Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In his own words.

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

Yes, they were his own words. The Minister for Defence said:

We know that this is going to be a particularly dangerous mission ...

The Minister for Foreign Affairs said:

... there are reports of shootings, so there is a good deal of danger there.

Yet we have the extraordinary decision to deny warlike service to these 2,600 troops which delivers a saving to the government of $185,000 a day for each day this contingent is deployed. This government spends $185,000 a day on all range of matters. This is a government which can afford to spend next year almost $300 million on government advertising—party-political advertising—yet they are penny pinchers when it comes to giving money for warlike service.

I note that, appropriately, public servants and members of parliament receive a nightly allowance when they travel. For members of parliament that allowance is now $190 a night when they visit Canberra, as the member for Cowan pointed out. We have no problem with that. That is appropriate. Yet we pay somebody risking their life in Timor Leste $78 a day. If warlike service was recognised that would rise to about $150 a day, which would be a much more appropriate level of recognition.

The nation got it wrong in Rwanda. We have not learned from the mistakes of the past. We are now getting it wrong in Timor Leste. We should not wait 10 years to correct that. We should not just support the troops with our words and sentiments; we should support them in a way which matters to them. I know that the soldiers in Timor Leste would not be particularly concerned about the loss of $70 a day. What it is is a matter of principle. It is a matter of showing that the nation actually cares. It is a matter of recognising their service, that it is dangerous and that they are risking their lives. We send them our sentiments and our support. We all join together in doing that. Why don’t we all join together in supporting them in their claim for being recognised for warlike service?

Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my contribution to this debate on our commitment of troops to East Timor, speaking as the member for Blaxland and also as the Deputy Chair of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, I want to pay tribute to those people who are hazarding their lives and their health in the service of the Australian people and also in the service of the people of East Timor. It is a thing that not many people do. Not many people are in our defence forces; not many people put their lives at hazard for the benefit of others and in the service of others. Those who do, who have the courage to do that, need to be congratulated as often as we can do so and given the full measure of support from both sides, indeed from all parties, not only in the House of Representatives but also in the Senate.

It is in the very nature of military service that those who serve have no choice where they serve. They have no say in determining the approach a government or an opposition will take to a particular conflict. They are at the whim and behest of the government. And they are subject to a great deal of scrutiny by the media and by commentators world wide. The particular circumstances our troops find in East Timor are different from those they find in Iraq—the just announced redeployment, with the Japanese moving out of Iraq, will mean another different set of circumstances as our troops move from Al Muthanna province to another area—and they are different to the situation our troops face in Afghanistan and to the situation they face in the Solomons.

What has been proven over the whole history of our forces, but particularly in the last decade or so, is that Australian defence forces can be engaged for a variety of purposes utilising all of their expertise in a staged way. We have a commitment of about seven out of our 14 chief elements. We have the capacity to move troops in and out of all of the areas where they are, but it puts a great deal of stress on the organisation. It certainly puts a great deal of stress on our troops who are serving, because of the rapidity with which they are being moved from one area to another. Having served in East Timor, come back to Australia and possibly been redirected to the Solomons or, indeed, to Iraq, they can come back to Australia and then, because the situation in East Timor has deteriorated, be back in the firing line.

Looking back some few years, I also want to pay tribute to those members of the Australian Federal Police who, in the initial engagements in East Timor to resolve the problems of the militias, went there and worked without weapons, using their best offices and their capacities as trained officers, to help people restore order and create a situation where there would be a safe environment for everyone. It was a very difficult and tough assignment. I personally knew two of those Australian Federal Police officers because they were members of the Prime Minister’s security detachment. I know how well and effectively they undertook those tasks. It was our very best and most experienced people from the AFP who hazarded their lives to try and sort out East Timor in that first situation.

It has been suggested that, in the current situation, AFP forces should again be sent because the particular roles that can be undertaken by the military and the police are different and the nature of the task before us in Timor demands policing roles. While we understand that those forces do not have a choice or a say in determining where they go and what they are going to do and we know that their professionalism has been commented on and marked out because it is of such a significantly high standard, I think the population at large also needs to understand the range of skills that are demanded of our people and the fact that this is a lot more difficult than operations in the past.

This is not only because of the different environments that we are involved in in different areas of the world, but also because the nature of the task can rapidly change. The original efforts in East Timor were different to these. The Indonesian government was at its very weakest and there was effectively an imposition on Indonesia of a demand for the creation of East Timor. There were Indonesian government-backed guerrilla groups trying to maintain control of East Timor, and the resolution of that situation depended upon what was done at the border and on the effectiveness of Australian forces being able to dissolve the capacity of those guerrilla groups to act at will.

