S2 Ep3: Doing Business in Timor-Leste

Escape, Exile and the Return to Build Timor-Leste - José Teixeira

Disclaimer: this podcast is a personal project. It makes no money, and I produce it in my own time, because I believe Timor-Leste is full of stories that deserve to be told. The views expressed by my guests are their own, and I don't necessarily endorse them. Any views I express are mine alone, and don't represent my employer or any organisation I work with in Timor-Leste.

In September 1975, a young José Teixeira boarded a cargo ship in Dili Harbour with his family, fleeing civil war for Australia. Twenty-four years later he came home — first as a spokesperson for the independence cause, then as a director in the UN transitional administration, and at midnight on 20 May 2002, as a minister in the first government of a brand-new nation.

In this conversation, José tells the whole story: growing up under Portuguese rule in a family of resistance figures, assimilating in multicultural Cabramatta, Queensland Labor politics and law, and the phone call that brought him back. We cover the work he's proudest of; leading the drafting of the Petroleum Fund Law, passed unanimously in 2005 and now holding $18 billion, along with his time in Parliament during the 2006–2008 crisis, and building Da Silva Teixeira & Associados into one of Timor-Leste's leading law firms. We finish on the practical stuff investors ask about most: surface rights versus leases, land titling, ASEAN 2029, and where the momentum is right now.

In this episode:

• Fleeing Dili on the Lloyd Bakke, and radio messages from an uncle in the resistance

• Cabramatta, 64 nationalities at one school, and choosing rugby over soccer

• Pizza Hut by night, law degree by day, and losing a Labor pre-selection by a whisker

• The 1999 ballot: staying in Australia as the CNRT's voice in Queensland media

• Working under the UN's "mutatis mutandis" approach to a country with no legal framework

• Drafting the Petroleum Fund Law — consultation in every municipality, passed unanimously

• Mistakenly "arrested" by hooded police during the 2008 state of siege

• The Chin Human Rights Organisation case: universal jurisdiction and a signal to Myanmar

• Surface rights explained: why a right in rem beats a 50-year lease for bankability

• NUIP numbers and doing land due diligence properly

• ASEAN 2029, and where he sees momentum: telecoms, tourism, livestock

• Optimism for a new generation of Timorese leaders and entrepreneurs

About the guest:

José Teixeira is a partner at Da Silva Teixeira & Associados, one of Timor-Leste's leading law firms. A lawyer trained and admitted in Australia, he served in Timor-Leste's first government from 2002 to 2007 — including as Vice-Minister for Natural Resources, Minerals and Energy Policy, where he led the drafting of the Petroleum Fund Law, the Petroleum Activities Law and the petroleum tax law, and as a Member of the National Parliament from 2007 to 2012. In private practice since 2013, he advises on everything from major energy procurements and international arbitration to land, investment and litigation, and is an accredited mediator with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Links:

• Da Silva Teixeira & Associados: https://www.dasilva.tl/en

• José's profile: https://www.dasilva.tl/en/team/go/jose-teixeira

• José on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josé-teixeira-622a167/

Transcript: *Disclaimer - this transcript is auto generated and may have some errors

Steve Pocock: Welcome to the Steve Pocock Podcast. This series is about doing business in Timor-Leste. My guest today is José Teixeira. José has a phenomenal story to share, and his role in the development of Timor-Leste is undeniable. He was a key architect of the Petroleum Fund, the sovereign wealth fund set up in the 2000s to ensure sustained benefits from Timor-Leste's resource wealth. He served in government and then he served in parliament before entering private practice at Da Silva Teixeira & Associados. There he advises on everything from local disputes to the largest foreign investments in the country. In this episode, José shares his story from leaving Dili with his family as refugees, growing up in Cabramatta in Western Sydney, to then becoming a lawyer in Australia and then returning home to help build the new nation of Timor-Leste. We also talk about the current state of business and investment in Timor-Leste and hear José's views on what the future holds. All right, let's get into it. José, thanks so much for joining me.

José Teixeira: You're very welcome.

Steve: José, I'm going to dive straight into it. This podcast is about doing business in Timor-Leste, but I want to get to know the man first. And I wanted to ask: what experience in your life would you say has shaped you the most?

José: The civil war, when I was only a child here, prior to leaving and taking refuge in Australia, probably impacted me the most. Many, many things — not just the trauma of it. Learning to confront fairly violent and aggressive situations — after years of counselling, you end up using that as a bit of a tool. So that created a sense of resilience in my character.

The other thing was definitely growing up in a place like Cabramatta in Australia. It was extremely multicultural — 64 different nationalities at the one school, most with very similar experiences to our own: having to leave your country of birth, go into a new country and restart your lives. That was highly impactful in how I looked at the world — that the world was indeed not only a pretty big place, but a pretty diverse place. I learned from a lot of folk what intolerance looked like, but I also learned from many, many more what the beauty and the positiveness of diversity is. Those were two very, very impactful things for me.

