Book Review: Balibo

By Jill Joliffe
Published by Scribe Publications
Reviewed by Dan O’Gorman SC

On 16 October 1975, five television reporters working for Australian media, Gary Cunningham, Greg Shackleton and Tony Stuart of Channel 7 and Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie of Channel 9,  were killed in cold-blood by the Indonesian military as they filmed the Indonesian infantry advancing into the Portuguese Timor boarder town of Balibo.  A few months later, Roger East, a freelance journalist who went to investigate the fate of these television reporters, was also executed by the Indonesian military.

The author, Jill Joliffe, describes in some detail how and why these journalists had gone to East Timor in the face of attempts by the Australian government to prevent them from doing so through a ban on transport from Darwin to Dili.  She describes how the journalists wanted to report Indonesian regular forces crossing illegally into East Timor from the Indonesian half of the island, and in so doing, the journalists wanted to counter Indonesian propaganda to the effect that this border activity was an extension of the Timorese civil war which had flared in August 1975, propaganda which, with few exceptions, was uncritically accepted by the world press.

Joliffe argues that the stories and film in these reporters’ notebooks and cameras could have changed the course of history. She also contends that these stories and film were also the principal reason they died as they provided the first indisputable evidence of a massive presence of Indonesian regular troops inside the Portuguese colony of  East Timor.

Joliffe submits that the Australian Government and its Western allies were aware of the circumstances of the cold-blooded killings of the “Balibo Five” by the Indonesian military shortly after they took place and that the cover-up by the Australian Government of those details was an important factor in Indonesia’s decision to continue its invasion and occupation of East Timor.  She also argues that these killings by the Indonesian military and their cover-up in Australia are as much an indictment of the killers as they are of Australia’s role in East Timor’s relatively recent tragic history.  She is critical of the Australian Government on the grounds that while the circumstances surrounding these deaths were known to the Australian Government shortly after the journalists died, they were suppressed for 32 years until the 2007 coroner’s inquest into the death of Brian Peters held in the Glebe court in Sydney which finally revealed what Joliffe describes as long-festering secrets kept by politicians and spies since 1975. 

This publication, which had its foundations in the author’s 2001 book “Cover-Up; the inside story of the Balibo Five”, and on which the film “Balibo” is based, graphically argues and highlights what the author refers to as a shameful episode in Australia’s history. 

While the author also covers many issues not directly relevant to the killing of the journalists and their subsequent cover-up, this is a very well written work.  In giving her account of these events, the author calls upon her 30 years of personal investigations and research into these issues and she relies upon both previously hidden material and material presented to the 2007 Glebe Inquest.

Joliffe does not attempt to disguise her personal involvement, and very keen interest, in this topic and she is very emotive at times.  However, this does not detract from the fact that this is a well argued publication that provides the author’s account of these tragic events that remain topical even 34 years after they took place, events that arguable constitute an unfortunate chapter in Australia’s political history.

Dan O’Gorman SC