This situation is very different. The Indonesians are in a different position because East Timor is now free. Australia is in a much more powerfully important position because it has sought to take on a role—to intervene militarily or to provide police forces—in our region and take a leading part. The Prime Minister has said:

… Australia—a large, stable and prosperous country—has a special responsibility to act as a force for peace and order in our immediate region.

The world we live in is one where the problems of weak and fragile states, especially ones on our doorstep, can very quickly become our problems. And certainly in East Timor the problems became our problems, because of the actions of the Prime Minister and the government in what they did with Indonesia at that time, forcing this through.

There are some fundamental questions to be asked about the actions taken by this government and the sense, or lack of sense, of those actions. The fundamental first question, I think, is to do with the nature and structure of the military forces within East Timor and the fact that $70 million of Australian money was used to help set up that army. It is an army which a good many of the government in East Timor said they did not need. They said they needed a police force and doubted they actually needed an army.

The fundamental breakdown in their society does not reside simply in the problems within that army group, but certainly that was the area that allowed the whole situation to catch fire. These problems highlight the fact that Timor is not one single indivisible entity, and that the regionally based tribal groups that exist there are present in the army. They have not been moulded into an effective group that sees itself as the defenders of the country as a single unitary group. Indeed the core of the conflict goes to the differential treatment of those from the east and those from the west—the fact that some were promoted and others were not. A whole section of the force saw themselves as effectively being cut out and felt that, when they put those arguments forward, they simply could not get those in power to properly listen to them or address their problems.

So you first have to question the sense in setting up that force to start off with. You also have to ask the question of whether or not, having set up the army at a cost of $70 million, with Australian troops helping to form and shape it, understanding that there is that fundamental problem, the army should be disbanded and a reconstituted and extended police force should take its place. That is something we need to give a great deal of consideration to. The very core of this problem goes to the division within the society and the feeling that people have been dealt with unfairly and there has been an unequal approach to this. That is not easily resolved.

In all small, fragile states, but particularly in relation to a country like East Timor, which has very little in the way of natural resources and which will be dependent upon the deal done with Australia on the oil and gas resources that are in the East Timor Sea, once there are fundamental ructions between different groups, the grab for power by one particular group leads to the exclusion of the other. In that situation, which has occurred in the Solomons, in Papua New Guinea and in Fiji, independent states have significant trouble holding the society together. In that situation you have to be very careful what you do.

There are other fundamental problems of a lack of insight into and a lack of proper determination of just exactly what we are facing. To me this was evident in the decision to go into Iraq in the way that the coalition forces did. There was no proper appreciation of just how difficult it is with, firstly, a dismembered state such as Iraq, and, secondly, a nascent state such as East Timor, to put together a modern democratic country and keep it whole. It is the exception, not the rule. But the ideology being pushed over the last few years is that, on a regional basis, we and the United States should be there to create and enforce that situation for these small states.

There is a signal lesson with regard to East Timor, and that is that the problems that we now have could be much greater. Virtually everyone in the House would be aware of the significance of the tribal problems in Papua New Guinea over the last few decades. Holding that great conjunction of different groups together has been significantly difficult. Problems of corruption and the fight for power between groups have been significant. The scale of what we are dealing with in East Timor would certainly pale if we had similar problems in Papua New Guinea. That is different from Irian Jaya, because it is incorporated as part of Indonesia.

The fundamentals here go to the question of who bears responsibility, the manner in which we do it and whether the appropriate means are being used to buttress a new government. The Prime Minister, in his general discussion of this in answer to questions, has effectively tried to distance himself from the creation of the state and the creation of the burden taken on by the Australian government and the Australian people for the good governance of East Timor. It is not enough to say that the fundamental reason for this breakdown is a lack of good governance. We were there at the very birth of this nation and in fact caused it to happen. If we took on the responsibility for it in economic terms and the failure to sign up to a deal which would give an adequate and necessary income, we would simply burden Australia directly rather than through the deal that has been done here.

We do not fully appreciate the resources that need to go into not just putting our troops in now, having resolved the situation before, but going in at a point in time when they are putting their lives in hazardous situations. We need to put a lot more civil capacity into East Timor to help them to try to resolve the fundamental splits that exist within their community. This is a very hard thing to do, but if it is not done then this will be not the end of the problem but part of a continuum, where a fragmented, small and weak state could continue to be a significant problem for us and for our troops from now into the future.

