Reporter: Ian Melrose
Mark Colvin: Negotiations between Australia and East Timor on a seabed boundary resumed in Canberra this afternoon, with oil and gas reserves worth tens of billions of dollars at stake.
Australia is offering East Timor a cash-for-sovereignty deal – put aside a final boundary settlement and take an extra $3-billion.
As the negotiators were getting ready to resume talks inside the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra, a group of Australians gathered outside to attack the Australian approach as "wicked". This report from Graeme Dobell.
Graeme Dobell: Australia wants to defer a final decision on a seabed boundary in the Timor Sea for 50 to 100 years to allow oil and gas projects to go ahead now.
Canberra has offered Dili $3-billion over 30 years to accept the cash-for-sovereignty formula – take the money now and deal with the final border issue in a few generations time.
The talks broke down in Dili last October, when East Timor rejected the formula, saying that control of resources, not just the cash, had to be part of the solution. Australia, in turn, took fright at Timor's demand that the pipeline from the seabed field should run to Dili, not to Darwin.
As the negotiations resumed in Canberra, a group of Australians from the Timor Sea Justice Campaign delivered a letter, calling for the boundary to be set at the mid-point between Timor and Australia, so the resource royalties can flow to Dili.
The median line is the Timorese demand. Canberra says if a boundary is set, it should be based on Australia's continental shelf, which runs much closer to Timor.
One of the group was Chip Henriss-Anderssen, who went into East Timor as a major with Australian Army at the start of the UN intervention.
Chip Henriss-Anderssen: What our government is doing today is criminally wrong and it goes against the real spirit of ANZAC. It's un-Australian and it's not about the Australian ethos of a fair go. We're really not helping these people that we, as soldiers, came to know and really love.
We landed in Dili on September 20th 1999, and personally, and I know for a lot of soldiers, it was one of the proudest days in our careers, we did a lot of very good work there. The actions of our government are now dishonouring that service and discrediting the spirit of ANZAC.
Graeme Dobell: Australia says the boundary dispute should be settled by negotiation, not by arbitration or litigation, and to ensure that Australia, in March 2002, announced that it would no longer submit to rulings by the International Court of Justice on maritime boundaries. Greens Senator Bob Brown says Australia is trying to steal resources.
Bob Brown: Look, the line should go halfway between the two countries, and East Timor's call for any independent international agency to arbitrate on the matter should be heeded by the Howard Government.
The Howard Government is not heeding that call for independent arbitration because it is in the business of theft, theft from the poorest nation in our neighbourhood, a nation that needs this money for hospitals, for schools, for police stations, for its army, to stop kids from starving.
Graeme Dobell: And Australians are going to keep hearing that message, theft of resources costing innocent lives in East Timor, through advertising. Having made his millions in business, Ian Melrose has already spent $2-million on an ad campaign since September, and promises to spend another $6-million on marketing East Timor's case. He wants Australians to get angry with their government's negotiating tactics.
Ian Melrose: I've scheduled $2-million a year for the next three years, however having said that, if it doesn't get the result, if I don't think it's going and getting the momentum required, I'll spend more.
Graeme Dobell: How would you define momentum?
Ian Melrose: Um, sufficient public concern, people visiting politicians, causing the Government to rethink its position.
Graeme Dobell: What of the argument that, yes, East Timor's needs are great, and that rather than negotiate for years with Australia they should take the offer on the table of $3-billion over 30 years and go and spend that money which is on offer?
Ian Melrose: That's treating East Timor in a patronising way, and that's unacceptable. What the Australian Government should morally do is reinstate the International Court as the proper jurisdiction to hear the matter and have the matter resolved independently by the UN.
Mark Colvin: Businessman Ian Melrose, of the Timor Justice Campaign, with Graeme Dobell.