Secrets, Spies and Trials: National security vs the public's right to know | Four Corners 

victor nderu I am sorry our government are so twisted and sick. God Bless to you and your family. They are out of control in a greed fed frenzy.

victor nderu perhaps we can give them Downer and Gillard as a a downer payment

Under the current deal of Timor getting 15% of the revenue from the Gas drilling, its enough to make every citizen of East Timor a multi millionaire. So I guess we will wait and watch now whilst the communist supported Fretlin party squander the money and make themselves rich and keep the poorest country in the world, poorer. That will be the true test to see if Horta and other frauds actually do believe in the ideologies they push.

Jasbad Sirron cheers.. I was not aware of this. It seems the Marxist rev is certainly getting about.. I’m sure we are getting ripped off, and the Constitutional monarchy known as a ‘commonwealth ‘ we live in constrains the wealth to the ‘not so common’👍

@@offgridjohn871 Gillard .....? Do you really think the liberals would want the opposition to know about these criminal dealings ... when the liberals commit these crimes. why do people always throw labour into that mix.?

Would have been John Howard

Hi MrLunithy, can you please explain what you mean here? It's sounds interesting, but I'm also slightly confused, lol

Useful Revolution I got no idea what he’s saying as well lol

@@UsefulRevolution As you should be..... they didn't advertise the fact it came from Timor oil reserve.

@@darthwookiee77 Power stations dont run on air mate.

MrLunithy yes they do. Solar and wind is the conversion model for the generating stations that still exist. Most of the coal fired plants have been shut down. They are only used for truly unsustainable cities who have no infrastructure for self reliance and must gorge from the planet and disrupt its inhabitants so you can watch tv porn and violent movies in the comfort of climate control. You couldn’t survive on your own.

Really??

@@garym7989 yes, your forgetting govt is there to serve the ppl, not be greedy for their own interests and exploit another poor country.

The program explained, correctly, that Timor-Leste was just emerging from a 24-year genocidal Indonesian operation, was extremely poor and had very few resources at the time of the operation. Just months before Timor-Leste gained independence in 2002, the Australian government withdrew from the maritime boundary jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. This withdrawal prevented Timor-Leste from asserting its rights under international law to a maritime boundary halfway between it and Australia. Timor-Leste needed immediate access to an oil and gas filed 135 nautical miles off its south coast. But the Australian government was denying it access in order to force it to surrender the much larger Sunrise and Troubadour gas fields (together called Greater Sunrise). The government turned to ASIS, its intelligence espionage agency tasked with collecting intelligence outside Australia. ASIS used the cover of an aid project to install listening devices in Timor-Leste’s ministerial offices. The operation gave Australia secret access to Timor-Leste’s internal deliberations and negotiating positions. Four Corners covered this aspect of the story - how the espionage operation targeted a poor, defenceless country. But it left out a crucial element: the operation drew precious intelligence resources away from the war on terror, just as the Australian government was assuring parliament and the public that it was doing everything possible to keep Australians safe. On September 9, 2004, a car bomb targeted the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Just under a dozen people were killed, including an embassy security guard, four Indonesian policemen, the gardener, a visa applicant and some others. The group known as Jemaah Islamiyah claimed responsibility. A few months before, the Australian government had released its white paper on terrorism. It identified “extremist Muslim” terrorism as a focus more than 50 times, and Indonesia was said to be central to Australia’s counter-terror strategy, receiving a hundred mentions in the space of 110 pages. ASIS was to be a vital pillar of the counter-terror strategy. It would have an obvious role in gaining intelligence about “extremist” terror groups. And yet, despite all the anti-terror rhetoric, valuable ASIS resources were being deployed away from it's mission. Four Corners left out another important aspect: the use of ASIS for commercial purposes was just one element of a much larger use of state assets for corporate wealth. From 1970 onwards, what is now the government agency Geoscience Australia conducted scientific surveys of Australia’s undersea geology, and then handed over this publicly-funded information to petroleum companies for almost nothing. In 1988, Treasury, with the support of the Department of Finance, objected to such valuable information being given away to private interests, urging “a much more substantial level of cost recovery”. But the Department of Foreign Affairs insisted the “national interest” required taxpayers fund the costs and - crucially, the risks - of investment in fundamental research, while the corporate sector benefited from the energy riches in the continental shelf. On September 4, 1984, West Australian premier Brian Burke formally opened the $27 billion North West Shelf Gas Project, which was operated by a then little-known company called Woodside Petroleum. It began exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 1989. The project has today become one of the largest LNG producers in the world and Woodside has become Australia’s largest standalone oil and gas company, and one of the top 20 stocks in the ASX by market capitalisation. The Australian government has seemingly deployed the full weight of its diplomatic, legal and scientific assets over decades to secure massive benefits for Woodside’s shareholders. In return, according to Woodside’s own calculations in February 2017, governments have received approximately $26 billion in royalties, excise and taxes from the North West Shelf Project since it began in 1984. Australia’s shame: Witness K punished for his service, while the guilty go free Other governments have taken a different approach: the Norwegian government is the largest shareholder in Statoil, its state oil company. Statoil’s workers elect several of the company directors, and its shareholder meetings are open to the public, as are its financial statements. The Norwegian government created the “Oljefondet” or "Oil Fund" in 1990 to invest Norway’s oil revenue. The fund had US$1 trillion (more than A$1.2 trillion) in December 2017. In Australia, the “national interest” has instead amounted to the socialisation of costs and risks, and the privatisation of profits, with taxpayers getting a trickle of revenue in return.

