Bruce Haigh, Sydney – Critics of the Federal Government's failed policies towards Indonesia and East Timor have been targeted by the Government. The Federal Police have issued warrants to search for documents in the homes of people suspected of dealing with "secret" information relating to Indonesia and East Timor. I am one of those people named.

These actions highlight a number of issues. Anyone with an understanding of Indonesian politics and the role of the Indonesian military (TNI) does not need access to "secret" material to analyse developments in the archipelago. The information is publicly available.

The protection of information relating to failed defence and strategic policies is not related to national security but, rather, the Government's wish to protect its failure from scrutiny. The Government has been publicly embarrassed at the exposure of its shortcomings and therefore is seeking to hit out at the critics. The recent release of selected papers relating to East Timor over the period 1974-76 makes this point all too clearly.

This is a government caught on the back foot, bereft of ideas and strategic vision whose regional defence and foreign affairs policies are governed by a fear of Indonesia. By seeking to bully and intimidate critics, it is behaving like the regimes it professes to find abhorrent. From where I sit, it has all the hallmarks of the former white-supremacist apartheid government of South Africa.

Three weeks of the Olympic Games will not deflect attention from its actions. The search warrants were executed to coincide with the Games. No doubt the Government hopes that saturation coverage of the Olympics will keep its actions off the front pages and out of news bulletins.

There are questions that the Opposition and other concerned Australians need to ask. The warrants contain references to a large number of cables and other official documents that were allegedly leaked. The list represents a massive failure of security which demands further investigation.

Why was the Government's security system so lax that so many documents could find their way into the public domain without authorisation? The warrants contain very broad conditions open to discretionary interpretation, so what is the purpose of the exercise? Is it a "fishing" expedition? Is the Government seeking to intimidate, and, by so doing, restrict the flow of information and close the debate in Australia on its policies towards Indonesia and Javanese control of the archipelago? If so, its actions will achieve the opposite.

Rather than discrediting those people named in the warrants, the Government's ill-conceived action brings discredit upon itself and throws into disrepute its administration of foreign and defence policies. This government is behaving in the same manner as its predecessors with respect to the formulation of regional foreign policy. It is not being honest with the Australian public over the nature of Javanese control of the archipelago and the intentions of the TNI with respect to East Timor, Ambon, Indonesian Papua and Aceh. It seeks to hide its lack of ideas by attacking those who advocate a different course of action and would like a more open debate.

This is a government which is dangerously weak and lacking in direction in a number of fundamental policy areas. For those weaknesses to be allowed to shape Australia's future direction in the region does not augur well for the nation.

The Government's repudiation of the United Nations committee system and its treatment of refugees is a further manifestation of an administration floundering in the real world.

Appeasement comes at a price, one that is now being experienced within the nation in terms of the assault on democracy. Issuing search warrants is dangerous and divisive and affects the political and social health of Australia.

[Bruce Haigh is a former Australian diplomat. He was director of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Indonesia section from 1984 to 1986.]