Just in case anyone wonders why successive Australian have afforded no protection or protest in regard to the prolonged and serious maltreatment of one of its own citizens, Julian Assange, the story of Bernard Collaery should clear this up very quickly. This story will likely have been discussed here at times in the past, but it may be useful to reming contributors, and bring the story up to date.

I am writing this because there is an excellent article in the NZ Listener today summarising the following circumstances. It will not be available on the internet for a few weeks, so I’ll give a full summary here.

The year is 2004. Men, posing as aid workers, had hidden listening devices with the walls of Timor-Leste’s Palácio Governo, the ministerial offices of that country. The devices relayed the discussions and conversations heard to a an old Russian ship moored as a “hotel” in the capital, Dili. The men, and the listeners, were Australian operatives of the Australian Secret Intelligence Services (ASIS). The reason was not security, but commercial and nationalistic.

Vast reserves of gas and oil had been discovered lying between northern Australia and Timor Leste in the Timor Sea, worth at least $50 billion. Timor-Leste, a hugely impoverished nation had just two years prior bloodily wrested its independence from Indonesia. The maritime boundary between the countries, previously un-negotiated, needed delineating. Australia was determined to get more than its fair share of what lay between these new boundaries.

The conversations and discussion between ministers and advisors in Timor-Leste were vital to Australia, what were this new and untested government’s bottom lines. In 2006 a smug Australian Foreign minister, Alexander Downer announce a hugely favourable deal to Australia to reporters.

But there was a grit of sand in the fine cogs of the ASIS. This grit of sand was “Witness K”, one of the key involved ASIS officers. He had a conscience, resigned, and got permission from the Inspector General of cIntelligence to speak to the lawyer, Bernard Collaery, former Australian Capital Territory attorney-general and long advisor to the Timorese.

Xana Gusmão, Timor-Leste’s old rebel and now leader, learned of this bugging operation in 2012, and approached the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, arguing the 2008 agreement should be invalidated, and renegotiated.

The reaction was immediate and severe. ASIS agents swooped on K’s home, seized his passport so he couldn’t give evidence in the Hague, though Colleary fortunately was already there, but 10 ASIS agents bust into his home and rifled through his files and documents for six hours.

Australia has never formally admitted its wrong-doing, but eventually, politically it had to capitulate, and a new treaty negotiated in 2018 now gives Timor-Leste around 80% of the royalties from these resources (JKM I must add, of course Australia will be the worst affected continent by the resulting burning of these fossil fuel resources from global warming - I trust NZ will not accept climate refugees from Australia, and if they make it here whether in some rickety boats or luxury cruise liners, NZ will open a camp for them all on the Auckland Islands to be detained indefinitely - please Google Auckland Islands for a flavour of what joys they’ll hold to the inmates.)

Australia managed to grind down a mentally fragile witness K to pleading guilty. He was given a suspended sentence against the wishes of the prosecutors.

The Australian government though is still after Collaery. Now aged 77, the government lost a court case when they wanted to try him in secret, but even that hasn’t stopped them - they have introduced so-called “super-evidence” that not even Collaery can see to try persuade the judicial system to to revert to a secret trial. So far Collaery has withstood 50 court hearings instigated by the Australian government at a cost of many millions of A$.

Why? Everyone now knows in any case that Australia is a bully and a rogue state. The only reason can be simply be that very nasty people want to have revenge and see blood spilt, pour discourager les autres. This prosecution was supported by the Labor opposition.

Now you know why no Australian government could give a hoot about Assange. And in that Australia and the UK are political and economic bedfellows, maybe not shafting each other but certainly everyone else, then you know why the UK government and the opposition here don’t give a hoot about Assange either. Having said that, there are MPs in Australia with more moral backbone. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/coalition-lends-voices-of-support-for-assange,15895

There is an article here on the internet https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/06/23/asis-j23.html which covers the same story.

And here in NZ? This kind and laid-back little paradise - with average house price eight times average earnings and 250,000 children in poverty, 100,000 of them in significant deprivation, CO2 and methane emissions continuing to rise, most waterways seriously polluted, massive student debt and massive wealth inequalities. ? Well, NZ is a very loyal member of the Five Eyes. It also owes 33% of its external trade to China, an effective muzzle to any criticism of pretty well anything that happens there - the only time NZ has made any sort of comment independent of the Five Eyes was its timidity in criticising China. .

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/safe-haven-julian-assange-new-zealand Some moral New Zealanders, but an intransigent NZ government.

Nicky Hager, is a fine independent investigative journalist, derided and sneered at by many right-wing commentators here in NZ (there are an abundance of such miscreants). When Nicky Have published his book, Dirty Politics, about crooked goings on in the Beehive (our ministerial offices) and John Key’s employed crooked spin doctors his house was raided by the police in 2014 when he was absent (though his daughter was home) He ultimately received an apology and compensation from the police, but not from the crooked John Key. I’ve yet to hear support for Assange from any politician in New Zealand.

https://www.nickyhager.info/category/articles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicky_Hager

PS Nicky Hager recently wrote this about Afghanistan https://www.nickyhager.info/the-taliban-won-the-war-can-we-learn-the-lesson/

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