Mr BRERETON —My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and concerns his claim this week that no-one could have anticipated the scale of the post-ballot violence in East Timor. Minister, isn't it the case that in early August our consulate in Dili received from UNAMET copies of documents detailing intimate cooperation between TNI and the militias, and their plans for widespread violence following the vote, including the mass deportation of the population and liquidation of pro-independence East Timorese? What assessment was made of these documents? Would you not concur with the view of an Australian CIVPOL officer who prior to the vote wrote:

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to work out a frightening prognosis from all these sources . . . East Timor will descend into the same hell that Somalia went through, Dili could become a mini Mogadishu.

Minister, why did you leave it so late before you first called for peacekeepers?

Mr DOWNER (Foreign Affairs) —I thank the honourable member for his question, and obviously I am aware of a large amount of information that was available both before the ballot took place and after the ballot took place but before the result was announced. I have said on many occasions, including publicly—I recall an occasion at the end of July in Jakarta when I did that and it was widely publicised in the Australian press—and also privately in conversations with other foreign ministers, including Madeleine Albright, that the most dangerous period in this East Timor process would be the beginning of phase 2, after the result of the ballot was announced. And we have never had any illusions about that.

It is okay to make party political points, and I am not knocking you for that because I accept that is the nature of the system, but I would have thought the fact that the Australian Defence Force was ready for such a contingency—that is, a contingency where it would have to go in as the lead element of a peacekeeping force—was a pretty clear demonstration of the measure of our concern. I remember the newspaper headlines earlier this year, when the brigade was established in Darwin, about Australia getting troops ready for East Timor. Obviously we were concerned that these headlines might not play very well in Jakarta but, nevertheless, that was very much the motive behind the establishment of the brigade, that we would be ready in the event of a contingency.

I also draw the honourable member's attention to the fact that we had in place a very sophisticated and a very successful arrangement to evacuate people from East Timor in the event that the sorts of circumstances that did arise arose. I would have thought just the fact of the readiness of the Australian Defence Force, both in terms of the brigade in Darwin and the contingency plans for evacuation—which, by the way, worked very well—demonstrated the depth of our concern as to how things could change for the worst and what could happen. There are obviously a range of assessments, and the honourable member quotes one, and many others, of one kind or another, have been quoted to me. All I can say is that we now know what happened. We could not precisely predict the future, and no-one ever can, but we did make available and put in place contingencies in case what happened did happen.

When the history of this issue is written, one of the things which people will regard as remarkable will be the speed with which we were able to get this multinational force onto the ground. Member countries of the United Nations have been enormously warm in their congratulations for what Australia has done in putting together that multinational force so quickly. Whatever the debate may be here in Australia, I can assure the House that, out there in the international community, this country has won enormous admiration for what it has done to get that force onto the ground so quickly. I have been told by long-serving Security Council diehards—and the honourable member can check this in New York next week to see if it is right—that the resolution got through the Security Council in record speed. We stayed there, I recall only too clearly, until after 3 a.m. to get that Security Council resolution through.

To get that force onto the ground as quickly as we did demonstrates that (1) we were ready if the worst happened, which it did, and (2) our diplomacy was effective in making sure that a multinational force could be deployed within three weeks.