Pearls and Irritations

Penny Wong’s speech at last month’s Whitlam oration demonstrated that while Australia’s relationship with Timor-Leste is swaddled in kind-hearted words, we must not forget that Whitlam gave a nod and a wink to Indonesia’s invasion of 1975. Whitlam’s decision continues to haunt Australia. 

The American journalist Michael Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as ‘when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth’ that they are ‘not supposed to say’.

Penny Wong’s brief mention of Australia’s history with Timor-Leste, enunciated last month during last month’s Whitlam Oration, constitutes Kinsley’s definition of the gaffe. Her remarks in the speech about the half-island nation to Australia’s north drew little attention. But they should. Her words reveal amnesia about Australia’s history in our region and a total reluctance to own up to past wrongs. The Australian ship of state can never do wrong in Wong’s world, even more when it is a Labor luminary at the helm.

At the annual rhetorical veneration for the former Labor leader in mid-November, Wong went for a tone of full-throated elegiac. Her speech, naturally, focused on foreign policy, situating the policy of this Labor government against the guiding light of Gough. It was thoughtful, for the most part, situating Labor foreign policy to the left of centre in the zone between principles and pragmatism with the odd bit of Tory-bashing thrown in to sate the faithful.

Yet a stray line half-way through Wong’s speech about Timor-Leste was revealing. ‘While he conveyed great moral purpose, he was also deeply pragmatic in putting Australia’s interests first’, Wong admired, lauding how Whitlam ‘prioritised the Indonesia relationship, including in his handling of the very pressing question of what was then called East Timor.’

That’s one way of putting it. Another is that Whitlam was purposeful in ensuring that East Timor did not become independent. Indeed, he did everything he could to ensure it didn’t happen. He told Indonesian President Suharto in 1974 he didn’t think what was then a Portuguese colony should ever be independent. Whitlam gave a nod and a wink to Indonesia’s invasion, where the lowball figure of those who suffered conflict-related deaths is 100,000. In the dying weeks of his premiership, the Balibo 5 lost their lives and he said nowt about it. Historian Peter Job, who has chronicled this lamentable period in Australian history, has written how Whitlam was a foremost member of the cheer squad for the Indonesian occupation in the years after the dismissal.

Today, Australia’s diplomatic relationship with Timor-Leste is swaddled in kind-hearted words. The ambassador’s social media pages are a daily prattle about handing out certificates for training courses and official meetings about ‘opportunities for support and partnership’. Relationships are always going to the next level while new positive chapters are continually being written. Unpleasant episodes such as Australian support for the Indonesian occupation, spying on government in offices in Dili, and prosecution of Bernard Collaery never mentioned. Little wonder this is the case if Wong’s one-eyed version of history constitutes the authorised version of events. Fretful public servants don’t want to present a version of events too divergent from ‘the minister’, no matter how cockamamie that account may be.

The fact is that the ghosts of Whitlam’s decisions continue to haunt Australia in the country that he did so much to abort. A cagey politesse characterises the bearing of successive East Timorese governments towards Canberra.

Australia remains embroiled in negotiations over the development of gas resources in the Timor Sea. Wong recently chided Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta for lobbying the Australian government to pressure Woodside to strike a deal – telling him that this should be ‘best done respectfully… not through the media’ even though Ramos-Horta was engaging in the very sort of statecraft Wong exalted Whitlam for. The East Timorese president himself conveys great moral purpose but he’s also deeply pragmatic in putting his own country’s interests first. Given Australia’s history of snooping on Timorese negotiators, Ramos-Horta’s eyebrows must have gone through the roof at the Foreign Minister’s handy hints about how to negotiate with decorum.

Wong acclaimed Whitlam in the oration because ‘he understood the reality that we can’t only engage with those who share our values, whether on human rights or anything else’. Wong is right – the Australian government’s job is to pursue what it identifies as Australia’s national interest. And the balance between pragmatically pursuing Australia’s interests and respecting core values will always a delicate one. Yet the major lesson from Whitlam’s legacy is that we haven’t always got this balance right. It’s never too late to try. Better relations with our neighbours will be built on trust, which is in turn built fundamentally on honesty. This hagiography of Gough Whitlam does not serve Australia well. Owning the realities of history would be a good start instead of continuing to Whit-wash it.

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