Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis judged it was a good use of Australian taxpayer resources in December 2013 to phone his mates in ASIO to do a raid on neighbouring oil and gas rival, East Timor – a new nation Australia has spent a decade, blood and billions creating – only for Brandis to then deceive and spy on it.
Nice.
East Timor has accused Australia’s outward spy agency ASIS of illegally spying on it and bugging Timorese ministers and officials during oil-and-gas energy reserves negotiations in Dili in 2004.
On December 3, 2013, lawyer Bernard Collaery representing East Timor in its spying case against Australia says his Canberra office was raided by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Collaery’s office observed a dozen agents swooped unannounced on his office and seizing reams of material, including legal documents, electronic files.
Files included a statement by Collaery (a former ASIS agent) proving illegal bugging of East Timor parliamentarians discussing Timor’s oil and gas negotiatiosn in the capital Dili in 2004. The Oil spying continues to be an ASIO’s major spying campaign, not for service to Australia’s national security but for vested corporate interests under Liberal politician George Brandis.
ASIO had no search warrant because ASIO knows it operates above Australian law. ASIO, being the epitome of national security, has its own laws above Australia’s Parliament. Brandis also judged ASIO should arrest Mr Collaery just in case. he was later released and not charged with any offence.
Brandis publicly confirmed the raids on the day:
“I confirm that today, ASIO executed search warrants at addresses in Canberra, and documents and electronic media were taken into possession. The warrants were issued by me on the grounds that the documents contained intelligence related to security matters.”
Brandis should read Dale Carnegie’s instructive best-selling book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’. Some 15 million have been sold since it was first published in 1936, so Brandis shouldn’t have a problem tracking down the book for weekend reading.
Tiny half island of East Timor, an impoverished nation, realised its secret deal had been undermined, has since rightfully sought redress and to have a subsequent treaty with Australia over the Timor Sea reserves declared invalid by an international arbitration tribunal in the Hague in Belgium.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has today provisionally ordered ASIO and Brandis not spy again on East Timor and not to look any more at the files they stole.
The ruling was endorsed by 15 of the ICJ’s panel of judges. Not unsurprisingly, the only dissenter was ad hoc judge Ian Callinan, a former Australian High Court judge appointed to the panel by Brandis.
Nice.
Some $40 billion of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea is up for grabs. The Liberal Government in Australia desperately need to money to repay massive Labor debt – the perpetual Laboral pendulum all over – Lib-Lab-Lib-Lab…
ASIO, the Dark Side of the Laberal Cabinet has sold its soul to the politics of the day, and botches its operation in the process.
A legacy of Big Australia’s Kevin Rudd’s decadence was his envy to emulate the US Pentagon with the $700 million glass lens-like ASIO monolithic building in Canberra.
Practising our capability in a compromising party political environment
When light shines into it, it is refracted into Chinese whisper crap. Truth in, spin and colourful crap out.
Indeed, the Chinese played a role in ASIO’s new headquartered Ben Chifley Building, so the entire building is bugged and so buggered, just like Labor’s school halls.