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Nick Xenophon calls for royal commission into East Timor spying scandal
ABC News - November 27, 2015
The call comes after the ABC's Lateline revealed new details about the 2004 spying operation and one of Australia's most senior lawyers, Nicholas Cowdery QC, said there is a criminal case to answer.
In 2004, ASIS officers snuck into East Timor's cabinet office and installed listening devices. The operation gave Australia the upper hand in negotiations over the treaty to divide the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field in the Timor Sea, worth an estimated $40 billion.
Senator Xenophon said a royal commission was needed to examine whether intelligence resources were misused. "This is the biggest intelligence scandal in this country in the past generation," he said.
"It warrants a royal commission, it warrants a judicial inquiry, a forensic examination of what occurred here because this has damaged Australia's reputation."
Senator Xenophon said a royal commission would examine weaknesses in the current system of oversight for intelligence services. "We have a situation here where the inspector-general of intelligence and security, that office, many would consider it to be a toothless tiger," he said.
He said a royal commission was "absolutely essential" to restore Australia's reputation in the region.
Mr Cowdery, former New South Wales director of public prosecutions, said in his legal opinion the bugging of the cabinet office was a crime under Australian law. He was engaged to provide a legal opinion for Bernard Collaery, the former legal adviser to East Timor.
Mr Cowdery supported the call for a judicial inquiry. "It would need to include an investigation into the question of whether or not criminal offences had been committed," he said.
Mr Collaery said it should also look at whether ASIS should operate within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
"The royal commission has to boost morale in our services and has to free ASIS, which is a very professional organisation, from the shackles of commercial boardrooms," he said. "They should not be acting to the dictates of commercial boardrooms by proxy through managing ministers."
In 2013, East Timor notified Australia that it was taking the case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
Later that year, ASIO officers raided Mr Collaery's Canberra office and the home of a key witness in the case, a former senior intelligence officer known as Witness K.
Witness K's passport was seized, meaning he was unable to travel overseas to The Hague to give evidence and to this day he is unable to leave the country.
Mr Collaery said it was disgraceful conduct by the Australian Government. "Because it created national security risk not only for Witness K, who had had a distinguished career, but it created risks for my chambers and my staff," he siad.
"To publicly identify my practice and my staff, several of whom have young families, as being associated with intelligence operations, was reprehensible, most reprehensible to place my staff at risk, because intelligence operations in this day and age extend to the very proper conduct of operations against terrorism."
Attorney-General George Brandis has previously said he is confident intelligence agencies are compliant with Australian law.
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