They move in, slowly, and there’s a sense of expectation, hope and renewal in the air. In a conference room in Dili, East Timor, in May 2008, the crowd has come to hear Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão speak, to stress the importance of an independent public service and to explain measures to combat corruption.
From near the back of the room I watch as the Prime Minister shakes the hand of every person who walks into the room, sometimes clasping their hand with his two hands, sometimes a word here, a thank you there. It’s an extraordinary personal touch, and you can see everyone’s warm response to it. This is what they mean when they talk about political charisma.
Xanana holds the room in his hand. When he rises to speak, a hush descends. At first he speaks softly in that deep honey-toned, thickly accented English, then builds and builds the tempo until he is speaking, with great passion and fire of the need for reform. I am staggered not just by the eloquence but also by the magnetism of the man. He has the audience captivated and, I can tell by their faces, inspired.
Watching in the crowd are former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, special adviser to the Prime Minister, and former Victorian Deputy Premier John Thwaites, who is helping a key minister in the Gusmão government tackle his various portfolios as well as providing training for other ministers in dealing with the media. Both men have seen their share of political speeches. Speaking with Steve and John afterwards, they both agreed it was one of the best they’d ever heard.
After Xanana finishes his speech, he spots me in the crowd, breaks from the circle of people he’s talking to and walks over and embraces me. ‘My friend Mr Mitchell,’ he says in that rich baritone. ‘Welcome to Timor-Leste.’ The whole room stops.
It was a revelation for me to be in East Timor, or Timor-Leste as it’s now called. For the eight years I had known and supported Xanana and his wife Kirsty Sword Gusmão, I had avoided going there, turning down Xanana’s invitations to visit. I had always wondered what purpose my presence would serve. I was sensitive to being made a fuss of, when there was so much to do in rebuilding the country. I would only go if my presence there would be useful. In May 2008 I felt that time had come. I wanted and needed to see the country I felt so strongly about, and to learn what it needed.
It was a deeply enriching trip. There was some feeling of culture shock arriving from such a rich country to one that has seen such oppression, violence and poverty. But my overwhelming emotion was admiration, that the wonderful people I was meeting had prevailed over years of fear and tyranny.
It was a charged time to be in Timor-Leste. Legislative changes were going through parliament to protect the country from corruption. Steve and John had done some great work in advising and guiding the government and helping various ministers with their portfolios. Results were slowly being seen. There was the sense of possibility, and the sense of a good future, of making progress.
Steve Bracks and I were invited to dine with the Prime Minister and Kirsty, who had grown up in Melbourne and Bendigo. As we drove through Dili to the townhouse within a secure compound where they lived, I could see tents pitched in the yards of churches that had once been the target of violent attacks. I looked at the people walking around holding chickens because they were such an important asset.
We watched the beautiful children playing in the street, happy and smiling in spite of the tumult their country had experienced, happy like kids in any other country. There is little to match the uncomplicated joy of these children. Apart from the rewards of finally visiting this beautiful country and meeting some of its people, I felt a huge hope in my heart watching these kids playing. They are, after all, the future of Timor-Leste. And they deserve a great future.
We arrived at the compound where we were welcomed by Xanana and Kirsty. It was a beautiful evening, balmy and still. I was excited to see my friends in their home, to be their guest. The four of us sat on the terrace and had a beautiful Japanese meal. As we dined, a pianist called Antonio Suares, whom less than a year earlier my foundation had helped by buying him a grand piano, serenaded us on an electric piano.
We talked about where East Timor was heading. I realized it was a joy for Xanana to be able to say thank you to some Australians who had helped him. I later found out that Antonio, this brilliant young musician and one his country was very proud of, lived in a tent in the grounds of a church in the main town.
It was one of the greatest dinners of my life.
Xanana has a deep calm and great strength; he is the Nelson Mandela of this region. He has experienced significant periods of solitary confinement in an Indonesian jail for his activities as a freedom fighter and is a man of great humanity. And he appears to have not retained any resentment at all. He said to me: ‘Harold, I say to my people as I say to myself, there is so much that has to be done, we can’t use up any energy on hatred.’ And with that he forgave the Indonesians. That combination of characteristics, as well as his capacity for forgiveness and ability to remain in control under severe provocation, are attributes I very much admire.
Getting to know Xanana has been deeply rewarding. He has the capacity of all charismatic people to make you feel that there might as well be no one else in the room when he speaks to you. But it’s not just his ability to make you feel special that you notice. It’s the kindness in his eyes. If you can tell a lot about people from their eyes, you get a strong idea about this man after five minutes in his company. I have met many politicians and businesspeople who would lay claim to the ability to light up a room. But I have never met anyone who lights up a room so much through modesty and humanity.
Kirsty is a woman of grace and strength. She established the ALOLA Foundation to support woman and families in East Timor, and our family’s foundation supports her work.
My involvement with East Timor began in 2001 when I was president of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. I had always wanted to have the presence of a head of state from a country represented in the festival. After the shocking events during the uprising in East Timor in 1999, festival director Jonathan Mills and general manager Ian Roberts said they wanted to open the Melbourne Festival offshore for the first time, and they had the perfect piece to achieve that. It was a play called Tour of Duty, which recognized the great bonds between the East Timorese and the Australians in World War II.
I jumped at the idea. When the idea was put to him, Xanana Gusmão was strongly in favour and had provided a letter of support. I asked Ian to travel to Timor-Leste to oversee the production and to find out what we could do to help through the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Ian stayed with a local family who lived next door to the Catholic church where two priests had been shot a year earlier. Little geraniums in pots were still there to mark the tragedy.
