Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Fifteen months after the treaty pledged to usher in a “new chapter” in the relationship between Australia and neighbouring Timor-Leste, the document remains unratified and the country loses millions of dollars a month from a Timor Sea field belonging to the Timorese.

Reporting in the latest edition of Eureka Street, freelance writer Sophie Raynor, who has been living in Dili for two years, has condemned Australia for “another [action] in a long line of Australia’s failure to do the right thing by Timor-Leste”.

Then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop signed the treaty in March last year and tabled it in the Australian Federal Parliament, saying it was “her hope” that it would be ratified by the end of the year.

READ MORE: Ramos-Horta expects Australia to pay back ‘millions’ in oil revenue

Although it remains unratified, Australia continues to draw millions of dollars a month from a 10 per cent share in a field found to belong entirely to Timor-Leste.

The Timor-Leste Governance Project estimates that field could have generated A$60 million over the preceding 12 months.

Australia will provide $95.7 million in foreign aid to Timor-Leste between 2018 and 2019.

“Technically, we don’t owe that $60 million to Timor-Leste. There’s no legal right in the treaty for either country to claim compensation for lost revenue from the Timor Sea,” writes Raynor.

‘Beatific big brother’
“But Australia’s role in Timor-Leste’s historic and hard-won independence 20 years ago this August burnished our reputation as a beatific big brother — a reputation until now unmarred, despite decades of those fractious Timor Sea negotiations, allegations of our spying and serious accusations of collusion.

“For years, we’ve positioned ourselves as an international champion of moral righteousness, of sovereignty and of self-determination, and as Timor-Leste’s liberator.

“But we can’t have it both ways. Taking unearned Timor Sea wealth is another in a long line of Australia’s failure to do the right thing by Timor-Leste.”

Former Prime Minister John Howard called the Australian-led liberation of Timor-Leste one of our most noble acts of foreign policy this century — the peacekeeping part; not the preceding 30 years of heavy-handed economic encroachment in the Timor Sea.

“Our delay in ratifying the boundary treaty and our refusal to commit to repaying that unearned money is squarely at odds with how we think of ourselves in this story,” writes Raynor

“And it’s unconscionably in breach of our moral duty to do the right thing by a neighbour.”

‘Siphoning’ millions
In April, The Guardian published an exclusive stating Australia was accused of “siphoning” millions in Timor-Leste oil revenue from the Timor Sea; an amount the newspaper said was more than Canberra had given Timor-Leste in foreign aid.

“Australia remains Timor-Leste’s largest, most financially generous and most important aid and development partner, and many Australian-funded projects provide significant and much-needed support and opportunities to Timor-Leste,” writes Raynor.

“But it’s laughable to say we’re concerned with Timor-Leste’s prosperity if we’re committed to scraping from its vaults more money than we give in foreign aid; to say we’re for its stability when we’re eroding a fragile economy’s ability to reinvest its resource wealth into education, health and agriculture; to champion regional security when we’re risking a generation of economic refugees with few job prospects at home and an in-fighting government.

“We’re more concerned with excuses than with fronting up and admitting to ripping off Timor-Leste — again.”

Eureka Street is a publication of the Australian Jesuits and is a vibrant online journal of analysis, commentary and reflection on current issues in the worlds of politics, religion and culture.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Tom Clarke

Timor-Leste and Australia has signed a maritime boundary agreement at the UN headquarters in New York today, putting their long-running border dispute to rest.

Although the finer details of the treaty remained under wraps, all reports suggest that the Timorese will secure their permanent maritime boundaries and a fairer share of government revenues from the Greater Sunrise gas field.

Such an outcome will be testament to the determination of the Timorese people and their governments to stand firm in the face of a neighbouring bully and claim their sovereign rights.

This debate has never been about charity, it has always been about justice and what the Timorese are legally entitled to.

Successive Australian governments, wanting to keep the riches of the Timor Sea to themselves, have deliberately and persistently frustrated Timor-Leste’s attempts to establish permanent boundaries.

Even though all of the oil and gas fields contested over the years are located closer to Timor than to Australia, the federal government has doggedly tried to short-change the Timorese at every opportunity.

