Graham Ring reviews Kim McGrath’s new book, Crossing the Line: Australia's Secret History in the Timor Sea
There is only one photograph in Kim McGrath’s new book, Crossing the Line. It’s an infamous 1989 shot of Australia’s then foreign minister Gareth Evans and his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas, drinking champagne in a jet over the Timor Sea. They had just signed the Timor Gap Treaty, purporting to divide the gas and oil revenue in the rich fields located off the south coast of Indonesian-occupied East Timor. The author describes it as ‘one of the most ill-conceived media events in Australian political history’.
Crossing the Line is a forensic account of negotiations around the ‘Timor Gap’ area off the coast of East Timor - the last part of Australia’s enormous maritime boundary still to be settled. The author has made a painstaking search of the Australian Archives and relies significantly on the Australian Government’s own documents for her source material.
She reminds us that at 2 am on Sunday 7 December 1975, Indonesian naval vessels shelled areas east and west of Portuguese Timor’s capital of Dili. Hundreds of Indonesian paratroopers dropped from the sky over Dili and carnage ensued. The population of the country fell from 650,000 to less than 500,000 in the years following the invasion –significantly a result of killings by Indonesian soldiers, and famine imposed as a political weapon.
This grim history is well-known, but the focus of McGrath’s fluent 200-page paperback, is the attitude taken by successive Australian governments to the invasion of East Timor - and its subsequent quarter-century occupation by Indonesian forces. It’s an uncomfortable read for Australians as the author chronicles the actions taken – and not taken - in the name of ‘Australia’s national interest’.
It’s abundantly clear that Gough Whitlam was aware of the impending Indonesian invasion in the months before his own demise in 1975. His government acquiesced because of an assumed political stability which an Indonesian-ruled East Timor would bring to the region. The rogues’ gallery who succeeded Whitlam – Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard – acquiesced in turn, for an even more unsavoury reason. A compliant Indonesian Government would offer favourable Timor Gap terms, generating billions of dollars of gas and oil revenue for Australia. In the national interest.
It’s safe to assume that - in the absence of huge prospective revenues from the gas fields -the Australian Government would have joined the great majority of nations in condemning the Indonesian invasion. It also seems likely that – in the circumstances where projected revenues numbered in the millions of dollars rather than billions of dollars - the result would have been the same. This begs the ugly but inescapable conclusion that a macabre calculation was done by Australian politicians and bureaucrats. This could only have involved offsetting the extent of public outrage about the likely number of executions, rapes, and incidents of torture, against the projected revenue the gas fields were likely to generate for Australia.
A strong stomach must be needed to undertake such calculations. But clearly, such cost-benefit assessments of this nature must have been conducted repeatedly in the years following the 1975 invasion, to determine the appropriate course of action. In the national interest.
Given that we live in a representative democracy it seems reasonable that our Government provide its citizens with some detail about the way in which these sums were done. Then we can make a judgement at the ballot box about whether we are getting the kind of government we want. The only alternative would be for Australia to undertake to respond to such circumstances by doing what is morally right, without regard to calculations based on projected resource revenues.
Footnote: On 3 September 2017, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague announced that East Timor and Australia had reached agreement over the disputed territory, however details remain confidential.
Crossing the Line is published by Black Inc. and retails for $22.99
There is only one photograph in Kim McGrath’s new book, Crossing the Line. It’s an infamous 1989 shot of Australia’s then foreign minister Gareth Evans and his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas, drinking champagne in a jet over the Timor Sea. They had just signed the Timor Gap Treaty, purporting to divide the gas and oil revenue in the rich fields located off the south coast of Indonesian-occupied East Timor. The author describes it as ‘one of the most ill-conceived media events in Australian political history’.
Crossing the Line is a forensic account of negotiations around the ‘Timor Gap’ area off the coast of East Timor - the last part of Australia’s enormous maritime boundary still to be settled. The author has made a painstaking search of the Australian Archives and relies significantly on the Australian Government’s own documents for her source material.
She reminds us that at 2 am on Sunday 7 December 1975, Indonesian naval vessels shelled areas east and west of Portuguese Timor’s capital of Dili. Hundreds of Indonesian paratroopers dropped from the sky over Dili and carnage ensued. The population of the country fell from 650,000 to less than 500,000 in the years following the invasion –significantly a result of killings by Indonesian soldiers, and famine imposed as a political weapon.
This grim history is well-known, but the focus of McGrath’s fluent 200-page paperback, is the attitude taken by successive Australian governments to the invasion of East Timor - and its subsequent quarter-century occupation by Indonesian forces. It’s an uncomfortable read for Australians as the author chronicles the actions taken – and not taken - in the name of ‘Australia’s national interest’.
It’s abundantly clear that Gough Whitlam was aware of the impending Indonesian invasion in the months before his own demise in 1975. His government acquiesced because of an assumed political stability which an Indonesian-ruled East Timor would bring to the region. The rogues’ gallery who succeeded Whitlam – Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard – acquiesced in turn, for an even more unsavoury reason. A compliant Indonesian Government would offer favourable Timor Gap terms, generating billions of dollars of gas and oil revenue for Australia. In the national interest.
It’s safe to assume that - in the absence of huge prospective revenues from the gas fields -the Australian Government would have joined the great majority of nations in condemning the Indonesian invasion. It also seems likely that – in the circumstances where projected revenues numbered in the millions of dollars rather than billions of dollars - the result would have been the same. This begs the ugly but inescapable conclusion that a macabre calculation was done by Australian politicians and bureaucrats. This could only have involved offsetting the extent of public outrage about the likely number of executions, rapes, and incidents of torture, against the projected revenue the gas fields were likely to generate for Australia.
A strong stomach must be needed to undertake such calculations. But clearly, such cost-benefit assessments of this nature must have been conducted repeatedly in the years following the 1975 invasion, to determine the appropriate course of action. In the national interest.
Given that we live in a representative democracy it seems reasonable that our Government provide its citizens with some detail about the way in which these sums were done. Then we can make a judgement at the ballot box about whether we are getting the kind of government we want. The only alternative would be for Australia to undertake to respond to such circumstances by doing what is morally right, without regard to calculations based on projected resource revenues.
Footnote: On 3 September 2017, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague announced that East Timor and Australia had reached agreement over the disputed territory, however details remain confidential.
Crossing the Line is published by Black Inc. and retails for $22.99
