Gough Whitlam was a giant but Timor is a shameful blindspot

My weekly Guardian column: After yesterday’s state memorial service, the beatification of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is complete. His domestic policies were rightly praised for dragging the country into a more enlightened age (although the project is far from complete) but since his death in October there’s been curiously little written about his foreign…

Being opposed to Australia dumping refugees in East Timor

We don’t want to be a post-colonial power (more than we are already): Refugee groups have called on the Australian government to scrap its proposal to build a “regional processing centre” in Timor-Leste. “The regional processing centre proposal was always about Australia avoiding its obligations to asylum seekers under the Refugee Convention,” said Ian Rintoul,…

Standing up for a defamed reporter

I was recently asked to sign a petition regarding the case against East Timorese journalist Jose Belo: More than 80 prominent Australian, New Zealand and Pacific reporters, editors and media academics have protested over the controversial criminal defamation case against East Timorese journalist Jose Belo. Chief editor Belo has been charged followed publication of an…