After Australia had unilaterally tapped the Laminaria Corallina fields – without the Timorese receiving a single cent, it jostled Timor into a temporary resource-sharing agreement, the Timor Sea Treaty, that allowed it to take a slice of the revenue from the Bayu-Undan fields, which were the fledgling nation’s most important source of revenue.

Miserly Australian proposal
Australia then set its sights on the massive Greater Sunrise gas field. Its initial proposal was to allow Timor a miserly 18 percent of the government revenue.

The prevailing legal consensus is that if permanent maritime boundaries were established in keeping with current international law, then most, if not all, of the field would be located within East Timor’s exclusive economic zone.

But international law was of little relevance to Australia. Just two months before Timor-Leste became independent in 2002, the Australian government withdrew its recognition of the maritime boundary jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Put simply, the Australian government turned its back on the independent umpire signalling that it had no intention of playing by the rules.

So despite Timor-Leste wanting to establish permanent maritime boundaries, in 2006 the Australian government managed to walk away with another “temporary” agreement.

This one, CMATS, would postpone for 50 years discussions about sovereignty – ie. which nation actually owns the area – and would see the government revenue from Greater Sunrise split 50/50.

Exactly how Australia managed to get such a deal was exposed in 2013 when a senior intelligence officer revealed that an AusAid project was used as a cover to bug the Timorese cabinet room during the negotiations.

Timorese upset
The Timorese government was understandably upset and triggered a conflict resolution mechanism set out in the Timor Sea Treaty, to prompt mediation in The Hague.

But just days before the meeting was to take place, an ASIO raid was ordered on the Canberra offices of Timor’s legal team and the passport of “Witness K” was seized preventing him from travelling to The Hague to present evidence.

This allowed Timor to take legal action against Australia and in a provisional judgement, the International Court of Justice slammed the heavy-handed actions and issued an unprecedented order for the Australian government to stop interfering with Timor’s communications.

With the upper hand in what would have been a long and embarrassing legal battle for Australia, Timor-Leste finally had some bargaining power. But in an extraordinary act of good faith, Timor traded that away – it withdrew its case in return for Australia agreeing to return to the negotiating table to discuss permanent boundaries.

But true to form, Australia soon reverted to its belligerent tactics and the talks were on a road to nowhere.

Eventually in 2016 with nowhere else to turn, the Timorese launched a “compulsory conciliation” procedure at the UN. This is a mechanism that had never been used before and exists specifically for when one country refuses to recognise the jurisdiction of the independent umpire that would normally settle such disputes.

The Australian government’s long held stonewalling tactics began to crumble after its undignified attempt to wriggle out of the process was soundly rejected by the UN-constituted commission.

The new treaty
The resulting treaty will set a permanent boundary along the median line halfway between the two coastlines. This is great news, but the exact placement of the all-important lateral, or side, boundaries which will determine the scope of Timor’s exclusive economic zone, is still unknown.

Recent media reports claim the treaty will give a much larger share of the government revenue from the Greater Sunrise field to Timor: 80 percent if the gas is piped 450 km to Darwin for processing where Australia will reap the downstream economic benefits of jobs and related activities, or 70 percent if the gas is piped 150 km to East Timor.

Even if the new treaty turns out to be less than ideal in regards to the size of Timor’s sovereign territory, it gets the job done in that it delivers what the Timorese have always wanted – permanent maritime boundaries – and it appears that the revenue share reflects the likely outcome had the maritime boundaries been set in keeping with contemporary international law.

It seems that it has also managed to do so without Australia having to concede territory it had not already conceded to Indonesia in 1972. So the politicians on both sides of the Timor Sea have saved face.

Whatever devils might be in the detail, there is little doubt that this new treaty will be a far better deal for East Timor.

This is a big win for the Timorese and also a reminder of the importance of the UN’s peaceful arbitration processes.

It is also a win for the Australian citizens who stood up in solidarity with the Timorese people to demand that the federal government do the right thing. It’s been a long time coming.

Tom Clarke is a spokesperson for the Timor Sea Justice Campaign.

• More Timor-Leste stories

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz