Australian whistleblower disappeard by ASIO

[David Guyatt]

It's as well to remember Murdoch's connections to the Mafia, especially in Oz. British MP, Tom Watson actually called James Murdoch a "Mafia boss" in hearings in parliament earlier this year. But it was Murdoch's business connections with Sir Peter Abeles that is one of the keys here, and which dates back to the Nugan Hand bank affair, as I recall. Supping with the devil and all that.

The confluence of organised crime, big corporate business and government is an irresistible force for evil.

[Magda Hassan]

The involvement of Martin Ferguson, a former advisor to Woodside Energy who went on to become the Energy Minister in former Labor government, goes some way to explaining Labor voting with the LNP to block the Green's motion in Parliament today for the Attorney General to explain the ASiIO raids. Ferguson was replaced by Gary Gray who was formerly an advisor to Woodside.

WikiLeaks: BHP and Chevron say Woodside forced deal on Kimberley LNG plant

• By Robert Burton-Bradley
  
• news.com.au
  
• September 01, 2011 9:41AM
  

James Price Point, north of Broome in Western Australia is to be the site of a multibillion dollar gas plant which energy companies say they were forced to choose according to US embassy cables. Picture: Rod Harvigsen


ENERGY companies involved in a $30 billion gas development believed they were blackmailed into accepting a controversial site for a gas plant in the Kimberley, diplomatic cables reveal.

The details emerged in US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks about the intensely controversial Browse Basin liquefied natural gas project that looks set to be processed at the environmentally sensitive James Price Point area in the Kimberley.

The site has been the scene of an ongoing battle between Indigenous land owners and environmentalist on the one side and Woodside and the West Australian and Federal governments on the other. The project is awaiting final approval form the Federal Goverment.

The leaked cable revealed several companies involved in the project were concerned that they would be pushed out of lucrative oil and gas deals by the federal government unless they used the James Price Point site which was favoured by Woodside.




The cable warned that government pressure was forcing the other partners to either walk away from the project or accept the proposed James Price Point facility.

The leaked cable comes this week as the federal government decided to include the Kimberley on the national heritage list excluding the James Price Point site, allowing the development of the processing plant.

The cable was sent from the US embassy in Canberra sent on December 11, 2009, and followed a decision by the Minister for Resources Martin Ferguson on December 4, that the Browse Basin LNG project partners Woodside, BHP, BP, Chevron and Shell must develop a plan to produce LNG within 120 days, as a condition for extending for three years their retention leases on gas fields in the project.

Australian Petroleum Producers and Explorers Association (APPEA) Director for Exploration and Access Ranga Parimala told the US, "the decision was an unprecedented interference' by the government in a project, intended to force Browse partners to choose Woodside's preferred development pathway."

"In Parimala's view," the cable continued, "the Browse partners would have no chance to develop a credible alternative in 120 days and would either accept the James Price Point plan or seek to walk away from the project."

Woodside's chosen site requires cutting through native vegetation and dredging parts of the sea bed and has attracted serious opposition from locals and environmentalists who argue it will destroy part of the Kimberley area which contains vast tracts of pristine wilderness and a number of threatened species. The other partners favoured a site in the already industrialised Pilbara region near Karratha further to the West.

Chevron's External Affairs Manager for Wheatstone, Mike Edmondson, according to the cables, told the US Consul General in Perth "the decisions reflected Ferguson's long-standing views on "use it or lose it" provisions and Woodside's lobbying to put pressure on its partners," and said "the decisions are unprecedented and concerning."

BHP Billiton Vice President for Government Relations Bernie Delaney was also quoted in the cable: "told us that his firm is strongly opposed to the changes in retention leases, which are likely to push companies such as Chevron and BHP to use existing Woodside infrastructure in the Northwest Shelf, and to develop the new James Price Point complex."

The Cable concluded that, "The clear winner in the initial set of decisions by Ferguson is Woodside, whose reluctant JV partners in two projects will likely be forced to accept Woodside's two preferred development options.

Minister Ferguson's Energy Advisor at the time, Tracy Winters, reportedly said that the government "would not allow companies to build portfolio investments by sitting on Australian resources over a long term" the Cable stated.

"Winters suggested it would be a good thing if some of the most reluctant partners pulled out of contentious and slow-developing deals, as there are plenty of investors ready to fill in their places.'"