Dursun Sahin true journalism deserves thumbs up no matter where it’s found

Sovereign nations of the world spy ..bullying.. ripping off each other all the time.. get used to it.. because we as a species of humanity choose to live as patriotism flags and sovereignty ideology.. hmmmm... Some greeny politician should catch a fixed wing helicopter flight to see that Timor sea... It is polluted by oil exploration, extractions in a bad way..😑

It's beyond most people's imagination

Starzi police are on the loose.

the one you voted for

@@robert23456789 personally I've never voted, not once

Dutton's Army

Annette Sleeping-Bear right but they expose the corrupt Governments- which the people in power don’t like. They like to be able to do their illegal activities undetected

Samantha Puntis US CITIZEN we had our own Gov fly planes ✈️ into twin towers there’s just six filthy rat families that run the globe welcome to the great awakening

Annette Sleeping-Bear They are quite dangerous and can act as a double edge sword. Sometimes I can agree with you within limits. The worse betrayal is one from the inside

good luck. no passion in australians to protest anything

Absolutely

@@ThePhreshdogMore interested in complaining about the Chinese in HK and Australia than they are in their own back yard. Fools. Whipped up by fear and misinformation only Australians have no idea of what's going on.

stop voting fucking morons then you wouldn't get this

no wonder Australia gets on so well with Communist-red-china

Callum Gillman , You might want to check with Shell Oil company. If you didn’t know how America got involved with Vietnam War, it started with Shell Petrochemical Company which is owned by an Australian company. Australians found the weakness in American Oil companies and they sold this idea to Americans that’s how US got into Vietnam. It wasn’t to stop the communist or help the South Vietnamese.

@@SirFoodie1904 What absolute bullshit. Shell is owned by Royal Dutch Shell, based out of the Netherlands, which is itself of British and Dutch origins.

In the US, Thomas Jefferson in his old age, 1830's, said, "To protect the fundamentals of freedom, it appears that a Bloody revolution is requireded every 20 years". He said this after watching, (I think) from about 1810, onward an increasing corruption develope. PUT SIMPLY: You have to simply Kill corrupt officials. They have made the law, Lawless, everywhere. You need to figure how to do it so as not to be seen and caght, unless the entire society goes after these Bastards. If you want freedonm, kill them. The US revolution was based on 1 verse in Romans: Obey they government, AS LONG AS IT DOES WELL. (KJV) After constant abuses, you have the moral, God allowed, right to rebel. DO IT.

@@SirFoodie1904 no the war wasn't about shell. it is bigger then that!.

We don't have a choice, Indonesia controls the sealanes to important trading partners to our north. If we anger them, and they decide to mess with trade going to and from our continent, we'd be on the verge of collapse.

@@rakatumu Your argument is shown to be false by the fact that we were the leaders of INTERFET in Timor Leste in 1999. Indonesia was dragged to conciliation kicking and screaming about our involvement. There was no long term effect to the bi-lateral relationship.

@@rakatumu That's a good excuse. I wonder if the Chinese government will say the same thing about there military base in the South China Sea. We Australian can do better.

Speaking about West papua? Truth is, maybe Indonesia need to help Aborigins, Indonesia's and Timor Leste's REAL neighbour!

@@rpesik You're correct about the treatment of Australian Aboriginals. How is that an excuse for Indonesia to do worse in the 21st Century to a people it has colonized?

enjoy what you keep on voting for

robert23456789 you say that like there's an alternative on the ballot. Look at the state of the media today and tell me how you can have a democracy with such an uninformed populace.

@@ConstableRinkels prepare your head cause am going to blow it with a idea i bet you have never heard of before TRY FUKCING TELLING THEM like you have all these people saying people don't know ok get together and go in teams of 200 per area work 24/7 to inform people even if you those 200 can talk with lets say 40 people in a day ........ oh wait the people who complain about this don't want to tell people so they can carry on complaining about it

Governments no longer serve anyone but their friends with the money. oh, hang on, all sitting officials have lots of money

@@phillipkennedy3444 hey dumbass if people put their money together to change things that a lot of money as well but let's all amit people dont really what change and will attack all those who do

RF monkey -Well, that depends on how fearful and disconnected from politics your are. Try Canada, New Zealand, UK, Swiss; all very good in their own way.