What steps are necessary? Firstly, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade needs to come up with an appropriate appreciation of just what the complexities involved here are. Secondly, Australia, in taking the leading part in trying to resolve this, together with the UN and with other interested countries, needs to focus resources on trying to heal the fundamental rifts that there are within this community and trying to heal the fractures in this very new polity. If we do not seek to do that by putting adequate resources into it and trying to negotiate a way through to a proper result, then our forces, even if they are there for the short to medium term, will be forced back in the future. Civil resources put into this matter now will ensure that our troops are not put in hazardous situations. (Time expired)

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In announcing Australia’s deployment of defence forces to East Timor on 25 May, the Prime Minister told the House:

This deployment also reflects what I have said on many occasions: that Australia—a large ... and prosperous country—has a special responsibility to act as a force for peace and order in our immediate region. I want to reaffirm in the strongest terms that this action is in our national interest, because the world we live in is one where the problems of weak and fragile states, especially ones on our doorstep, can very quickly become our problems.

The Prime Minister went on to say:

At the same time, I want to underscore the importance of states accepting their own responsibility for improving governance and reducing corruption, as the path to a better future.

Those remarks reflect this government’s approach to security in our region. It seems we will limit our role to that of the deputy sheriff in our region if and when we can spare the troops from deployments in other parts of the world.

The withdrawal of Australian forces as part of the UN peacekeeping mission since 2002 came in spite of repeated requests from the government of East Timor for a continued presence, but this government’s decision to cut and run from East Timor had more to do with providing troops for Iraq than a realistic assessment of the situation in East Timor. Having said that, I should add that, while the need for deploying Australian personnel in East Timor is vital at this stage, it should not be seen as a long-term solution to the instability in East Timor and a number of other small nations in our region.

I visited the Solomon Islands and spoke to RAMSI in 2005, and the recent recall of Australian forces to the Solomon Islands should remind us that stability does not come from our ability to quickly deploy troops to trouble spots. Our strategy must look toward longer term development if we are to build a secure and stable region. While security and good governance are important starting points, they do not ensure economic and social development and, if the experience of other developing nations is anything to go by, access to resources such as oil and gas is no assurance of stability and economic development.

Resource riches can be more of a curse than a blessing for the ordinary people of developing countries. When you look at countries like East Timor, the poorest nation in South-East Asia, it should be clear that assistance in economic development must be a key part of Australia’s role in the region. One form of assistance proposed for countries like East Timor is for Australia to allow young people from our region to work and train in Australia. The benefits of remittances to families at home and the increased skills gained by workers from these countries have the potential to improve the economic development of small nations in our region. While Australia does not have a history of employing guest workers, when you consider that we allow the employment of tens of thousands of backpackers, we could also see the potential in allowing the entry and employment of young people from our region in a similar way.

Last year, I attended the East Timor Independence Day celebrations hosted by the Chinese Timor association in Fairfield. The special guest at that celebration was the East Timor foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta. Having visited the Solomon Islands shortly before the occasion where the idea was raised, I made mention in my speech of the guest worker idea. Speaking to an audience of East Timorese refugees who had made their home in Australia, the idea was warmly received. I stress that the aims of such a scheme would be to allow young Timorese to gain skills in areas such as horticulture and hospitality, as well as improved English language skills, which would equip them for employment in tourism industries and allow for future training.

In addition, money earned could be remitted to assist family members in East Timor or could be used as a foundation for establishing farms or small businesses. To my surprise, Jose Ramos Horta flatly rejected the idea, saying that East Timorese young people could look to Portugal and through there to the European Community for employment and training, and that they would prefer that the East Timorese develop their knowledge of the Portuguese language rather than English.

I can accept the desire of the East Timorese people to maintain the culture which they have fought so hard to preserve. I can appreciate the strong links between East Timor and Portugal, but my conversation with Jose Ramos Horta did lead me to consider the difficulty that Australia faces when dealing with the future deployment to East Timor. I should point out that in the present emergency, of the 3,500 personnel sent to East Timor, Portugal has provided only 127, while Australia has provided 2,800. I can imagine the difficulty faced in what is essentially a policing task for law enforcement operations where the court system is based on Portuguese law and where the official language is Portuguese

I mentioned earlier that I attended the East Timor independence celebrations last year. Western Sydney is home to a large number of refugees from East Timor. I should note in passing that only after considerable action on the part of religious and community groups was the plight of some 1,600 East Timorese refugees in Australia finally recognised by this government. I raised the case of Pedro Cham back in 2003, an East Timorese refugee who faced deportation after eight years in Australia. I can recall at that time claims by the government that East Timor was a safe and stable country. Well, we have seen just how fragile that environment was. I am grateful that the government finally saw sense and granted permanent residency to the Cham family and hundreds of other East Timor refugees.