Kevin Blatchford from the group Save the Kimberley believes the push for a processing plant at the James Price Point is part of a wider plan to open up the rest of the Kimberley to industrialisation.
"We believe the reason why this site being pushed is from political persuasion to power up further development of the Kimberley area and open the area up to other industry.

"They knew early in the piece there would be significant opposition to placing this anywhere on the coast, especially when have alternatives there's Karratha down there's already an LNG plant there that's approved for that type of development.

"We also know that Martin Ferguson is heavily pushing behind the scenes for this because this will open other resources in the area.

A media spokeswoman for Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said the Government did not comment on "leaked confidential documents."

Woodside spokeswoman Laura Hammer said the company would only say that their current partners were happy with the project.

"The Browse Joint Venture partners have all agreed to fund the current front-end engineering and design activities for the Browse LNG Development to be in a position for a final investment decision in mid-2012," she said.

Gillard government knew of the spying also. But Gillard such a US lackey. Quite likely to be US involvement here. She refused to renegotiate the Treaty (CMATS) and E. Timor went public with the spying allegations and declared the Treaty invalid and took Australia to the Hague for arbitration.
Paywalled.

Aussie spies accused of bugging Timor cabinet

• Leo Shanahan
  
• The Australian
  
• May 29, 2013 12:00AM
  
• 4 comments
  

AUSTRALIA'S overseas spy agency has been accused of breaking into the cabinet rooms of the East Timorese government under the instruction of then foreign minister Alexander Downer and covertly recording the Timorese foreign minister and officials.

The East Timorese government claims that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service conducted the operation in Dili during the 2004 negotiations over a treaty that governs billions of dollars in gas revenue between the two nations - and which Timor now claims is invalid.

[Magda Hassan]

It's as well to remember Murdoch's connections to the Mafia, especially in Oz. British MP, Tom Watson actually called James Murdoch a "Mafia boss" in hearings in parliament earlier this year. But it was Murdoch's business connections with Sir Peter Abeles that is one of the keys here, and which dates back to the Nugan Hand bank affair, as I recall. Supping with the devil and all that.

The confluence of organised crime, big corporate business and government is an irresistible force for evil.

Indeed. Josh Frydenberg. Murdoch journalist and advisor to Alexander Downer and shareholder of Woodside shares.

Shale gas offers energy security

• JOSH FRYDENBERG
  
• The Australian
  
• August 02, 2012 12:00AM
  
• 11 comments
  

NEARLY 40 years after the global oil crisis of 1973-74, another energy shock has hit. Fortunately, this time it's not some despot from the OPEC cartel holding America and its allies to ransom.

Rather, the revolution is the other way around. Shale gas may rewrite the rulebook on energy security beyond this century.


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[Magda Hassan]

Some background sleaze and intel connections on Woodside operations.

