Longtime East Timor campaigner , Darwin agronomist Rob Wesley-Smith has expressed anger at the charging of Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery and the person described as Witness K over Australia's bugging of the the East Timor Government during Dili talks to determine the maritime boundary between the two countries .
Wesley-Smith, involved in the East Timor struggle since l974, said he was appalled and angered by the prosecution of "hero" Bernard Collaery and the unknown Witness K, whom he had never met .
" I
can no longer claim to be speaking on behalf of Australians for a Free East
Timor (AFFET), as we thought that there was no longer need for such an organisation." he said in a media release . "
Perhaps we need Australians for Freedom of Timor Supporters."
He praised independent MHR Andrew Wilkie for revealing in parliament that the two had been charged , describing the action as in keeping with a police state . The Australian Labor Party was also criticised by Wesley-Smith for its ongoing silence on the subject .
Wesley-Smith said that in 2002 he had been in Dili and tried to persuade the putative East Timor government not to succumb to the bullying of John Howard and Andrew Downer and sign any agreement which limited their rights for setting a fair boundary . They had, however , signed an agreement, which recent international court action overturned .
He hoped the present Timor-Leste Government would strongly support Collaery and Witness K . In his ebook, 117Days in East Timor , Wesley-Smith said he had strongly attacked Howard and Downer for their involvement in " ripping off East Timor" . Gareth Evans and Tim Fischer had also been criticised..."I have not been prosecuted yet !"
He attached relevant reports by Crikey Political Editor Bernard Keane , slightly condensed and run below :
...Similarly, no one has ever been jailed - or even subjected
to disciplinary action, or censure - for one of the most sordid moments in
Australia’'s intelligence history, the bugging of the Timorese cabinet by ASIS
at the behest of Alexander Downer. The goal of the “operation” was to benefit
Australia'’s commercial interests and gain an advantage over a fledgling state
that needed all the help it could get to become viable after decades of
occupation and a violent transition to independence.
Instead, we ( Australia ) sent spies in
to bug them. It'’s Alexander Downer’'s legacy from all those years as foreign
minister, that and outsourcing Australia'’s foreign policy to the Bush White
House.
It was also, unquestionably, illegal
under Australian law. Our overseas spy agency broke the law, as part of a
particularly grubby exercise in screwing over one of the poorest countries in
the region.
Now the Turnbull government wants to punish the people who
revealed it, Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery. It'’s important to note
that K is not a whistleblower, and has at no stage acted outside the law. He has
never spoken to the media - who are in any event prohibited, rightly, from
revealing his identity - and he has acted in accordance with the advice of the
then-Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Ian Carnell, about how to
handle his dispute with ASIS. But he’'s been charged with “conspiring” with
Collaery to communicate information, a novel interpretation of lawyer-client
privilege.
An illegal, and particularly grubby, act committed at the
direction of the Howard government, and a prosecution by the Turnbull
government, by its hand-picked Director of Public Prosecutions, signed off by
the Attorney-General .You'’d think Labor would be all over this. But the Opposition has been deathly silent. That'’s because Labor is up to its ears in
this saga almost as much as the Coalition.
Timor Leste began its Timor Sea suit
against Australia when Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, and as the ABC'’s
Steve Cannane reported later, it was Julia Gillard who rejected Timor
Leste’'s complaint about the bugging when they learnt of it in 2012. As it has on
so many of the Coalition'’s assaults on basic liberties, Labor is standing
shoulder to shoulder with its own opponents.
The prosecution raises major
free speech and transparency issues. The government will likely seek to have the
trials conducted in camera. It has much to hide on the bugging operation,
particularly given its illegality; there may also be evidence ASIO has bugged
not just Collaery - that’s already known - but journalists as well.
Collaery
will seek to prevent his trial being conducted in secret. Hopefully media
organisations will join his attempt to do so next month at the initial hearing.
Beyond that, the sheer fact that the government is attempting to punish a lawyer
for revealing something embarrassing to the government means the case will
attract considerable interest as a test of how far the High Court'’s implied
freedom of political communication extends.
Only the minor parties -
Centre Alliance'’s Rex Patrick, Andrew Wilkie, Tim Storer, and the Green's’ Nick
McKim - were prepared to stand by Collaery (yesterday) and protest the
prosecution. When we write the history of how Australia became a police state,
it will note that Labor colluded and collaborated in its
creation.
The second Keane report that Wesley-Smith said should be read on the issue was headed : Collaery
prosecution targets ABC but strangely misses News Corp.
At a time when the government has
launched a full-scale war on the ABC over its journalism, the decision of the
government'’s hand-picked Director of Public Prosecutions, former Trade Union
Royal Commission counsel Sarah McNaughton, to charge Canberra lawyer Bernard
Collaery for talking to the ABC raises serious questions about the agenda
behind the prosecution.
In addition to facing a charge of conspiring with
Witness K to reveal
the illegal bugging of the Timorese government by the Australian Secret
Intelligence Service under Alexander Downer in 2004, Collaery is being charged
with illegally communicating information via interviews or conversations with a
number of ABC journalists and producers: Emma Alberici, Peter Lloyd, Connor
Duffy, Marian Wilkinson, and Peter Cronau.
Alberici has been a regular
target of both the Turnbull government and its media supporters in relation
to her journalism on economic issues.
But there'’s a strange omission from
the prosecution'’s summons to Collaery. The charges relating to ABC journalists
or producers all relate to early December 2013 or March 2014, in the wake of
raids by ASIO on Witness K and Collaery'’s offices, which included the seizure of
privileged material. ASIO had waited until Collaery was out of the country to
conduct the raid of his office.
The omission is that the revelation of
the illegal bugging of the Timorese cabinet wasn'’t by the ABC in December 2013,
but by The Australian on May
29, 2013 when Collaery told The Australian’'s Leo Shanahan what ASIS had
done. Shanahan isn'’t mentioned in the summons to Collaery, which goes through
chapter and verse of all the times he is meant to have illegally shared
information with ABC staff. Why the selective focus on the ABC when the original
“offence” was committed with News Corp?
If the government has its way in
preventing Collaery and K's trials from being held in public, we'’ll likely never
find out. No journalists, editors or producers have been directly
charged.
