by John Howard
The preamble suffered an even more severe defeat. The yes vote for it was only 39.3 per cent. My own electorate of Bennelong voted in favour of a republic by 54.62 per cent to 45.38 per cent. On the preamble, however, there was, in Bennelong, a vote of 52.5 per cent in favour which was the highest pro-preamble vote anywhere in the country. I have still not been able to figure out how it was that my own constituents so deliberately ignored my views on the republic yet with equal deliberation, so it seemed, embraced them on the preamble. There was a lot of amusement in the fact that as well as my electorate rejecting my views on the republic, so did Kim Beazley’s electorate of Brand reject his views. The electorate of Brand voted 66.31 per cent in favour of the status quo.
There was no doubt that conflict between the minimalist republicans and direct-election republicans contributed to the defeat of the republic. Many who wanted a republic, but only if the president could be directly elected, voted for the status quo in the hope that at some time in the future there would be an opportunity to vote in favour of a republic where the president was directly elected.
Before the too-hasty conclusion is drawn that a directly elected presidency is inevitable at some time in the future, a note of caution should be introduced. Many people who favoured a republic in 1999 did so on the condition that minimal change was involved. Just as not all direct-election republicans followed the path of people like Tim Costello and threw in their lot with other republicans, it would be the case that many minimalist republicans would have refused to embrace a direct-election model, thus throwing in their lot with the constitutional monarchists.
The overwhelming media support for a republic was counterproductive. Australians are independently minded people. They resent being told how to vote. So intense and comprehensive was the campaign that the unmistakable impression was created that the Australian media had united and decided that Australians should embrace a republic.
Michael Kirby, the former High Court judge and strong monarchist, clearly held that view. In delivering the Menzies Memorial Lecture at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College, London, on 4 July 2000, he said, during a forensic analysis of the reasons for the defeat of the 1999 referendum: ‘So uneven and biased was the media coverage of the referendum issues that I consider that this became part of the problem for support for the republic in Australia. It tended to reinforce opinions, especially amongst lower-income and rural electors, that this was a push by intellectual, well-off east coasters, not necessarily to be trusted by the rest of the nation.’6
The ‘true Australian’ pitch from the republicans also backfired. The monarchy and, particularly the Queen herself, had been part of the Australian landscape in the living memory of all Australians. To be told that wanting to keep the institution, for whatever reason, somehow or other defined one as a lesser Australian was, to say the least, counterintuitive and, to millions, deeply offensive. Another problem the republicans had was that their campaign was far too elitist. The pragmatism, verging on cynicism, of most Australians asserts itself in situations such as the republican debate. The fact that a given individual may be a talented sportsman or outstanding actress does not, in the eyes of the average Australian, invest that person with any superior wisdom when it comes to matters unrelated to their field of excellence. The same applies to artists, writers, judges and, indeed, former prime ministers. The egalitarian instincts of most Australians reject the notion that the views of such people carry any more weight than those of their next-door neighbour on such basic issues as a republic.
The two campaigns had contrasting styles, which worked against the republicans. The ARM-led pro-republican push had an air of the well-funded slick advertising promotion. By contrast, the no campaign had more of a battler image. Also important was the fact that, as Prime Minister, my opposition to a republic did deliver extra support to the constitutional monarchy, particularly from Coalition voters.
That having all been said, two factors in the end played a much bigger part than has been commonly recognised. As an individual, the Queen continues to enjoy enormous respect in the Australian community. If anything that respect has grown since the defeat of the referendum in 1999. As a very dignified lady, she has retained considerable affection. There is a real sense that she has done her duty in a conscientious fashion over many decades. Some Australians of an otherwise distinctive republican bent would have, in 1999, found it hard to vote for her removal as monarch. The other factor is the innate, commonsense conservatism of the Australian electorate. The argument ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ carries a lot of weight with the mainstream of the Australian community on a whole range of issues.
Conventional wisdom amongst political commentators is that it is only a matter of time before Australia becomes a republic. I question this. The decade which has passed since the defeat of the referendum has seen an unprecedented assertion of Australia’s independent action and sense of separate and distinctive identity. The liberation of East Timor, the frontal role played in the War Against Terror, the example of being better prepared to weather the economic meltdown than virtually any other Western nation, and our continued capacity to maintain close links with the United States whilst deepening our ties with Asia have sent an unambiguous message to the world. That is that in every way ours is a robustly independent and self-confident nation. Our vestigial constitutional links with the British monarchy have not inhibited these displays of Australian national virility. The early 1990s arguments of Paul Keating that Australia needed a republic and a change to its flag to better define itself in our region now seem very distant and totally irrelevant.
The Australian people had been given a vote. The issue had been fully and fairly debated and, in the end, the defeat of the referendum, which accorded with majority sentiment within the rank and file of the two Coalition parties, meant that this issue could be set aside for an indefinite period.
We could now all return in a united fashion to the ongoing challenges facing the Government. As 1999 ended, we had no conception of the challenges which would engulf the world in the next few years.
