Kernot's ex chequered path to the chancellor

STUDENTS at the Australian National University can next year look forward to some fascinating tutorials with their new chancellor, the former attorney-general and former foreign minister Gareth Evans.

Succeeding Kim Beazley, now off as our ambassador to Washington, Evans is eminently qualified to offer instruction in how to mislead parliament, followed by instruction in how to sell-out groups seeking freedom movements and well placed to offer tips on how to ride the international post-politics gravy train. He could start with a light anecdote about his acquisition of the nickname "Biggles" in April, 1983, after authorising spy flights by an F-111 jet and a Mirage over the Franklin River Dam in the Hawke government's effort to prove the Tasmanian government was not complying with a federal government order to stop work on the controversial project. His plea of the "streaker's defence" that it "seemed like a good idea at the time", should go down well with the undergraduates. A first-person account of his five-year affair with former Democrats head Cheryl Kernot, whom he lured across to the ALP, would also titillate, especially when he explains why he told parliament in March, 1988, that allegations about his conduct were "totally baseless, beneath contempt, and a disgraceful abuse of parliamentary privilege". They were not, of course. As Evans confessed in a note from Europe in July, 2002: "I deeply regret all the hurt my actions have caused, above all to my own family. It was precisely to avoid that and protect my marriage that I said what I did in Parliament." Students might also like to quiz Evans on the subject of Indonesia's annexation of East Timor, which Labor in Opposition had strongly condemned "in the strongest terms" including calling for the suspension of all defence aid to Indonesia. That position was dumped when Labor came to power, however, and sent a parliamentary delegation on a "fact-finding tour" of East Timor. During the tour, Fretilin representatives tried to make contact with delegates but were rebuffed. They were later captured and killed by the Indonesian military. The report of the delegation concluded that the Indonesian government was acting in good faith. Evans, as foreign minister, signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia's foreign minister Ali Alatas in December 1989, ensuring that Australia and Indonesia would share East Timor's oil, while the Indonesian army continued to occupy East Timor. The following year he dismissed concerns about Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor, saying: "What I can say is simply that the world is a pretty unfair place, that it's littered over the course of the decades and the centuries with examples of acquisitions by force which have proved to be, for whatever reason, irreversible." Nine months before the infamous 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, Evans had stated that East Timor's "human rights situation has, in our judgment, greatly improved under the present military arrangements". When news of the massacre broke, it was, Evans said: "An aberration, not an act of state policy." The Indonesian government said the dead civilians had been responsible for provoking the military into firing on them.