Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia And The Independence Of East Timor

by Clinton Fernandes

Exposing the role of the so-called Jakarta Lobby?Australian officials whose policies supported the Indonesian military regime and public commentators who defend these policies in the public sphere?this inquiry contends that under their influence, the government of Prime Minister John Howard worked assiduously to support Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, trying hard to prevent a ballot of independence. That it was only pressure from activists and the broader public that forced the Howard government to send a peacekeeping force and reluctantly help East Timor to achieve independence is also revealed.

Genres: Politics

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Angus McGregor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for an essay on East Timor. It's a shame that the main anti-establishment book on Australia's involvement in Timorese independence is such a mixed bag.

Fernades effectively shows that the Howard government placed the bilateral relationship with the Indonesian government and military over the human rights of the Timorese people. In the process, Howard and Downer lied multiple times in 1998 and 1999 about how much they knew about violence on the ground.

However, his argument about the existence of a so-called 'Jakarta Lobby' was largely asserted and based on ideological appeals to authority rather than on any documented evidence. There seemed to be no appetite to engage charitably with any realist conception of Australian foreign policy.

I had no idea how popular Timorese independence was in Australia. The CFMEU and AWU spending substantial capital on an international political issue is unheard of in the 21st century.