Woodside drill deep into an African money pit

Date July 5, 2008 Richard Baker and Julia May




WOODSIDE'S great African oil adventure had all the elements of a modern spy novel.
There was a military coup, a shady big-money deal in Dubai, corruption allegations, a jailed politician, police interrogations, high-stakes international politics and the threat of terrorism.
Even the name of the country Woodside had $1 billion tied up in - Mauritania - sounded like something from the pages of an espionage thriller.
Adding to the plot was the presence of French-speaking Australian Government foreign affairs official, Brendan Augustin, who had been quietly placed at the forefront of Woodside's operations in the impoverished and politically unstable Islamic nation in north-west Africa.
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Unfortunately for Woodside, the story of its pursuit of African oil did not have a pleasant ending. Last September, amid an Australian Federal Police investigation into allegations of corruption, the Perth-based resources giant sold its interests in the offshore Chinguetti oilfield. Chinguetti's output had failed to meet expectations and Woodside's first overseas production venture ended with a $233 million loss.
In better news for the company, the AFP corruption probe - with which Mauritania refused to co-operate - recently concluded with no evidence found to suggest Woodside had broken Australian law in its dealings with Mauritanian politicians.
Though this finding has brought relief and closure to Woodside, there remain serious questions and much mystery about its actions and the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Australia's attempt to strike it rich in Africa.
An investigation by The Age into the Mauritania affair reveals:
* Allegations by Mauritania's former oil minister - who was jailed over over his Woodside dealings - that company executives, including DFAT's Augustin, gave evasive and ambiguous answers to Mauritanian prosecutors about his conduct.
* The secret role of a Dubai-based oil sheikh from Qatar's ruling family as the middleman in Woodside's controversial $US100 million "project bonus" payment to the military junta that swept to power in Mauritania in a 2005 coup.
* Just weeks after the coup, senior DFAT officials and Woodside executives were exchanging US Government intelligence about Mauritania. DFAT has refused to disclose the US material under Freedom of Information, claiming to do so would lessen US confidence in Australia and restrict the future flow of information.
* In one declassified document, Woodside asks DFAT first assistant secretary David Ritchie if Australian diplomats in Washington and London would pressure the US and British governments to remind Mauritania's military junta of Australia's "commercial interests" in their country.
While these revelations may not show illegal or corrupt behaviour, they raise questions about the relationship between DFAT and Woodside, as well as inviting scrutiny of the company's business practices in Mauritania.
Why did DFAT deem it necessary to have an official work for Woodside in Mauritania? What was the US government information they shared? Was Woodside's $US100 million payment to the military junta in 2006 a legitimate business deal, a concession of past misdeeds or something else? And why was Dubai-based Sheikh Abdullah bin Saeed al-Thani needed to make the deal?
A MAN well placed to answer many of these questions is Zeidane Hmeida, Mauritania's minister for mining, energy and oil until the 2005 military coup. The Age met Hmeida last month in Paris for his first media interview about the Woodside affair. In addition, The Age has obtained his 60-page record of interview with the AFP.
Hmeida has seen Mauritania emerge as a nation of increasing strategic importance to the West since its oil potential was discovered in the late 1990s. The Bush Administration has a policy to derive a quarter of US oil imports from Africa by 2015 to lessen reliance on Middle East crude.
Mauritania has also become a base for US special forces troops to curb the growing presence of Islamist terrorists in sub-Saharan Africa. There are credible reports that Mauritania now hosts a secret CIA prison for the rendition of terror suspects, though this has been denied by its government.
"Certainly the CIA has made a presence in Mauritania. Like France, maybe Australia," Hmeida told The Age in French-accented English in the boardroom of Hotel Printemps in Paris. "Why? I think because of oil. And a lot of people from Australia, US, from oil companies, from France, China, Spain, UK, all people are rushing to Mauritania … I am sure all the governments have spies in their big companies. Firstly to protect their interest and to know what is happening in this area."
Hmeida's life was on the up until August 3, 2005, when Mauritania's military and police took advantage of President Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya's decision to attend the funeral of Saudi Arabia's king. Staging a bloodless coup, the junta promised democratic elections within two years.
For a brief period, it looked as though Hmeida and Woodside would remain unaffected by the coup. His ministerial duties in limbo, Hmeida studied in Scotland and worked as a World Bank consultant. Woodside continued trying to extract oil from the seabed.
But it was not long before the military men turned their attention towards Woodside and amendments made to its production sharing contracts by the previous regime a year earlier. As the minister responsible, Hmeida's immediate future was grim.
Speaking through an interpreter, Hmeida told Australian Federal Police officers at the Australian embassy in Paris last October that his home in Mauritania was "ransacked violently" on December 28, 2005, by police. Two weeks later, he was taken at gunpoint from his wife and children for an interrogation lasting eight days. The military junta believed Mauritania's interests had been sacrificed for Woodside's gain. Hmeida was singled out as the culprit and accused of being an Australian agent.
For almost three months, he was jailed in a two metre-by-two metre cell. While incarcerated, Mauritania's military men went on a media blitz, claiming Hmeida had cost his country $200 million by lowering Woodside's taxes and limiting Mauritania's profits. Strangely, they never publicly accused Woodside of corrupting the former oil minister, who in 2002 had visited the company's Perth headquarters. There was only one side to the alleged corruption.
