Thanks Mark

You have perfectly captured the extraordinary condescension and derision with which Australia treats her pacific neighbours during your recent East Timor interviews. Well done for being so Honest, matey. Good on them for keeping an Open Market military mentality. Good on them for shopping with China. That tells everyone in clear terms what their relationship with us is like. Their's is a COUNTRY, Mark.....a Sovereign State. Not some Australian Federal Police parade ground. They do not OWE us.

Timor Leste

Having worked with some of the folk in East Timor they would be far better served developing baseline education for their people. A question that needs to be asked is why invest in maritime defence? Surely any military threat would come by land and secondly why is China interested in this sort of investment in the region? Perhaps access to the gas reserves might have something to do with it....

patrol boat

well, oil is one of the reason for the Chinese, but apart from that they also have intention to expand their population in order to reduce poverty in China. There are thousands of Chinese immigrants (not chinese Timorese) in EAst Timor and they all over the place most of them illegal, and they cannot be deported because Timorese government think that they owed the Chinese government generosity. Here you see the Chinese are very smart . I doubt that the two boat patrols quality.

Context - DMO & Ausaid

Hi Mark, nice report. With the East Timor situation and China's comparative in context you could do a follow up and examine the performance of AusAID and Defence. I actually feel sorry for the new Ambassador, considering he's just arrived. There is a much wider problem: getting other parts of our government that have a REAL impact on our foreign relations to pull their weight. Some tight journalism could spur some accountability that Foreign Affairs could never achieve on its own.

Wrong assumptions

The discourse of this video makes the assumption that Timor-Leste and Australia are friends and allies and always have been. Not so. For 25 years Australia tried to frustrate Timor-Leste's entry into the world community as an independent nation, while the Chinese gave it support from the sidelines, modest, such as a typewriter for Jose Ramos Horta's New York office etc, but Australia made the occupiers life easier for them. Similarly Australia's claim on Timor's oil reserves was a foolish act.

China outmanouvers us dummies !

Australia ought to co-operate in a far more pro-active way with East Timor's Gov't; Mark's report rang more than a few alarm bells for me; who really gains in the present arrangement? And, is the G'llarh in the Lodge at all interested in anything but her own political survival ? It's almost as if Canberra is saying We'll ignore your needs because you won't solve our refugee fiasco ! ( Perhaps Mark could grill Defence Minister Smith ?)

John of Burwood. 2nd comment.

Hi John. Interested. Could you email me directly? Thanks. Mark Davis. mark.davis@sbs.com.au

And what is the crap about people smuggling

Asylum seekers have the right to come and ask for protection, that has nothing to do with people smuggling and it never did. Are you cretins in the media or just so brainwashed you believe your own rubbish. Besides all that only one asylum seeker ever arrived in East Timor, he was an Afghan and we took him