29
THE LIBERATION OF EAST TIMOR
When asked to list the achievements of my prime ministership of which I am most proud, I always include the liberation of East Timor in 1999. Now years later, it stands out as one of the more noble things that Australia has done in many years. Our nation was directly responsible for the birth of a very small country whose people remain deeply grateful for what we did.
Some of the best Australian attributes were on display. Good-quality diplomatic and consular work; our willingness, in the right circumstances, to be an active and constructive member of the United Nations, and, above all, the combined military professionalism and common humanity of the men and women of the ADF. In turn those men and women were led by a commander, Major General Peter Cosgrove, who the Australian people came to know and respect as the most prominent soldier this country has produced since General Sir Thomas Blamey in the days of World War II.
Until late in 1998, East Timor was always treated as an adjunct to Australia’s relations with Indonesia. The Whitlam Government wanted to maintain close ties with Indonesia and raised no meaningful objection to Indonesia’s clear intention to forcibly incorporate East Timor. Later, the Fraser Government would give formal recognition to Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor. Essentially the same policy was followed by successive governments, including — initially — my own. The realpolitik of having good links with ‘our nearest neighbour’ meant that, with the exception of continued rumblings within the left wing of the Labor Party, both sides of politics went along with the status quo. It was not thought appropriate to question Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor.
Although Australian governments continued to express domestically, their concern about the lack of political freedom in East Timor, it was never going to become a make-or-break issue in our relations with Jakarta. There was never any serious th
ought given to reversing the original Whitlam policy of 1975.
Within the Australian community, however, there were more troubled thoughts about this tiny province. The left had always been intensely suspicious of the Suharto Government, given the brutal suppression of any dissent which followed the crushing of the attempted Communist coup in the 1960s. Many Australians of the World War II generation had deep affection for the Timorese people. Some had sheltered Australian soldiers from the Japanese and had paid dearly for having done so. We owed them a debt, and whenever stories emerged about alleged Indonesian brutality in East Timor, consciences would be stirred.
The Catholic Church, because of the Portuguese colonial history of East Timor, had significant links with the Timorese. In Darwin a small but lively community of East Timorese was a constant reminder of domestic resistance to Indonesian rule. Sections of the Australian media, particularly the ABC, continued to run anti-Indonesian stories about East Timor. The added incentive here was the lingering resentment about Indonesian complicity in the deaths of five Australian journalists at Balibo in 1975. Many believed that the Australian Government at the time had not been resolute enough in seeking a proper explanation for what had happened.
Between 1975 and 1999, there were 12 official visits by Australian prime ministers to Indonesia, yet in that same period there were no return visits by an Indonesian president. General Suharto, Indonesian President since the 1960s, did not visit because he did not want to endure the indignity of demonstrations against him over East Timor.
The bipartisan constant was that nothing was to get in the way of smooth relations between Australia and Indonesia; if anything, this sentiment strengthened under the Keating Government because of the PM’s close personal association with President Suharto. Pragmatically, it was in Australia’s interests to have a cooperative partnership with this huge nation, on our doorstep which was, culturally and in so many other ways, completely different from our own society.
Many Australians took the view that the priority for any Australian Government was to keep the peace with Jakarta. For many in the foreign affairs establishment, harmony with the Suharto Government was the real test of whether we remained ‘engaged in Asia’.
Indonesia and, by extension, East Timor had always been a more internally divisive issue for the Labor Party than it was for the Coalition. Labor had been in power when Indonesia had gone through its birth pangs in 1946. The Chifley Government, with trade union backing, helped Sukarno, who became the founding president of Indonesia, and his colleagues throw off Dutch sovereignty. It was a piece of anti-colonial conduct which warmed the hearts of many Labor followers. Later the manner of Suharto’s coming to power, most particularly the immediate aftermath, complicated things for many Labor stalwarts. He had brought stability to the country, but at a cost. For the Coalition, Suharto was the man who had prevented a Communist takeover of our nearest neighbour. With all his faults he was, therefore, in the balance sheet of history, someone who had done the right thing by his country and the region.
In 1985, I visited Jakarta as Deputy Leader of the Opposition and, out of historical interest, went to the late General Ahmad Yani’s home. One of the generals targeted by PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, dissident military groups and, it is believed by many, President Sukarno, he had been murdered in his own home by military dissidents. It was a moving experience, hearing of the tremendous courage he had displayed. Along with General Abdul Nasution, he had been one of the anti-Communist heroes of those tumultuous days in 1965; Nasution had escaped the same awful fate by hiding in an incinerator. There were conflicting accounts of what had actually happened. It was clear, however, that Yani and Nasution and others like them opposed increased power for the PKI. General Suharto galvanised the anti-Communist forces and became the strongman who restored order in Indonesia after the chaos of the attempted coup.
