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BACKGROUND TO THE ALLEGATION The allegation of an East Timor cover up showed the extent to which Australian politics has become increasingly embittered. Some opponents of John Howard's Liberal government assert that constitutional protections had been damaged as a result of the politicisation of the public sector. This politicisation was made possible because senior public servants no longer had secure jobs as they had been moved to contract employment. While renewal is technically dependent on competence, it is further claimed that renewal of contracts is now largely dependent on pleasing political masters. The allegations of an East Timor cover up arose because a number of individuals were prepared to go public, usually after their careers had ended. Indonesia 's invasion and occupation of East Timor lasted twenty-four years. According to some estimates as many as 250,000 people died as a result, an immense figure considering the 1999 population of approximately 750,000. This figure was widely bandied about in the press and academic literature. The people of East Timor fought the Japanese in World War II after the Japanese occupied East Timor. This resistance may have resulted in the deaths of 15% of their population. PEOPLE MAKING OR SUPPORTING THE ALLEGATIONS Wayne Sievers Wayne Sievers was an Australian Federal Police officer attached to the United Nations mission in East Timor for 1999 independence ballot. He warned of impending widescale killing and destruction in East Timor orchestrated by the Indonesian military should the territory vote for independence. He produced Indonesian Army and militia documents to support his claims, but the Australian government took no action. Given that Indonesia was occupying East Timor (with U.S. backing) it is, admittedly, hard to see what action could have been taken. Sievers later resigned from the Australian Federal Police. Andrew Plunkett Andrew Plunkett was an Australian Army Captain and intelligence officer in the subsequent Peace Keeping mission to East Timor in late 1999. He raised concerns that the he and his colleagues had come under intense political pressure from the pro-Jakarta lobby and Howard Government figures to greatly understate the extent and scale of massacres of East Timorese by the Indonesian military and their militia proxies. This was allegedly in the political interests of the Howard Government as it covered up the extent of its policy failure in relation to the 1999 independence ballot. Lance Collins Lance Collins was a high-ranking Australian Army Defence Intelligence officer. He gained widespread public recognition in Australia when, as an insider, he raised concerns about a pro- Jakarta (or "pro-Indonesian") lobby operating in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and among high ranking civilians in the Department of Defence. This group allegedly comprises key bureaucrats who made their professional reputations and careers as experts on Indonesia, traditionally a major focus of Australian foreign policy. Allegation against such a pro-Jakarta lobby go back decades in Australia to the days of the Hawke and Keating governments. Indeed Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were significant supporters of the Indonesian military regime. The lobby allegedly caused intelligence reports to be distorted in favour of the political interests of the Indonesian Government rather than the Australian national interest. This had contributed significantly to the alleged failure of Australian Government policy during East Timor 's 1999 independence ballot. Thousands were killed, most infrastructure was destroyed and some significant percentage of the population moved to Indonesia as the Indonesian military's militia proxies went on a rampage after the people of East Timor voted for independence. Allegedly vital intelligence was deliberately later withheld from operational Australian Defence Force units in East Timor as they sought to protect the remaining population of East Timor after the departure of the Indonesians. Collins initially raised concerns about the quality and accuracy of intelligence reports that the Australian Defence Force relied upon during its 1999 Peace Keeping mission in East Timor. He then received a letter from the government telling him to keep quiet. Collins has accused the government of turning off an intelligence link to Australian troops in East Timor for twenty-four hours in late 1999. "We didn't find out until the next morning it had been turned off", he said. Departure of Collins from the Army In 2000 Collins' home was one of those which Federal Police raided as a result of an intelligence leak. As a result of the raids, Collins' name was mentioned in the media which ended his intelligence career. He has now announced that he is leaving the Army because of its culture of bullying and recrimination. While in charge of intelligence gathering for the Australian forces in East Timor in 1999, Colonel Collins tried to highlight the Indonesian Army's links with local militia. In February 2005 he received backing from the Inspector-General of intelligence for his long-standing allegation that the Defence Intelligence Organisation deliberately cut the flow of intelligence to the Army at the time to ensure Indonesian Army officers were not linked with militia. Collins says the Government has been more concerned with shooting the messenger than addressing the problem. :"The problem with our intelligence system is that it's the politicians that choose, or approve the choosing, of the bureaucrats that run it", he said. "The system is very heavily weighted to produce a certain answer that is acceptable to a certain political party and its agenda, rather than the nation and its wellbeing." Captain Martin Toohey Collins says that he spoke out for the first time to support Captain Martin Toohey, whose report on the matter in 2003 backed his allegations. Collins says he feels dreadful that, in his opinion, the Defence Force and the Government smeared Toohey's work and destroyed his career, although subsequent investigations have backed his findings. Merv Jenkins The scandal surrounding the death of Merv Jenkins hinted at the damage the domestic dispute over East Timor caused to its intelligence relationship with the United States. Australia's intellgience relationship with the United States has been a long-standing source of protests from the Left of Australian politics. This is nowhere better symbolised than by the Listening Facilities provided by Australia. In the face of domestic opposition to involving the United States some information on East Timor was declared AUSTEO, or Australian Eyes Only. Until then all intelligence reporting had been on a shared network that could be accessed by key Australian allies, including the U.S. This was in line with long-standing Labor Party policy