An Australian parliamentary inquiry into the bilateral relationship with East Timor has come under attack for only hearing from so-called "insiders and bureaucrats".
DLP Senator John Madigan says the public hearings are limited and elitist. Academic Clinton Fernandez fears the inquiry will just "rubber stamp" whatever Australia's Foreign Affairs department has in mind.
He says leading Dili NGO, Lao Hamutuk, has provided a written submission on how Australia and East Timor divide oil and gas resources, but has not been invited to address the hearings.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: Nick Champion, Australian Labor Party MP and chair of the parliamentary inquiry into Australia's relationship with East Timor
Champion: Well it's been a decade since East Timor was created as a nation, although it obviously existed long before that, but it seemed like the right time after a decade and after some military and diplomatic and economic assistance had been given over that decade to have a review of Australia and Timor Leste's relationship.
McCarthy: What do you say to the criticism from those such as Senator John Madigan, who says you're only hearing from almost exclusively a very narrow club of insiders and bureaucrats?
Champion: Well I don't think that's true, I think inevitably these sorts of inquiries do get diplomats and they do get government departments, but we've heard most importantly from the ambassador from Timor Leste and we'll take many different submissions from many different groups. So we'll have everybody in the mix, government departments, ambassadors, NGOs and from any citizen of either nation who wants to make a submission.
McCarthy: The criticism is that the committee may end up just becoming just a rubber stamp for the DFAT party line if you like. Do you think you are hearing from enough witnesses who are departing from that traditional DFAT view of the bilateral relationship?
Champion: Well I don't think that's a valid criticism, I think that's a nonsense, parliamentary inquiries by their very nature hear from a range of different views, and there's no stopping people exercising their right to free speech. Of course the government will have a view and departments have a view, diplomats have a view, and they're normally considered and decent views about bilateral relationships. So I wouldn't expect that that view would be kind of necessarily a bad thing. And I think the criticism sounds to me to be a bit silly.
McCarthy: But then you do have people like James Dunn putting in written submissions, he's the former consul to Portuguese Timor from 1961, he's one of the world's most respected historians of the recent history of the country. Why wasn't he called to testify before the committee?
Champion: Well we've only had two days of hearings and you've got to remember this is just the start of the inquiry, so you normally by the nature of inquiries hear from government departments first and from embassies first. But that's not to say that we won't have other hearings and that other people won't be able to make, come and give us evidence. Parliamentary inquiries in the course of their activities do that, and I don't think that criticism is very valid.
McCarthy: We do know there's a lot of anger among both the government and NGOs within East Timor about the equitable distribution of resources from the Timor Sea, and Australia's share of those resources. Are you hearing enough testimony from East Timorese people, government members, NGOs that are reflecting that high degree of public anger?
Champion: Well there are a number of treaties but these treaties have been negotiated between Australia and East Timor, between Australia and Timor Leste. And they were negotiated some time ago by the governments of the respective nations. So there are treaties in place. Whether or not there's anger over them I'm kind of not aware of that, but like I said people are free to make submissions.
McCarthy: Well the East Timorese government is alleging that Australia obtained covert information during the treaty negotiations and is now trying to have the treaty completely renegotiated. So it's a pretty big thorn in the side of the bilateral relationship?
Champion: Well what as I understand it what's been applied for is arbitration, and obviously we can't go into the details of that arbitration because it's a legal mechanism. So that matter is unlikely to come before the inquiry in detail. There have been references to it obviously in the hearings so far, but we're unlikely to hear about that in detail and indeed that arbitration if it goes ahead will go ahead under the provisions in the treaty.
McCarthy: But isn't that going to be a fairly big omission in the inquiry report, if you're not considering that anger, which runs so deep in East Timor at the moment?
Champion: Well like I said I've been to Timor Leste a number of times, the sort of economic distribution of if you like the resources dividend is an issue in Timor Leste, but I don't think that's an issue necessarily of anger towards Australia. It's more of an issue of they want to see equitable growth in their own country. But of course aside from the resources issues there's things like the people-to-people links, there's things like the other economic links that are formed between our two nations, there's our very important aid program to Timor Leste, and there's things like the agricultural economy and the tourism economy, which potentially could yield a lot more jobs than the resources industry, which as we know in our own country generates a vast degree of financial resources, but is not an employment heavy industry.