Timor-Leste, explained.
Neighbourhood disputes (Bay Ismoyo/AFP via Getty Images)
Both moral and pragmatic cases exist to directly confront stains on the diplomatic record, yet Australia continues to duck, weave and obfuscate.
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The apology Australia owes Timor-Leste – but won’t deliverThe apology Australia owes Timor-Leste – but won’t deliver
“If something happens that’s wrong, you say sorry” said Evan Shackleton, son of one of the Balibo Five, last week. Shackleton was speaking to media at Balibo at commemorations for the five journalists murdered by Indonesian forces on the Timorese side of the border in 1975. He was wondering aloud why advice parents give to their kids doesn’t apply when it comes to the actions of governments, including his own.
Balibo is the first in an awkward duo of golden anniversaries for Australia in Timor-Leste, both of which alight on the question as to whether states should apologise for their past actions. Next month marks a half century since East Timorese leaders declared independence, a short-lived freedom as Indonesia invaded nine days later. Australian officials knew about the attack in advance. Both Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser – this was the period of “the Dismissal” and caretaker government in Australia – gave Jakarta’s actions a nod and a wink.
As regards Timor-Leste, there is a line of argument that Australia’s unwillingness to directly and unambiguously offer apologies for past actions are the equivalent of original sins. They stain efforts no matter how much support Canberra offers Dili in the present day. Yet there’s another argument: expressing contrition now won’t accomplish much and constitute too little too late.
Australia’s shabby role in terms of advance knowledge about the threat facing the journalists at Balibo and the subsequent invasion is well documented. So too is its recognition of the Indonesian occupation and Australian espionage during oil and gas negotiations in the years after independence was restored in 2002.
Bureaucratic efforts to screen off that history from view have been assiduous. Authors such as Jill Jolliffe, James Dunn, Clinton Fernandes and Peter Job as well as lawyer Bernard Colleary have written excellent books on Australia’s tangled relationships in Timor and Indonesia, devoting nearly as many pages to Canberra’s efforts to duck, weave and obfuscate as the acts themselves. Squirminess extends even to areas of Australian pride. It took Craig Stockings – author of a monumental official history of the much-lauded INTERFET peacekeeping force – two years to work up the manuscript and three years for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to clear it for publication. Jitters about impacts on the relationship with Indonesia was the prime reason.
Canberra has never confronted past deeds in Timor head on.
Balibo House, now a memorial, where the five Aussie journalists were shot in 1975 (James D. Morgan/Getty Images)
Visiting Dili in 2019 as prime minister, Scott Morrison waxed about a “new chapter” in relations while never specifying events in previous chapters. Penny Wong offered a careful form of words that came closer to penitence when visiting in 2023. “There have been past instances in which Australian governments have acted in ways that Timorese people, and many Australians, found disappointing”, she acknowledged without specifying what precisely she had in mind.
Australia is not atypical. Sorry seems to be the hardest word for states. A book on the subject, Sorry States, concluded that “international apologies have powerful healing effects when they are offered, and poisonous effects when withheld.”
When the government of Australia has said sorry, it has been about domestic matters and its effects have been transformative. Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations in 2008 is front of mind. Julia Gillard, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese have issued national apologies also. Yet on the international stage, not so much. Tony Abbott refused to apologise after disclosures that Australia tapped Indonesian president’s phone for instance. The rare instance that comes to mind occurred this week with Ambassador Kevin Rudd apologising to President Donald Trump.
To the Canberra hive mind, apologising for 1975 would also imply direct criticism of Indonesia.
There is a contrast here with Indonesia. President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) apologised when he visited Dili in 2000. In 2008, Timor-Leste and Indonesia concluded a Commission of Truth and Friendship which described heinous deeds during the occupation. Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressed his deepest remorse, which Timor-Leste accepted.
Whether it was those words, historical memory, or the calculations of a small state nestled within the embrace of a larger one, East Timorese leaders take a different tone to Jakarta as compared to Canberra. Both Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and President Jose Ramos-Horta dapple praise on the Australian government with the occasional lacerating broadside. “What is Horta going to say next” is a perennially indigestion-inducing exercise for officials tracking the relationship.
Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta earlier this month in Dili (Kyodo News via Getty Images)
What’s the argument for an apology for past deeds? There’s the moral imperative as so clearly expressed by Shackleton but also the quasi-anthropological argument that an apology would be well received in Timor-Leste as a deeply Catholic country.
At a more pragmatic level, there’s the argument that an expression of remorse could transform a betimes awkward relationship. There is no doubt Canberra presently enjoys reasonable relationships with Dili. The case Timor-Leste brought against Australia in the international court on the spying allegations was dropped. Australia’s seasonal workers program is well regarded and appreciated; its development projects move forward.
Yet other features of the relationship are in a long-drawn-out inertia. Resources from the Greater Sunrise field – an animating source of Australia calculus in the 1970s – remain under the seabed. Timor-Leste gets closer each year to running out its petroleum fund, which provides the money for government operations, with the World Bank predicting that could happen by mid 2030. A Chinese company won the contract to develop a supply base on the southern town of Suai, located less than 300 nautical miles from Darwin, which Timorese leaders hope will service a pipeline pumping Greater Sunrise gas that has yet to be agreed.
The arguments against offering apologies go that little would be gained in isolation without also including something substantive to go with it, and the Australian government really doesn’t have the wherewithal to give. Woodside is the operator of the Greater Sunrise field, not Canberra. Speaking to ABC radio this week, Horta urged Australia to support this “pipeline of friendship” to Timor-Leste.
To the Canberra hive mind, apologising for 1975 would also imply direct criticism of Indonesia. For Labor diehards, apologising would constitute besmirchment of sainted Gough Whitlam whose record on Timor is lamentable. In 1974, Whitlam told President Suharto he didn’t believe the then Portuguese colony should ever be independent; he became a foremost member of the Indonesian cheer squad in the years afterwards. Labor tackled this record in the late 1990s with Laurie Brereton as shadow foreign affairs spokesman, brawling at the time with Rudd as well as the record of the Hawke-Keating years, but the collective memory is far from settled. There is also the “open floodgates” argument, asking what else will Australia be asked to apologise for and, potentially, be financially on the hook for (a rationale why John Howard resisted an apology to the stolen generations).
Last week’s Balibo anniversary highlighted old wounds and continued official imprecision. Echoing a statement of Wong, the Australian ambassador Caitlin Wilson “acknowledged the profound grief that families have carried” but stopped there, making no mention that predecessor officials from Australian governments contributed in some way to families carrying that burden. Will contrition be offered next month? Unlikely. The state binds its foot soldiers living and dead.
About the author
Gordon Peake
Gordon Peake is a writer, podcaster and consultant, and a campus visitor at the Development Policy Centre.
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