that Australia ought to have an independent intelligence gathering capacity. While the U.S. had no forces in East Timor, it had been providing crucial intelligence and communications back-up. Moreover, there had been deep tensions between Australia and the U.S. over the intelligence Washington was getting from Australia on the situation in East Timor in 1998 and 1999, when violence was escalating, along with agitation for independence by activists. These tensions had tragic consequences when the Defence Intelligence Organisation and Foreign Affairs launched an investigation into the organisation's chief liaison officer in Washington, Merv Jenkins, after he was accused of handing the Americans AUSTEO documents on East Timor. Jenkins believed he had authority to pass on the material, saying the former Office of National Assessments chief Richard Smith had given approval. DIO rejected this and, under pressure as the investigation escalated, Jenkins committed suicide. AFTERMATH OF THE ALLEGED COVER-UP With an Australian election looming in 2001, the alleged cover-up allowed the Howard Government to claim that it had freed and protected the people of East Timor while its more hardl ine opponents claimed its actions had materially contributed to widespread death and destruction in East Timor. Theoretically the public stand of Sievers, Plunkett, Collins, Toohey, Jenkins and others might have posed a threat to the re-election prospects of the Howard Government. It is widely believed by the Left of Australian politics that the Howard Government won the 2001 Australian election by exploiting not only the East Timor issue but also a general fear of terrorism following the September 11 attacks and illegal immigrants represented by the MV Tampa incident. In a speech to public meeting during the 2001 Australian election campaign, Sievers said: "The tragedy in East Timor was made possible because of the politicisation of the Australian public sector. It amounts to nothing less than a creeping constitutional coup. This produces not only bad policy outcomes but ultimately puts at risk our basic rights and freedoms. It makes it possible for governments to win elections not on faith, hope and ideas but on fear, greed and lies. Our national security and the political security of a politician are two very different things" These observations by Sievers were reinforced when Andrew Wilkie resigned from the Australian intelligence services in March 2003. He did this protest the misuse of intelligence during the Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As an insider in the intelligence community, Wilkie was aware that there was little intelligence to support the Howard Government's usually public justifications for Australia's involvement in the invasion of Iraq. At that point Wilkie did not believe that Iraq had many Weapons Of Mass Destruction or was involved with the 11 September terrorist attacks. The reasons for involvement by the Howard Government are complex but probably have more to do with maintaining Australia's traditional alliances with Britain and the United States. Yet the Left continues to assert they may have much to do with negotiations for a free trade agreeement with the USA and a traditional cultural cringe by many in the Australian political elite. Recent opinion polls suggest most Australians support involvement in Afghanistan because the link to terrorism by the former Taliban regime was clear. There is little evidence that Australians are anything other than proud of their role in East Timor. There is increasing anxiety in Australia, however, in the wake of terrorist attacks such as the Bali Bombings and the London Bombings . The Bali Bombings were a direct result of intervention in East Timor by the Australian military. The view that Australian democracy has been compromised the last few decades has found support from Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Australian Senate and the most senior public servant in the Australian Parliament. He believes that the Australian Parliament has deteriorated into a form of elective monarchy where the Prime Minister "rules all he surveys". Parliamentary inquiries are being ignored by the Government according to Evans. He says it is time the public insists on better representation: :"We no longer have parliamentary government in any meaningful sense of the term." Mr Evans likened John Howard to a king, and said people needed to be more sophisticated about what they expected from their elected representatives. Many of these issues date back to the major reforms of the Civil Service under Bob Hawke and so are not party political. :"There is in Australia an enormous concentration of power in the Prime Minister," Mr Evans told Sydney Radio Station 2UE on 21 July 2005 . "People don't realise this, that we really have a sort of elective monarchy where, you know, you elect the monarch and {Link without Title} rules all he surveys." Despite the attempts at raising the issues by the Opposition, the Howard Government was returned to power in the 2001 election. There were probably many reasons why the Australian voting public ignored the issue. However it is ironic that the Left should have embraced the cause of so many conservative, even old-fashioned, military men. Even worse from the Leftist perspective, these men had served in the military and, in one case, leaked sensitive Australian intelligence material to the United States. Moreover their criticisms tended to be very conservative ones, criticism of the politicization of the Civil Service and the ''de facto'' alliance with Indonesia, both Labor policies dating to the Hawke years. Given the patent insincerity of these accusations, there was no reason to think they would sway the voters. The irrelevance of the allegations over East Timot was shown when the Howard Government was returned to power in the 2004 election with an increased majority. The Howard Government even won unexpected control of the Senate following the election. Meanwhile some further opinion polling suggests that the general standing of politicians with the Australian community has sunk to a new low. There are growing concerns among certain sections of the Australian public that the Howard Government has deliberately manipulated public fear of terrorism to distract attention from the more radical aspects of its agenda, such as industrial relations policy. By November 2005, other opinion polls showed that support for the Howard Government had declined to levels not seen in years and would have now seen it defeated in a landslide were an election to be held. However the Labor opposition has been unable to capitalise on this and Howard remains Australia's preferred Prime Minister. What the allegations show is the general decline of standards in Australian politics which is not confined to any one side. REFERENCES
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