Neither confirm nor deny. Head officially stuck in the sand on East Timor spy scandal – Michael West

The world knows, the Timorese know, and all Australians know we spied on the Timorese to steal their oil and gas, yet DFAT is denying official history because that history alleges Australia spied on its neighbour. Rex Patrick on the endless cover-ups.

In 2015, the Australian Government commissioned the Australian War Memorial (AWM) to produce the official history of Australian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Australian Peacekeeping Operations in East Timor. In 2016, UNSW history professor Craig Stockings was engaged as AWM’s official historian, and work commenced, first up, on two volumes covering Australia’s East Timor Operations.

Despite the title, the official histories are not the Government’s view of events; the Official Historian is independent, free to research, write and give their historical account as they see fit. The official histories are not government publications; they are published by UNSW Press.

The “official” part of the official history refers to access to government records, many of them still secret.

Access to classified information means that the official history has to go through a formalised clearance process. It goes to Defence, who forward relevant parts to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the intelligence organisations, and then finally the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security and the Australian Federal Police.

The clearance is supposed to take six months and makes it clear that any editorial comment provided by government agencies involved is ‘advice’, not required changes.

East Timor – Volume One

Volume One of the Timor History took two years to write but became a hugely controversial affair when it then took three years to ‘clear’.

DFAT didn’t like the history as written. Letters revealed under a previous FOI show that DFAT was uncomfortable with the first nine chapters of the book – they thought that these focussed “inordinately” on the events leading up to the 1999 Timorese independence vote.

DFAT’s agitation arose from the fact that the Department was the lead agency in determining Australia’s controversial East Timor policy over nearly half a century, with successive generations of senior diplomats deeply involved in orchestrating Australia’s acquiescence to Indonesia’s invasion of Timor in 1975.

It turned a blind eye to a quarter of a century of Indonesian military atrocities and human rights abuses, refusing to support East Timorese self-determination, delaying and foot-dragging on Australia’s intervention following Timor’s independence vote in 1999.

It then engaged in bad faith negotiations through the 2000s as DFAT worked with Woodside and other energy giants to rob Timor-Leste of their share of the energy resources under the Timor Sea.

This was a shameful record that DFAT had no desire to have documented in detail, indeed a story they had no wish to publish at all.

In order to broker a compromise, former Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, then head of the AWM, proposed the first nine chapters be truncated to just two chapters. DFAT liked the idea, but Nelson quickly retreated from his unsustainable position.

Then head of DFAT and now Governor of South Australia, Francis Adamson, wrote to Professor Stockings emphasising that an “honest history” of Australia’s peacekeeping role in Timor would touch “raw nerves”.

From DFAT’s perspective, it was best if history was twisted to suit their narrative and should be censored when the topic was just too hot for them.

The AWM stood its ground.

UNSW Professor of International and Political Studies Clinton Fernandes paid tribute to Professor Stockings. “It would have been easy to have given in and just written a whole book full of stories about larrikin diggers and ruminate on our national character – bronzed ANZACs, all of that stuff. He has taken his task as an official historian seriously, and a lesser person would easily have not only gone along with it but then justified the action.”

Volume One was published in December 2022. The publication was also mired in controversy after the launch of the book was abruptly cancelled after invitations had been issued. Instead, a more discreet “in conversation” event was held, featuring AWM board chairman Kim Beazley interviewing Stockings.

DFAT were no doubt pleased that publicity was minimised.

East Timor – Volume Two

A similar controversy has now arisen over Volume Two.

Newly obtained FOI documents, reluctantly released after the AWM capitulated when I appealed another access refusal decision to the Administrative Review Tribunal, show that DFAT doesn’t want Volume Two making any mention of the spying that ASIS did on the Timor Sea boundary negotiating team.

The official history team are drawing the spying information from public sources, and DFAT has wanted to remove even that in the clearance process!

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

The spying is an established fact.

• Timor was confident enough to institute proceedings in the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in relation to the 2006 treaty, which was the subject of the spying. 
• The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, on national security grounds, raided the offices of the lawyers who represented Timor-Leste in the Arbitration and the home of a material witness in the proceedings for security-related reasons, giving credibility to the fact that the spying took place.
• The Australian Government welcomed the PCA proceedings being discontinued.
• The Australian Government’s negotiation of a new maritime boundary treaty with Timor-Leste subsequent to the disclosure of the spying operation was more favourable to Timor-Leste than the earlier treaty, showing that the disclosure of the spying affected Australia’s approach to the negotiation of the second treaty.
• Witness K was sentenced for his role in disclosing the spying operation.
• The Australian Government also brought charges against lawyer Bernard Collaery for disclosing the spying operation.

Yet DFAT, in an approach everyone can see through, neither confirms nor denies the spying took place.

But in relation to Volume Two of the history, they don’t even want the fact of an allegation of spying to be mentioned.

No resolution

As the official history team work to resolve the issue, the FOI release shows that a DFAT censorship wand is still being waved around. On the 15th of April this year Professor Stockings met with DFAT where officials added two more request to remove information about the Timor Sea boundary negotiations. Stockings stated:

“The argument is that [the official history team] are not qualified to make judgements in this regard as insufficient evidence exists. We respectfully disagree. The quality of the history is up to us. It is not a clearance issue.”

Stockings then goes on to state of the unresolved issues:

“We cannot make these changes on the basis that to do so would fundamentally risk the credibility of the volume. No serial was described as a problem of [security] classification (indeed most only have unclassified sources) but rather that their inclusion may cause some degree of offence to former and/or current East Timor politicians/leaders. Given nothing that is said is not already in the public domain, and given the necessity of this context for the volume to make sense to a reader, we do not agree.”

The released FOI documents show that the Volume Two clearance process is now at an impasse.

In May this year the impasse was escalated to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in a supposed effort to resolve differences.  This may not help much. Historically, PM&C and DFAT have been joined at the hip regarding Timor policy. Most of PM&C’s international experts have come from DFAT and have been just as complicit in Australia’s shameful behaviour towards our neighbour as their diplomatic colleagues. Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister’s Department failed to respond to questions from MWM.

Time to come clean

Most Australians are highly embarrassed about our general conduct towards Timor-Leste. The spying on Timor-Leste for the purpose of stealing their oil and gas is the centre-piece of that embarrassment.

The official historian is not trying to put on the record the actuality of the spying, just that allegations were made. A failure to include this in the history of the two countries would stand out like a sore thumb.

The history must tell the truth. Indeed, the Australian Government should tell the truth and apologise for what it did.

The continued desire of DFAT to blot out the Howard government’s conspiracy to defraud the newest and one of the poorest countries in the world is pointless and just picks at the scab of shame and embarrassment. DFAT need to own their history, apologise to all and reflect on their immoral and unethical legacy, so that we can all move on.