That leads me to question the accuracy of our assessments of the stability of East Timor over the past three years. What warnings did the government have about the deteriorating situation on the ground in East Timor and why did the government continue to push for the ending of the United Nations presence, if it was aware of what was happening? The 2,800 Australian defence and police personnel have the full support of members on this side of the House. Their task, as I have already described, is a difficult one. Regardless of the failure of the government to recognise this deployment as warlike service, there is concern for the safety of all members of the deployment.

That raises my concern for the consequences in the event that Australian service personnel may be injured or tragically killed in the performance of their duties in East Timor. The prospect of less compensation and fewer entitlements for their families in such an event is totally unacceptable, and I urge the government to address this situation urgently. We see in all too many cases where service personnel have to fight governments at home to get just compensation for injuries suffered in overseas operations. Having seen the effect of those conflicts many years later, I would hope that we could avoid such battles for recognition of the type of service undertaken. Defence families—and I have met a number in my electorate—need to be reassured that in the event of injury or death a grateful nation will neither ignore the plight of those who have served their country in times of conflict nor ignore their dependants.

I come back to a point raised earlier in this speech, and that is the long-term future of our relationship with East Timor. The stated terms of Australia’s mission relate to the stabilisation and creation of a secure environment for the conduct of dialogue to secure a settlement to the current political crisis. In recent statements, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has referred to a role for Australia within an ongoing United Nations presence in East Timor.

While it may be too soon to consider our role in the longer term, what is clear is that Australia will need to go beyond police and security assistance if East Timor is to develop into a strong and independent country. Our role will be enhanced by strengthening the people-to-people links that come from closer contact between our two countries. The idea of allowing young Timorese to enter Australia to work and gain skills is one way that both countries can benefit from closer ties. Recognising our role as a cooperative partner in regional development rather than a deputy sheriff or economic and cultural colonist will provide the basis for our long-term relations with East Timor. As I stated earlier in my speech, the 2,800 Australian defence and police personnel have the full support of members on my side of the House. They are definitely in our thoughts and we wish them a safe return to Australia.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are speaking on a motion to take note of the statements made by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition on the decision to send something like 2,600, or 2,800 troops including police, to East Timor. I want to reiterate what the honourable member for Fowler has said: not only should those serving men and women and police understand that they have our total support on both sides of politics but, more importantly, we wish them well and hope that they will successfully accomplish their mission. Sending troops to East Timor is not new. In fact the largest military contingent since the Vietnam conflict was sent to East Timor, and our troops did us very proud on that occasion. They performed magnificently well.

I want to return to a point that the honourable member for Fowler has made. When we send troops or police overseas there is no committee or ballot—you do not vote on it. They are required to go, and go in harm’s way. Increasingly we are asking the Defence Forces and the Federal Police to go overseas on our behalf as a people and as a government. I very much regret that the government has not considered this service to be warlike. Nowhere in their mission were they required to deal with gangs that were breaking into houses, setting fires and causing all sorts of mayhem—nowhere. That we have not had a fatality is a blessing, and I think it reflects poorly on the way the troops will feel we value them that their service is not considered to be warlike. If my memory serves me correctly, the Australian Federal Police are likely to be earning more money than the soldiers, as they did in the Solomons. In no way do I wish to reflect on the Australian Federal Police—I admire the jobs that they have been asked to do over many years—but I think that that is essentially wrong.

I think it is fair enough for us to ask, given that we had such a military presence and we wound it down: why is it that we are back there, especially when the Prime Minister says he has been aware of governance problems in East Timor for three years? We should not be using soldiers and policemen to mop up a failure of foreign affairs, and yet this is precisely what we are doing. When we send troops there we have an obligation to follow up. Even when we have no troops in a particular peace-enforcing or peacekeeping role we have an obligation to maintain the rage, as they say, and ensure that their good work is followed up by every other arm of government—not going back three years later in significant numbers, as we are today. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.