@@antonysmyth2464 Not New Zealand...do you not know how their government deceived their citizens with their unconscionable signing of the UN Migration Pact? New Zealand Canada (same insanity ) and the UK are done and were not looking good with our mass immigration hurting our young Australian born citizens. We need someone like President Trump to save our country.

Antony Smyth UK a democracy? Lol they're worse than us. You have UK intelliegice running psyop campaigns against the opposition party... Hijacking an Iranian oil taker in international waters... Rampant privatisation and wealth concentration in the hands of the elite while the working class falls into poverty... 1 in 4 children are in poverty... illegally imprisoned Julian Assange for 7 years... There are thousands of examples I can list for the UK before I even get into those others you listed. To give you a start CANADA - the worst concentration of media ownership in the world... Genocides it's indigenous population and continues to steal and destroy their land with oil sands and pipelines while we look into the face of extinction.... NEW ZEALAND - the The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in which 90 percent of the population was against and serves only to harm the working class an enrich transnational corporations, hardly a progressive policy, Jacinda.

marie cameron - Hmmm, can’t agree with that. Lies, cheats, insults, to name but a few features, can’t keep good people. Not the type of person I would like as a political leader in Australia.

Democracy itself is a farce. It is being ruled over by unknown powers rather than actually having someone accountable .

me too... that was excellent wordage...

Hope he survives.

Albert Xavier True, however, Take note, America, Nothing can compete with ultra-rich who practice Surveillance Upon on their customers and pays no taxes.

Too many people absorbed by the Kardashians and iPhone apps. And you've seen what happens when people protest on the streets these days...?

Aust only have a conscience when it suits them or suits their purpose

Maybe they're concerned about the recent NSW supreme court ruling that media outlets are responsible for comments made on their youtube channel, facebook page etc.. ie. they could be liable for any defamatory comments. Maybe it was done in error. You should ask the ABC why they deleted the comments before rushing to call them a joke and trotting out the usual tired news corp talking points.

Australian Contractors are guaranteed to do a shit arse job, they are paid up front and simply dont give a fuck because nobody is going to take them to task for the services provided. In all of Australia's history nobody has ever been taken to task for wasting Tax Payers money, when the Tax Payer is forking out the Contractors see it as Free Money

Because the welfare gravy train at the ABC is dependant on shilling for the lnp

Because the corporate media run the liberal government.. it's quid pro quo arrangement. They fan the positives and cover the negatives for the government and they fan the negatives and cover the positives with labour.

No excuse really...this current government had been caught out over many scandals before the election, the mismanagement of water, favouritism from Dutton in handing out visas, the robo-debt fiasco, etc, etc. This is just another one of those scandals but voters turn a blind eye to this sort of thing, franking credits and a couple of hundred jobs at a dodgy coal mine take priority, not a poor country battling to stand on its own.

I hope you're not expecting anything better from Labor. They went along for the ride because Howard wedged them in the early 2000s. They either fell into line with LNP policy or stood accused of being "soft on terrorists".

There is no national security when the New World Order runs everything behind the scenes. ~( ,m,)~

Don't forget our universities, and may as well throw politics in there too considering all the "donations" from suspect origins.

CENSORSHIP!

@MrAubery Generally the ABC RU-vid channel let's any comments go. This is the only one ever I've seen have comments disappear. And it appears that's just because they've split one RU-vid channel into two

A BILL OF RIGHTS, WITH NO MORAL MEN IS WORTHLESS, LOOK AT THE US. National security at the expense of those they claim to "protect" is NO Security. Truth should always be given latitude. In the US, Thomas Jefferson in his old age, 1830's, said, "To protect the fundamentals of freedom, it appears that a Bloody revolution is required every 20 years". He must have been profoundly discouraged. He said this after watching, (I think) from about 1810 onward, an increasing corruption develop. PUT SIMPLY: You have to simply Kill corrupt officials. They have made the law, Lawless, everywhere. You need to figure how to do it so as not to be seen and caught (defending people, killing evil politicians/bureaucrats & against corrupt gov.'s is not illegal in Common Law), untill the entire society goes after these EVIL Bastards. If you want freedom, kill them. The US revolution was based on 1 verse in Romans: Obey the government, AS LONG AS IT DOES WELL. (KJV) [TEAR IT DOWN WITH GOD'S BLESSING, OTHERWISE.] After constant abuses, you have the moral, God allowed, right to rebel. DO IT.

China.