When I became Prime Minister, I had no intention of changing Australian Government policy towards East Timor. I had not thought about the issue much at all but, to the extent that I had, my view was that a continuation of good relations with Indonesia was an important foreign policy goal for Australia. In March 1996, during our handover discussion in the loungeroom of the Lodge, Keating talked at length of APEC and, in particular, his discussions with Suharto. The personal character of the relationship obviously meant a lot to him. My attitude was a pragmatic one — East Timor was part of Indonesia, and that was how things were likely to continue.
Although it wasn’t obvious then, the ground began to shift under Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor with the onset of the Asian economic meltdown. It had become increasingly apparent that, at some point, there would need to be a succession plan in Jakarta, given Suharto’s advancing age. The economic crisis added to the succession pressures on the long-serving President. The Asian downturn hit Indonesia very hard. Inevitably some of the blame for this attached itself to Suharto.
Since becoming Prime Minister I had paid two bilateral visits to Jakarta. The first of these was part of my first visit overseas in 1996 as Australia’s leader, which also included a visit to Japan. The second had been late in 1997, on my return from a CHOGM in Edinburgh, when I re-routed to Jakarta to announce an Australian aid package to Indonesia. It was part of our assistance to regional economies in response to the financial crisis which had hurt the region, and in particular Indonesia, so much.
I told Suharto that the crisis had punished Indonesia more than it had deserved. Peter Costello and I felt strongly that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under pressure from the US Treasury, had, initially, been too severe with its adjustment requirements on Indonesia. We made our displeasure plain to both the Americans and the fund. They both relented.
The financial pressure on Indonesia at the time of the Asian meltdown proved to be the last straw for Suharto. Events gathered momentum in the early part of 1998 and he was replaced by the mercurial Dr B.J. Habibie, who was the Indonesian Vice-president, on 21 May 1998. It was an historic change for Indonesia. Suharto had been its military dictator for more than 30 years. Habibie had lived for a large part of the previous 25 years out of Indonesia, working for the Messerschmitt Corporation in Germany. Habibie immediately began democratising his country in stages, releasing political prisoners and removing restrictions on the press. This began a process which, three presidents later, culminated in the election, by popular vote, of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as Indonesian President in 2004.
Habibie’s accession to the presidency of Indonesia was also to open up the prospect of a radical change in Jakarta’s approach to its troubled province. Habibie’s attitude to East Timor was fundamentally different from that of his predecessor. He lacked the personal attachment of Suharto and other members of Indonesia’s military class to the province. To Australia, the fresh tack from Habibie meant, in the words of Alexander Downer, ‘… new possibilities emerged on the horizon, including the possibility that hitherto intractable issues such as the question of East Timor could finally be resolved’.1 From very early in his presidency, Habibie was aware that Australia saw, in his elevation, a window of opportunity regarding East Timor.
Three weeks after taking over, Habibie publicly talked about a possible autonomy package for East Timor. He saw the province, because of its economic dependency, as a liability rather than an asset for his country. In June he went much further, announcing an autonomy package for East Timor, with a view to having the future of the province resolved within the processes of the somewhat moribund tripartite discussions involving Indonesia, Portugal and the United Nations, the last-mentioned having never formally accepted the Indonesian takeover of 1975.
This was a significant advance, and although it suffered from the major defect of not allowing any involvement from the East Timorese, Australia warmly welcomed the Habibie announcement, and then set about persuading the Indonesians to include the East Timorese. Alexander Downer travelled to Jakarta in July to see both Dr Ali Alatas, the Foreign Minister, an
d General Wiranto, the Defence Minister. With the approval of the Indonesians, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) surveyed East Timorese opinion about the future of the province.
The East Timorese favoured what Downer would describe in an attachment to a letter to Alatas as ‘a transitional autonomy arrangement, to be followed by a referendum or similar process after a specified period which varied from 3 to 20 years’.2
Jakarta was not attracted to this. The Indonesians wanted their autonomy package to be the end of the issue, but this was never going to work. Australia rightly felt that unless the East Timorese participated in decisions about their future, the mistakes of 25 years earlier would be repeated.
Despite the gulf between our respective attitudes, I drew encouragement from the fact that Habibie had a more sceptical view about East Timor’s significance than his predecessor, or indeed many of the members of his Government. He felt that East Timor, increasingly, was a costly drag on the heavily stretched resources of the central government. This appreciation of Habibie’s disposition played a major part in shaping the new policy we were to enunciate later in the year.
East Timor came under intense discussion when the National Security Committee (NSC) of cabinet met on 1 December 1998. Downer gave an extensive report on the altered mood in Jakarta, East Timorese opinion, as well as broader international attitudes. Most of us felt that an important time had arrived, when it would make sense to reverse longstanding Australian policy on East Timor. The key to this was that Indonesia now had a president who did not see the retention of East Timor as a symbol of national self-respect.
The NSC concluded that it was a case of seizing the day. There was a new president, with a new attitude on an old and troubling issue for many Australians; taking advantage of such opportunities to pursue change was what practical advances in foreign policy was all about. Grand designs amount to very little unless governments have the wit to grab hold of opportunities for progress when they present themselves.