But behind the scenes the relationship between Woodside and the military leaders had soured. The company's hopes for an African oil bonanza were in jeopardy as the military junta disputed the validity of the amended contracts. The stand-off continued for months and looked set for international arbitration when it was suddenly resolved.
The key was Sheikh Abdullah al-Thani. A relative of Qatar's rulers, Sheikh Abdullah is the owner of a major Arab oil company with interests in Mauritania. He had fast become a trusted adviser to Mauritania's military regime.
Over a series of secret meetings in Dubai in March 2006, Sheikh Abdullah convinced Woodside and its junior joint venture partners to pay a special $US100 million "project bonus" to Mauritania. Woodside also agreed to scrap the amended contracts.
In no time, Hmeida was freed and the charges against him dropped. A legal amnesty was placed over Woodside's amended contracts to prevent further scrutiny. It was as if the whole affair never happened.
Though he had his freedom, Hmeida's reputation had taken a hit. Resurrecting a political career and finding work has proved difficult. He is furious at what he sees as Woodside's reluctance to help in order to please the military junta.
Hmeida told AFP officers that Woodside knew he did not play a leading role in negotiating the amendments. The bulk of the work, he argued, had been done by senior public servants such as Mauritania's director of mines and geology, Wane Ibrahim Lamine, who last year was a visitor to the WA school of mines at Curtin University in Perth. Woodside, Rio Tinto and Chevron are among the school's corporate partners.
Hmeida accused Woodside of allowing the military junta to perpetuate the facade that he was corrupt. "The first thing that Woodside did that was detrimental to me was the two Woodside witnesses made statements when they were interviewed by the investigating magistrate that were clearly accusatory and that left the judge a clear and distinct impression that I had acted in a manner that was corrupt."
A French language transcript of the questioning of two Woodside executives, one of whom was DFAT's Augustin, show the Australians made no attempt to defend Hmeida or challenge allegations against him. They told prosecutors they knew nothing about the amended contracts despite them having been signed by Woodside executives and approved by the previous Mauritanian parliament.
Hmeida also told the AFP that it was he, not the military junta, who first ordered an audit of Woodside's contracts and found evidence the company owed Mauritania a large sum of money. He suggested this may have been a factor in Woodside's payment of $US100 million to the military junta. So what does Woodside have to say about Hmeida's claims and its troubled time in Mauritania? Gary Gray, the Rudd Government MP and former ALP national director, was Woodside's corporate affairs director for many years and was heavily involved in the politics surrounding the Mauritania operation.
A straight-talker, Gray met Hmeida twice in 2004-05 while on business in Mauritania. "There's no doubt at all he'd had have every reason to believe he had been hard done by. The jails there are pretty horrific," he said.
Asked about Hmeida's claim Woodside could have done more to help him while in jail, Gray said the company's policy was to not get caught up in issues that did not directly affect its business. "If we'd been out defending Hmeida we would have faced more accusations we were engaged in corruption with him."
A Woodside spokesman said Hmeida's claims company executives collaborated with the military junta to keep him in jail were untrue and ridiculous. Augustin, who left DFAT last year to work for an Australian iron ore company in Cameroon, declined to answer questions.
Gray revealed it was his idea to have a DFAT official seconded to Woodside's Mauritania operations.
"We needed someone with French-Arabic cultural skills and we thought the arrangement would also benefit DFAT because at the end of it they would get back a person with knowledge and experience of the oil sector in western Africa," explained Gray. "Brendan (Augustin) was an excellent candidate. He had experience in Dili. His wife, I think is a GP from East Timor. He knew the circumstances of living in the Third World."
NEITHER DFAT nor Woodside believe the secondment of Augustin is evidence of a cosy relationship. But the pair have had strong ties in recent times, with the late DFAT secretary Ashton Calvert joining Woodside's board in 2005. Woodside's director of international exploration, Agu Kantsler, is a member of DFAT's Council for Australian-Arab Relations.
Publicly, Woodside plays a straight bat on the terms of the $US100 million "project bonus" paid to Mauritania in 2006. But there is a feeling among some senior executives it was effectively blackmailed into making the payment. Such things are a risk of doing business in developing nations.
There is no doubt the Mauritania adventure has been a bruising but educative experience for Woodside, which came to the country with good intentions. It was the first company to provide Mauritania with advice on how to develop an oil industry, it helped frame environmental legislation and funded projects in local schools.
Largely through the efforts of Gray, Woodside, along with pressure from the US and Britain, convinced Mauritania's military junta to sign up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to limit the misuse of oil revenues. "If I believed we were doing anything unethical or corrupt in west Africa I would have resigned. We weren't trying to play by the book in west Africa, we were trying to write it," Gray said. But for all Woodside's endeavours, its Mauritania experience is symbolic of the oil curse affecting much of Africa. The influx of money from Western governments and oil companies has done little to improve the living conditions of the majority of people in oil-rich African nations.
Hmeida has no idea where the huge sums of money - including Woodside's $US100 million - that flowed into his country in recent years have ended up.

