the national interests of its community. We do not need that kind of foolishness and short-sightedness. We need a government that focuses on the national interest instead of chiding oppositions by making short-sighted points. We need a government that is respectful of our national interests and understands the risks that a foolish ignorance of circumstances may place our troops at.

Debate (on motion by Mr Ticehurst) adjourned.