Subject: GLW: East Timor: Australia’s double betrayal
East Timor: Australia’s double betrayal
Max Lane
Since the East Timorese independence referendum in 1999, the Australian
government has received approximately $1 billion dollars in taxes on oil taken
from the Laminaria Corallina field, which is fully situated in East Timorese
territory.
During the same period, East Timor has received absolutely nothing from this
oil field. One billion dollars is four times the amount of “aid” that has
been “given” to East Timor through AusAID since 1999.
In Melbourne, the Timor Sea Justice Campaign has been established and other
groups are screening the documentary Timor Gap Oil and Gas: Don't Rob Their
Future to raise awareness about this rip-off. Clearly there is a massive
challenge to reawaken and mobilise the Australian people’s solidarity with
East Timor against the Australian government’s robbery.
It should concern us all that the campaign to give East TImor its resources
back is stronger in the United States than in Australia. The US East Timor
Action Network, ETAN, issued a petition signed by scores of organisations
worldwide calling on the Australian government to change its position. Even
members of the US Congress have written to Howard on this issue.
The complete moral bankruptcy of so-called ``mainstream'' politics is
illustrated by the deafening silence in the Australian media and parliament
about what amounts to an Australian occupation of East Timorese territory and
the direct theft of billions of dollars worth of oil.
Between Suharto’s invasion of East Timor in 1975 and Indonesian president
Habibie’s agreement to withdraw Indonesian troops in September 1999, the
Australian political establishment relentlessly and mercilessly pursued a policy
of support for Jakarta’s annexation and military occupation of East Timor.
More than 200,000 East Timorese were killed, or died from hunger, during
Jakarta’s war of occupation. Most of these deaths occurred during periods when
the Australian government was sending military equipment to Jakarta.
From 1975, the motivation behind Australian policy was clearly that it would
be easier to get access to the oil in the Timor Sea from the dictator Suharto
than from a new independent and nationalist East Timorese government, which may
have opted for Chinese, Soviet or European oil partners. Now, thirty years on,
the Australian government is doing all it can to keep what it was given by
Suharto.
According to international law, as set out in the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the international sea boundary between countries
situated close to each other is the median line (the half-way point). But the
Australian government insists that an old border - the 1972 Australia-Indonesia
seabed boundary agreed with the Suharto — be the basis of current negotiations
between Canberra and Dili on exploration of oil in the Timor Gap.
To protect itself from legal challenge, since March 2002 the Australian
government has refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the International
Court of Justice or any dispute-settlement mechanisms under UNCLOS.
There are four major oil or gas fields in East Timorese territorial waters:
the Laminaria Corallina oil field, the Elang Kakatua oil field, the Bayu-Undan
oil and gas field and the Greater Sunrise gas field. The Australian government,
resting on the agreement with the deposed Jakarta dictator, claims 100%
sovereignty over Laminara Corallina and sovereignty over 80% of the territory of
the huge Greater Sunrise.
Canberra’s one concession to the new East Timorese government was that it
agreed to accept 10% of taxes, rather than the 50% Suharto had agreed to, on
takings from the Elang Kakatua and Bayu-Udan fields (the smaller of the yet
unexploited fields). This was set out in the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty signed with
the East Timorese government at the time of formal independence.
If this new occupation of East Timor’s territory is maintained, East Timor
will be robbed of approximately US$30 billion dollars over the next three
decades.
On March 10, the federal Coalition government introduced several bills to
give effect to an agreement signed in March 2003 between Dili and Canberra on
how to calculate the division of revenue from the Greater Sunrise field. Dili
signed this under pressure from the Australian government, which threatened to
not ratify the 2002 Timor Sea Treaty until Dili signed. Without ratification of
the treaty, exploitation of the Baya Udan field was likely to collapse, and East
Timor would have lost urgently needed short-term funds.
However, Dili still insisted that the Greater Sunrise agreement include a
clause stating that all existing agreements with Australia could be renegotiated
once there was an agreement on a new sea border (as Dili rejected the 1972
Australia-Indonesia sea boundary).
Dili has not ratified the agreement, calling for negotiation on the border
issue and for a date to be set for the conclusion of these negotiations. The
Australian government’s refusal to set an end-date and claims that it can only
afford to hold two meetings a year have sparked fears that it will attempt to
drag out the whole process, knowing that all the oil will be exhausted within
ten years or so.
The government initially attempted to get the new bills, including the
Greater Sunrise Unitisation Implementation Bill 2004, passed through both houses
of parliament in one day. In doing so, industry, tourism and resources minister
Ian McFarlane made a point of calling on the East Timorese government to quickly
follow suit.
In the House of Representatives, the bill was fully supported by the Labor
Party, and several Labor MPs gave speeches discussing the benefits of the bill
for the Australian economy. The ALP’s only substantive criticism was that the
government was not insisting that the oil and gas companies (including British,
Japanese and American companies as well as Australian) be forced to buy the
equipment they needed in Australia.
Northern Territory MP Warren Snowdon’s main concern was that “this stuff
is brought onshore”, in effect denying the Timorese the right to insist that
their oil be refined in East Timor rather than in Darwin. This latter point, and
an ALP proposal that companies should lose their lease if they do not start
exploitation within a specific period of time, were the only real points of “debate”
with McFarlane, who attacked Labor as “anti-business”. Neither the Coalition
nor the ALP questioned Australia’s right to grant leases for East Timorese
oil.
Country Liberal MP David Tollner attacked the ALP for allegedly treasonous
behaviour in arguing for East Timor’s interests rather than Australia’s.
However, the closest ALP mining, energy and forestry shadow minister Joel
Fitzgibbon got to this was his racist and patronising statement: “East Timor
is an impoverished nation... We cannot bring it to self-sufficiency by hand-out
alone. The best we can do for the East Timorese people is to give them an
industry, an economic base and an opportunity to grow their economy to create
local jobs.” Such a statement ignores the fact that it is East Timor doing the
“giving”, as all the oil and gas being discussed is within East Timorese
territory.
Snowdon read a quote from an ALP national conference resolution, which states
that a Labor government will negotiate with East Timor in good faith on a new
border, and will accept international law. However the resolution then negates
this affirmation by stating that the negotiations may take 3-5 years and: “The
conclusion of the maritime boundary should be based on the joint aspirations of
both countries”.
In reality, there is nothing to negotiate. The Australian government and
Labor opposition should simply state that they accept the median line as the
border and acknowledge that they have no rights at all over any of the oil and
gas resources on the East Timorese side of the border.
This was the stance taken by Greens MP Michael Organ, and even more clearly
by independent MP Peter Andren, who made a clear statement that Australia had no
moral right to the resources at all. Under threat of an embarrassing attack by
the Greens in the Senate, the bill was referred to a committee for one week’s
perusal. However, this committee has concentrated on ALP concerns about
insufficient requirement for purchase of Australian-manufactured equipment and
similar matters.
From Green Left Weekly, March 24, 2004.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/576/576p24.htm