The Department Head of Foreign Affairs at the time of the bugging of E. Timor resigns to take up a position with Woodside. Dies 2 years later.

Rio, Woodside boards depleted by death

• Nigel Wilson, Energy Writer
  
• The Australian
  
• November 19, 2007 12:00AM
  

THE death of Ashton Calvert has robbed Rio Tinto and Woodside of a director with incomparable international contacts.

Dr Calvert, 62, the former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, died on Friday.
His resignation from both companies was announced early this month after he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
Speaking after the resignation was announced but before Dr Calvert's death, Woodside chairman Michael Chaney said he and his fellow directors "greatly regretted" that ill health had led to Dr Calvert's decision to leave the board.
"Ashton made an enormous contribution to Woodside over the past two years, providing great intellectual rigour and an unmatched knowledge of both international and domestic political developments," Mr Chaney said. "We shall miss Ashton greatly."
At Rio Tinto, chairman Paul Skinner said Dr Calvert had made a major contribution to the company since joining the boards of Rio Tinto and Woodside.
He had "provided valuable insights across a range of major strategic issues, notable in relation to our business in Australia and Asia".
"We are very sorry that his health prevents his continuing membership of the board and will greatly miss his wise counsel and advice," Mr Skinner said.
A Rhodes Scholar from Tasmania, Dr Calvert joined the companies in 2005 following serving as head of DFAT for more than six years, during which Australia's policy on East Timor was developed, as was the response to the Bali and Jakarta embassy bombings.
Previously he was ambassador to Japan after an extensive career in the diplomatic service.
He had a reputation for being politically even-handed, which led to him continuing as head of DFAT following the defeat of the Keating government.
Company officials said Dr Calvert's experience suggested he would be hard to replace. In fact, the suddenness of his illness means that no work has been done on finding a successor.
For Rio Tinto, it is expected a replacement will be an Australian, reflecting the current geographic makeup of the board of the dual-listed mining giant.
At Woodside, the retirement left its board two short, as 34 per cent shareholder Shell has yet to replace Russell Caplan, who resigned last month following a perceived conflict of interest.
Shell's rationale for the resignation of its chairman in Australia from the Woodside board was that the company was expanding its interests in Australia in competition with Woodside, which suggests his replacement will have to come from overseas.
Shell is entitled to three directors on the Woodside board.
Dr Calvert's resignation will provide an opportunity for Mr Chaney, who became Woodside chairman in August, to signal the company's immediate strategic direction now that it has said it wants to concentrate on Australian LNG developments rather than expand internationally.

[Magda Hassan]

Looks like there are at least 4 whistle blowers wanting to give evidence against Australia and for Timor Leste. That's how many Timor Leste has called to give evidence at teh Hague.

Discovery of more than one whistleblower in East Timor bugging case

Peter Lloyd reported this story on Thursday, December 5, 2013 18:10:00
Listen to MP3 of this story ( minutes) Alternate WMA version | MP3 download

MARK COLVIN: In the latest twist in the case involving Australian spies bugging the offices of the East Timor government, PM has learned that Timor's lawyers in the Hague had intended to call four whistleblowers to back their case.

Earlier in the week, the domestic spy agency ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) raided the home of a senior ex-member of the overseas spy service ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service).

He's believed to have been a senior member of the team that carried out the bugging operation in the Timor capital Dili.

We now understand that other members connected to the operation had also decided to testify.

There are also serious questions about how the Australian Government's legal team used privileged information given to them by the Timor legal team.

Peter Lloyd has been investigating and joins me now.

Let's begin about two weeks ago when the legal teams of Australia and Timor met in the Hague.

PETER LLOYD: That's right Mark, a timeline is taking shape here, which reveals the background that led to these ASIO raids in Canberra this week.

It was two weeks ago in the Hague that a preliminary meeting between the parties in this dispute over the treaty took place and at that meeting the exchange of information included the revelation to the Australian side by the Timorese that there are not one but four whistleblowers in this case.

We presume other operatives from ASIO - ASIS rather - that were involved in this elaborate bugging operation during the year 2004, where on four occasions they broke into the cabinet offices at the palace of government in Dili and installed surveillance equipment; maintained and carried out operations to find out what was said in that room, and then passed it on, say the Timorese, to the Australian government and their negotiators, who were doing a deal over this $20 billion Sunrise, Greater Sunrise, gas field.

MARK COLVIN: They told the Australian Government who they were going to bring as witnesses?

