Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Kim McGrath, Redback, $22.99.
It has been claimed that for 50 years, Australia has schemed to deny East Timor billions of dollars of oil and gas wealth. McGrath has revealed some unsettling and reprehensible facts in this book.
With explosive new research and access to never-before-seen documents, Kim tells the story of Australia’s secret agenda in the Timor Sea, exposing the ruthlessness of successive governments. Australia did nothing to stop Indonesia’s devastating occupation of East Timor, when – on our doorstep – 200,000 lives were lost from a population of 650,000. Instead, our government colluded with Indonesia to secure more favourable maritime boundaries.
As McGrath points out: “this book is based on my examination of thousands of documents in the National Archives of Australia about Australia’s Timor Sea boundary negotiations with Indonesia and the dispute with Portugal. It is deliberately focused on one narrative: Australia’s secret Timor Sea oil story. There are, of course, other factors at play in Australia’s foreign relations with Indonesia, Portugal and Timor-Leste but, sadly for the Timorese, oil has been a dominant driver behind its neighbour’s many betrayals since Australia unilaterally issued petroleum exploration permits in 1963”.
“As I dug deeper into the historical records I found briefs, reports, Cabinet submissions, correspondence and meting minutes showing that many of Australia’s politicians and senior diplomats in Jakarta, Lisbon and Canberra were very actively engaged in Australia’s Timor Sea oil agenda throughout the period covered by the Downer Compilation (1974-1976).”
“Australia’s keen interest in oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea was not only kept secret from the Australian public; Australia’s major allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, were also kept in the dark.”
The more files McGrath looked at, “the more it seemed that the records published in the Downer Compilation obscured, rather than revealed, the truth about Australia’s official thinking and action”.
