The big leak

Jemima Garrett

Sydney

Pacific Island leaders have every right to be angry with the now infamous leak of the Australian government’s briefing paper for the Forum Economic Minister’s Meeting, held in Cairns recently.

A series of blunders, any one of which was enough to cause a departmental inquiry, resulted in highly sensitive material being picked up by a journalist who found it at the reception desk and initially thought it was a media briefing.

It started when the document was first put together. Like all briefing documents for meetings of this sort, it was classified AUSTEO (Australian Eyes Only), a confidential classification which means all copies must be carefully accounted for.

These documents are intended to give frank advice but because such documents can go astray they generally contain only infor mation on Australia’s objectives and negotiating tactics. The even more sensitive material - biographies of individuals or other sen sitive assessments that it may be necessary to communicate to ministers - is usually given an even more restrictive classification such as “secret” or “top secret”, which requires security measures which make inadvertent leaking of the material almost impossible.

For some inexplicable reason, in this case. Treasury officials (most of whom are not used to dealing with highly classified mate rial), decided to include that very sensitive information in the main brief. But for ordinary Australians, like this correspondent, it is not the leaking of the document that is the cause of most anger and embarrassment, it is what that leak revealed about the quality of Australian intelligence reports on the Pacific.

The most damaging material in the document - material which explored the drinking habits of island leaders and made often dis paraging or downright defamatory assessments of their honesty or competence - was put together by the Office of National Assessments (ONA), an elite group of intelligence analysts with in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Although it drew on material from other sources, including Australia’s diplo matic missions, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Treasury, and AusAID, it was ONA that made the assessments.

And when scrutinised, what woeful assessments some of them were: florid language, such as the description of one minister as "lickspittle” of his prime minister; gratuitous comments about leaders’ drinking habits which had no bearing on their ability to do their job; and overly harsh and patronising descriptions of other' ministers who are justifiably respected throughout the region.

Even more worrying was the simplistic division of countries into goodies and badies. Those countries which came in for severe criticism for their recent economic management seem, according to ONA, to never have done anything right while others, which are in ONA’s good books, have a history to be proud of.

These assessments, written in the sort of cowboy language ONA favours as a way of getting its documents noticed amid the deluge of paper which crosses ministers’ desks, were, as Fiji’s Foreign Minister Berenado Vunibobo rightly pointed out, so bad as to be racist.

And, it was the very sensationalism which was their downfall as assessments, which turned them into sensational newspaper headlines and did most damage to the international reputation of the Pacific nations. It is here where the Howard government could have taken stronger action to end the controversy.

Instead of simply announcing an inquiry into the circumstances of the leak and weakly denying the assessment was a reflection of the government’s view, it should have immediately made a state ment clearly and unambiguously repudiating the florid language and unprofessional nature of the work.

With so many government organisations having had a hand in the briefing paper, that would certainly have helped people within those organisations who were as appalled as anyone over the con tents of the document. One of the biggest tragedies of this whole sorry mess is that the fuss over the contents of the Australian brief ing paper has completely obscured the very significant achieve ments of the Caims meeting. The finance ministers agreed to a 26point action plan which will significantly advance the sort of eco nomic reform that will make the region attractive to investors and keep it in step with other crucial groupings such as APEC.

Despite the fear expressed in the Australian briefing paper that Treasurer Peter Costello would have to cajole or even ‘gag’ some Pacific ministers to make progress, it seems much of the running was actually made by the islanders. With such hurtful and person al insults made against key leaders in the region, there is no doubt that the fallout from this debacle will continue to damage Australia’s relations with the region for a long time.

That damage will be prolonged and accentuated if Australia continues to use the sort of strong arm tactics it used on Fiji to make it back away from lodging a formal protest over the docu ment. Such was Australia’s paranoia about the document that it leant heavily on Fiji, using Fiji’s desire for readmission to the Commonwealth and its awareness of Australia’s pivotal role in convincing India not to exercise its veto right, to kill off Fiji’s protest.

Denying Fiji its right to express its anger will not change Fiji’s opinion. It merely demonstrates that some in the department of Foreign Affairs have still not leamt that taking a high-handed atti tude is not the way to do business in the Pacific.

Each Australian official and politician will have to go back to square one and demonstrate that their knowledge of the region is real and that commitment genuine.

Before he attends the South Pacific Forum in the Cook Islands next month. Prime Minister John Howard would do well to work out a strategy for making amends and for keeping the more sala cious of the Australian media pack from turning the summit into another opportunity to repeat the allegations in the notorious doc ument. ■