Page 1478 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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gave to the independent commando company of Australians who were there fighting magnificently from 1942 to 1943 or even 1944, before the last managed to withdraw.
We owe a great debt to the East Timorese. It was tragic—and I remember it quite well—in 1975, to see the then Whitlam government wash their hands of it. There was a three or four-month hiatus after Portugal just walked out on its former colony. It had done nothing to prepare them for independence. It was probably one of the worst colonial powers you have seen.
I remember Indonesia at the time maintaining that they wanted stability. It was quite tragic. Perhaps all that needed to be done was for the Whitlam government to posit a battalion of troops in Dili. That might have helped sort the situation out. We might never have had the Indonesian invasion. There was a lot of prevaricating and washing of hands by successive Australian governments, from Whitlam onwards, on the situation in East Timor.
To its eternal credit, the Howard government reversed that situation back in 1999. Within two weeks of the dramas that erupted over the courageous decision by the then Indonesian President to have self-determination, Australia was committed to assisting in East Timor. There was a magnificent effort by the Australian Defence Force, led by the then General Peter Cosgrove.
Before that, in supervising the ballot, there was probably an even more magnificent effort by members of the Australian Federal Police. When I was police minister in 2000, I had the honour of presenting some awards to those who went in and supervised the ballot back in 1999. They were threatened; they were stoned; they were threatened with death; yet they protected and probably saved the lives of thousands of East Timorese.
There are a number of heroes still serving in the Australian Federal Police in the ACT who single-handedly stared down mobs. They were unarmed; they used force of character and incredible guts to stare down some of these wild, anti-independent mobs, thus saving probably countless thousands of East Timorese. As a result of the intervention by the Australian Defence Force, a nation slowly is being formed there.
It is not without its problems. It is a poor nation. I was saddened to see reports in the last couple of weeks of dramas there based not so much on ethnic lines but on lines of people who live in the east and people who live in the west. Those are the things that you really want to do all you can to avoid if you are setting up a new nation state.
But it is good to see a reaffirming of this friendship relationship. It is good to see the efforts made by ACT governments from 1999 onwards. It is good to see the efforts made by former members of the Assembly, including our old friend Bernard Colleary in the first Assembly who was a close personal friend of Xanana Gusmao and who certainly has been a champion of East Timor since then.
Perhaps through him, a few other people, such as Bernard’s secretary, Silva Cengic, and her husband, Ivan, a very good soccer player, joined. He played with the then Croatia Deakin Soccer Club, but he got suspended a lot. Ivan was more akin to a rugby player. I was delighted when he played veterans once and got three goals in his first game. Ivan went over there and coached their first national soccer team. I also remember him
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