One evening Ian was talking to the family and asked these beautiful young girls what they liked to do at school. A little girl of about twelve said: ‘We like to play the recorder.’
‘Can you play me something?’ Ian asked.
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘We haven’t got any recorders.’
‘How did you learn to play them?’
‘We played them before our school burned down.’
When Ian told me this, I asked him to buy three hundred recorders and some songbooks, and I would pay for them. We packaged them and shipped them over.
Jonathan Mills suggested we invite Xanana Gusmão to come to Melbourne to open the festival. Being one of those rare politicians who is also an artist—he is a published poet—we invited him, and he agreed. We commissioned him to write a poem, which he would read at the Myer Music Bowl.
Like most great leaders, Xanana has a quiet strength and authority, but what sets him apart is his warmth and compassion. His personal experiences of violence, solitary confinement and systematic brutality have not weakened his spirit or toughened his heart.
We had lunch at Café Centro on the day of Xanana’s reading. That evening, Xanana read his poem, called ‘A Poem for Peace’, in Portuguese, accompanied by three East Timorese singers. It was a powerful moment.
Two years later I was asked to become a governor of the Xanana Education Trust, an Australian volunteer organization dedicated to job training for the Timorese. I jumped at the offer. A few months after I joined, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks hosted a breakfast for the Xanana Trust with Gusmão in attendance. As the business and community leaders had breakfast, a young and very nervous Timorese man, Antonio Suares, was introduced to play the piano. Antonio played a Chopin nocturne beautifully and was warmly applauded. Later in the breakfast Xanana told me that Antonio was possibly the only Timorese studying classical music anywhere in the world, or at least one of the very few.
After the breakfast I met Antonio. He told me that his dream was to finish his studies in Australia and return to Timor-Leste to start the country’s first music school. One of his supporters then took me aside to tell me that there was no piano in East Timor that Antonio could use when he returned to start the school. I was moved by this story and decided on the spot to do something to help. With the advice of the late Australian impresario Clifford Hocking, a piano was selected and shipped to East Timor.
Antonio and the piano are now at St Cecilia’s Church in Dili, and he has realized his dream: he now runs the only music school in Timor Leste. A wonderful choir has been formed, and the joy of music is now a regular part of many people’s lives. During one of the most difficult and dangerous times in the last few years, Antonio and his choir came under sniper attack while rehearsing in church. No one was hurt and they were evacuated but returned when it was safe, and the musical activities continue today.
While it is important that Australia has strong relationships with the world’s superpowers, it is also crucial to be leaders in our region and that neighbouring countries do not look at Australia as a rich, uncaring cousin. It’s our responsibility to help look after less well-off neighbours such as Nauru, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, and we can do that very easily.
Australia owes a debt of gratitude to our neighbours. The story of the ‘fuzzy wuzzy angels’, Papua New Guineans who helped injured Australians down the Kokoda Trail in World War II, is well known. Less well known, sadly, is the story of the ‘criados’, a group of East Timorese who helped Australians in Timor in their battle against the Japanese in World War II. Their support came at a great cost. By the end of the war, as reported in the Age in 2006, between forty thousand and fifty thousand Timorese out of a population of only 650,000 had been killed or starved to death, mostly for helping the Australians. It’s said that no other nation has lost so many civilians as a direct result of helping Australian soldiers.
In 2007, after he had left office as Premier, Steve Bracks asked whether we could meet, and I went to his office in Spring Street. Steve knew about my association with Timor-Leste and wanted to activate a project whereby he would provide advice, pro bono, for the new Prime Minister of Timor-Leste. The main role would be to help structure new laws to combat corruption in the public service. Steve emphasized to me how important this would be.
The Timor-Leste Government had named 2008 the Year of Administrative Reform. Steve wondered whether the Mitchell family would be interested in helping fund costs associated with travel and accommodation.
‘Will this project cost around $500,000?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I will pay.’
I think Steve was slightly taken aback by how quickly I agreed.
It turned out to be the best $500,000 I have ever spent. The money has helped Steve and his former deputy John Thwaites to mentor and advise the Gusmão Government. Steve’s role has largely been focused on working to help reform the public service, to ensure that it’s clean. He has helped to set up an anti-corruption body. Under the Indonesians the public service of East Timor was made up of people paid to keep their heads down and not challenge the authority of the Indonesians. They were known as the 9–5 Brigade, people who didn’t do too much work.
John has travelled regularly to Timor-Leste to provide mentoring to the Minister for Infrastructure, whose portfolio includes responsibility for roads, water, sanitation, ports, aviation, communications, public works and electricity. So much infrastructure was destroyed during the fighting in 1999 after the vote for independence. Buildings were burned, power lines pulled down, and water supplies damaged. Most people outside the cities in Timor-Leste do not have access to clean water and sanitation. Children die of diarrhoea and malnutrition because of polluted water. Forty per cent of schools in the country have no water, so girls won’t go to school because there’s no toilet. It’s critical that these problems are addressed.
On the trip in May 2008 John recorded our trip and produced a short film called Something Worth Doing: Steve Bracks and Harold Mitchell in Timor-Leste. It captures some remarkable moments: John telling a group of ministers how inexperienced he and his fellow ministers were when they became government in 1999; Steve advising a group on how to talk to the media. It has been a privilege to witness such passionate men sharing their knowledge and skills.
The day after our dinner with Xanana and Kirsty, Kirsty and I visited a school she had been helping redevelop. The children were gathered to say hello, then they sang to us in four languages.
I asked them whether they knew ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’. They didn’t. So the visitor from Australia taught them. I sang it once through, and they listened carefully. Then, to my surprise and delight, they sang it back to me. It was a beautiful moment that I will never forget.