PETER LLOYD: Yes, as an act of, what the Timorese called, good faith in the negotiations of the architecture of this tribunal. What we've got, what you've got - the exchange of normal information in a legal case. That is when the hammer dropped on Australia.

So the timeline suggests that within two weeks of finding this out that's what led to the raids.

And it's raised for the Timorese the question of whether or not the veracity of George Brandis' - the Attorney-General's - statement two days ago can be fully tested. Because he's saying that ASIO came to him and said there was a matter of national security.

They're saying, that's rubbish, that he acted on the basis of information obtained in the normal arbitration process, and they believe that these raids shouldn't have took place, and they're seeking some legal counsel advice tonight to find out whether they can try and overturn these raids and the seizure of these documents under the warrants and have them returned to their owners.

MARK COLVIN: Where might they be able to do that? In a Federal Court?

PETER LLOYD: Big grey area of law here. Look, under the Commonwealth act that ASIO and ASIS exist under, the remedies would probably be taking them to the Federal Court. It's not clear and the Timorese themselves aren't sure what the route is, how they take this journey. But that's the strategy.

MARK COLVIN: Now one of the witnesses for Timor, we know, has had his passport cancelled and is therefore grounded here in Australia, and will not be able to go to the Hague to give evidence. Is there some possibility of doing it on video link? Do we know that?

PETER LLOYD: There are a number of options, Bernard Collaery, the Australian legal advisor to the case, has suggested to me that if they had to they'd bring the tribunal, the three party tribunal hearing here to Australia. They could do it via video, they could do it via phone.

I don't think silencing him is in any sense achieved through this process.

MARK COLVIN: And what about the others, if there are four?

PETER LLOYD: Well that's - the same test and question applies to them. It's presumed that if there are four, then there are four affidavits and that the affidavits were seized along with the other things that were taken from Collaery's house in Canberra this week.

One of the significant other bits of this timeline that's emerged today is that in a second preliminary meeting, one week ago, the Australian Government, say the Timorese, agreed not to arrest these guys, we presume it's men, before the case was heard when they were abroad. But they specifically did not make the agreement to not arrest them in Australia.

MARK COLVIN: One of them is under arrest, or has been arrested, and, as we say, the passport cancelled.

PETER LLOYD: That's right.

MARK COLVIN: What about the others? Do we know where they are?

PETER LLOYD: We don't. We don't know anything about - this is the first time today that we've learnt that there are others.

MARK COLVIN: So for all we know they could possibly be in the Hague or on their way to the Hague?

PETER LLOYD: Well it raises the question, if the Timorese side revealed to the Australians two weeks ago that these whistleblowers, that this smoking gun evidence existed, why they didn't move them faster and sooner out of the jurisdiction if the deal they've struck is to not have them prosecuted or prevented from taking action by the Australians overseas but not in Australia. It's one of the big questions here.

The other thing is that the - today we've discovered more information about the kind of background that preceded this case even becoming public.

A year ago, the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, received a letter, a document included in the letter, from the prime minister of East Timor, saying we have a problem with this treaty and we need to start doing some negotiating about it. They say that there was no response. That there was a subsequent meeting set up in London, at which the Australian side simply didn't turn up.

MARK COLVIN: Didn't turn up?

PETER LLOYD: Didn't turn up, according to the Timorese. In an act that they saw as a defiant refusal to even engage on what they say was a basic contractual dispute.

And it gets even worse, from the Timorese account, that they also say there was a follow-up meeting in Bangkok later in the year, at which no senior minister attended and they believe only note taking, effectively, level people from DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) turned up to hear, and to engage with the Timorese side, and then left the room with no instructions on what to say.

So…

MARK COLVIN: All of this was happening while Australia was trying to get a seat on the UN Security Council is that…

PETER LLOYD: With the support of the Timorese. Yes. That's an interesting bit of geopolitics that was going on at the same time.

MARK COLVIN: Are the Timorese saying that?

PETER LLOYD: That's what the Timorese are saying, is they feel a bit miffed about how big brother Australia's been treating them. And this is important because they are saying, this is the essence of their case, that under the treaty that they're disputing, there is a part of it that says that if there is a dispute then the two parties should sit down and try and resolve it through fair means.

And they're saying they did all this, and they're revealing this information to illustrate their case, which they say will begin this evening in the Hague.

MARK COLVIN: Peter Lloyd, thank you very much.

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3905928.htm