{"id":3324,"date":"2014-05-25T06:36:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T20:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2014-05-25T06:36:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T20:36:48","slug":"draw-the-boundary-line-between-timor-leste-and-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/?p=3324","title":{"rendered":"Draw the Boundary Line between Timor Leste and Australia."},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>

from Eureka Street<\/a><\/h4>\n

Let’s be good neighbours with Timor<\/span><\/h1>\n

Frank Brennan<\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0 20 May 2014<\/p>\n

\"Fr<\/p>\n

Join the campaign<\/a><\/p>\n

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of joining Timor Leste\u2019s erstwhile First Lady Kirsty Sword Gusmao and the Timorese ambassador Abel Guterres (pictured) at a public meeting at the Mary MacKillop Centre in Sydney, convened by long time campaigners Sister Susan Connelly and Tom Clarke from the Timor Sea Justice Campaign. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The message was simple: ‘A fair go for East Timor’.\u00a0 The lecture hall was full to capacity with Australians concerned about the decency of our dealings with the Timorese over the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2006, Australia and Timor Leste signed the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS).\u00a0 The treaty came into force early in 2007 with a provision requiring the submission and approval of an appropriate development plan for the Greater Sunrise oil and gas deposit within six years.\u00a0 The treaty was finalised at a time of considerable political instability in Timor.\u00a0 It was not subject to the usual treaty review processes by the Australian Parliament, there being bipartisan criticism of Alexander Downer\u2019s wanton haste to grab a small window of opportunity for implementation of the treaty.\u00a0 In exchange for an increased share of the upstream revenue flow from any Sunrise development (increased from 18 per cent to 50 per cent), Timor agreed to Australia\u2019s demand that we put boundary negotiations on hold for 50 years. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Timor Leste already receives a steady revenue flow from the development of the Bayu Undan oil and gas field in the Timor Sea.\u00a0 With this revenue, Timor has the money to employ the very best international lawyers to advise on boundary delimitation.\u00a0 These lawyers think that Timor has a very strong case for establishing that the whole of Sunrise would fall within the Timor jurisdiction.\u00a0 Equally, Australia\u2019s lawyers continue to argue Sunrise is located under the Australian continental shelf, and that even if there be agreement on a median line between Australia and Timor, there would be little prospect of Timor getting any more than 20 per cent of the upstream revenue flow. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A year ago, the joint venturers for the Sunrise project submitted their development proposal for a floating natural gas facility (FLNG), avoiding the need to pipe the gas to either Darwin or Timor.\u00a0 The Timorese leadership are not interested in an FLNG proposal which would yield no significant downstream revenue, would contribute nothing to the development of infrastructure in Timor, and would do little to assist Timor employment and training.\u00a0 There is a political imperative for the Timorese leadership to be able to deliver to their people an oil and gas project which develops tangible onshore benefits, and not just another offshore revenue flow like Bayu Undan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Armed with evidence of Australian spying on the Timorese during the negotiation of CMATS, the Timorese decided to challenge the validity of CMATS, commencing an international arbitration.\u00a0 Australia then conducted raids on premises which housed material relevant to the arbitration.<\/div>\n

In March, the Timorese had a spectacular win in the International Court of Justice, causing great embarrassment to Australia.\u00a0 The Timorese challenged Australia\u2019s raid on the Canberra legal offices of one of their lawyers, Bernard Collaery, and on the home of witness K, a retired Australian intelligence officer.\u00a0 They asked that Australia return the seized materials.\u00a0 Last week, Mr Collaery informed the Senate that he was acting as a lawyer for Witness K with the knowledge and approval of Ian Carnell, the Director General of Intelligence and Security.\u00a0 Collaery informed the Senate Privileges Committee: ‘Witness K alleged he had been constructively dismissed from ASIS, as a result of a new culture within ASIS.\u00a0 The evidence indicates that the change sought included an operation he had been ordered to execute in Dili, Timor Leste.’ \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in March, the International Court of Justice ruled by 12 votes to 4 that Australia not use any of the seized materials from Collaery\u2019s and K\u2019s premises to the disadvantage of Timor Leste and that Australia keep the seized documents under seal.\u00a0 The majority of judges were not satisfied that the undertakings by George Brandis, the Australian Attorney-General, were sufficient to safeguard Timor\u2019s interests.\u00a0 Even more embarrassing for Australia was the court\u2019s all but unanimous decision to order that Australia ‘not interfere in any way in communications between Timor-Leste and its legal advisers’.\u00a0 The decision was all but unanimous in the sense that the one Australian judge on the case was the only one to dissent from this order.\u00a0 Sir Christopher Greenwood, the UK judge, offered this damning indictment of Australia\u2019s behaviour:<\/span><\/p>\n

In view of the seizure of papers which clearly related to legal advice and preparation for the forthcoming arbitration from Timor-Leste\u2019s lawyer, it is entirely understandable that Timor-Leste is concerned that there might be future interference and it sought an assurance from Australia that there would be no such interference. To my surprise, the undertaking from the Attorney-General makes no mention of this matter. In the absence of any undertaking not to interfere with Timor-Leste\u2019s communications with its lawyers in the future, I accept that there is a real and imminent risk of such interference which requires action on the part of the Court.<\/span><\/p>\n

The day after the decision was delivered, the Australian stable of Murdoch newspapers carried the\u00a0headline<\/span><\/a>: ‘Australia wins East Timor UN court fight’.\u00a0 This was no win for Australia; it was a humiliating defeat. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is to be gained for Australia and Timor as neighbours airing dirty laundry in such exalted international fora?\u00a0 It is time for both countries to agree to put the unresolved boundary issue to bed.\u00a0 The situation is similar to neighbours agreeing not to settle the boundary of their back fence.\u00a0 That is all very fine unless and until there is a problem.\u00a0 Once there is a problem, it makes good sense to determine the boundary.\u00a0 The boundary should be left unresolved only if there can be the assurance that both parties can get what they want in the meantime, living amicably as neighbours.\u00a0 The Timorese want to find an economically feasible way in which Sunrise can be exploited with the gas being piped onshore to Timor for processing.\u00a0 Unless that can be done, Timor has no interest in the short term development of Sunrise.\u00a0 They think it is time to settle the boundaries.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to pipe the gas to Timor or to draw the line and get back to being good neighbours.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"Frank<\/em>Frank Brennan SJ AO is professor of law at the Australian Catholic University and adjunct professor at the College of Law and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University. This article is extracted from Frank’s address at the\u00a0Timor Sea Justice Campaign<\/a>\u00a0event on 17 May 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>

from Eureka Street Let’s be good neighbours with Timor <\/p>\n

Frank Brennan | 20 May 2014<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Join the campaign<\/p>\n

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of joining Timor Leste\u2019s erstwhile First Lady Kirsty Sword Gusmao and the Timorese ambassador Abel Guterres (pictured) at a public meeting at the Mary MacKillop Centre in Sydney, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[218,219,217,121],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lobbying-efforts-requested","tag-boundary","tag-boundary-line","tag-timor","tag-timor-leste","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3325,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions\/3325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}