Labor's East Timor policy: how much has changed?
Labor's East Timor policy: how much has changed?
By Jon Land
In the period immediately leading up to the October 3 federal election and in the weeks since, the Labor Party has made various statements on East Timor designed to distance itself from the party's past position of betrayal and appeasement.
Foreign affairs spokesperson Laurie Brereton, told a press conference in Darwin in September: "East Timor will be a key diplomatic priority for an incoming Labor government ... Labor is determined to seize this opportunity and do all that we can to encourage negotiations of a just and lasting solution to the problem of East Timor."
Labor has managed to make considerable mileage out of the bumbling efforts of foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer and the inability of the federal government to deal effectively with several important issues in relation to East Timor.
Brereton has called for independent monitors to be placed in East Timor and for a bipartisan inquiry into the deaths of five journalists at Balibo in 1975.
Shadow immigration minister Con Sciacca called on the Howard government to allow the East Timorese asylum seekers to stay, following the successful appeal of an East Timorese man in the Federal Court on October 30 against a decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal.
But how genuine is Labor's about-face on East Timor? Didn't Labor deliberately forge closer military ties with the Suharto dictatorship when it was in power?
The new policy on East Timor, which was adopted by the Labor national conference in January, states that Labor supports a "process of negotiation through which the people of East Timor can exercise their right to self-determination".
It also calls for the reduction of troop numbers and the release of resistance leader Xanana Gusmao and other East Timorese political prisoners.
Labor had previously dropped all reference to self-determination for East Timor at the 1984 national conference, the year after Bob Hawke was elected prime minister.
The new policy was formally adopted by Labor's parliamentary caucus on May 26. On that same day, Labor voted with the Coalition against an Australian Greens motion in the Senate which called for a free vote on self-determination in East Timor, the release of Xanana Gusmao and the suspension of military aid programs to Indonesia until free and fair elections have been held.
Labor has still not revoke its recognition of Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, nor has it called for the suspension or end to military ties with Indonesia.
Supporters of a free East Timor should not be taken in by ALP rhetoric that is still unmatched by action.