And I can't deny that being involved in politics in Australia — in the Australian Labor Party, the Queensland branch — and practising law at the same time prior to coming back to Timor, there's a lot I learned from being involved in those two arenas. I've had the benefit of some great mentors, both in the legal sector and among the politicians I worked for in Australia. Some are still alive, some have passed now, but everybody I came across left a mark on me.

Steve: Huge. And I want to touch on all of these points in the conversation. So can we go back to your early childhood, growing up here in Timor? What was that like? And you talk about the trauma you experienced — at what point did the trouble start to emerge?

José: I guess the most traumatic thing was that we were living an idyllic life in an island paradise. We weren't the poorest of people socioeconomically, but we certainly didn't live as well as, say, the Timorese social elite — some of the families that are still around today. You always knew you were not quite the bottom of the rung, but somewhere in the middle. And we had a very idyllic life. We were always out swimming on the beach. We were out hunting doves — which is ironic given my passion for birding over the last 40 years. Even where we are now, [VENUE NAME — see notes], I used to come fishing for eel. It was good.

I went to a Catholic school for my first four years of schooling — a Canossian Sisters school, where we were taught in Portuguese — but outside of school we were speaking and communicating with most people in Tetun. Then I went into middle school, which is when the civil war, or the civil conflict, began to emerge.

My family on my mother's side — including my father, who was Portuguese, not Timorese; my mother is Timorese — were all fairly involved politically, and were already people who didn't like the Salazar dictatorship and the Caetano dictatorship that followed. I have very clear, vivid memories that my father was not the favourite person of the PIDE, the Portuguese internal police and security service that would take people off the streets and ask questions. My mother's oldest brother, my godfather, became the first Secretary-General of Fretilin, and afterwards, when Fretilin did the counter-coup, he was for a brief period of time the first commander of Falintil. So I grew up around that environment — knowing a little bit that we were living in a society where there were people that governed over us and we were the governed, and maybe a little bit of a feeling that things weren't right.

One of the greater influences I had, even though I was only 10, 11 years old at the time, was actually a Jesuit priest, a man by the name of Father [NAME — see notes], who was quite radical. I understand many years later he left the Catholic Church and is living in Portugal running an alternative school. But he used to tell us as boys sitting in the classroom things like: you are Timorese, this is your land, I am a visitor here. They were really impactful things that I remember.

Steve: For any international audience members who don't understand the history of Timor — you grew up when Timor was a Portuguese colony. And you were part of a family that was quite politically engaged and active, and later came to serve under prominent Timorese political parties?

José: Going right back to 1912, my great uncle is Dom Boaventura. We call him great grandfather, but he was a great uncle. He and his brothers — one of whom is my great grandfather — were all involved in the 1912 rebellion. So the history goes back quite a bit. And it was a colonial administration that was authoritarian. There were books you could not read. There were things you couldn't talk about. I've compared it with other regimes — I met people in Australia who lived under the Chilean regime, and in Romania, places like that. It wasn't that bad, but it was subtle. That was also because Timor was a small place, and there wasn't guerrilla warfare going on here like there was in the other colonies.

Steve: So how did you experience it as a kid when the transition happened? Timor-Leste got its independence for a very short period, and then the Indonesians occupied. How did that all play out?

José: Well, I wasn't here when that happened. There was the coup, which resulted from internal disagreements between Fretilin and UDT and other parties — UDT undertook a military coup on the 11th of August. Fretilin organised itself, because it had the support of the Timorese militia and the Timorese army; they got weapons and did a counter-coup on the 21st of September. So round about the 24th, 25th of September, we were already on a boat. It was a Danish cargo ship that was passing by Dili Harbour, and a mayday call was made. We had been refuged in the Dili Port — which is now being turned into a convention centre. There were about 1,000 to 1,500 people there, basically trying to avoid being caught up by either of the combating sides.

It was a deliberate decision on our family's side. My uncle, who was involved in the counter-coup, was out there doing his thing. My father, who was Portuguese — although sympathetic — was told: your role is to look after the family. They were conscious that the Indonesians were going to invade, so the discussion was: get them out. And we were lucky enough that we went on a vessel called — I had the name of the vessel, I've just forgotten it — the Lloyd Bakke, that was it. We managed to get our immigration entry cards into Australia, and we arrived in Darwin on the 27th of September. That's 1975. By the time Indonesia invaded, on the 7th of December, we were already ensconced in a migrant hostel in Cabramatta.

For me personally, it was like — well, there's no going back now. Because even as a child here, we grew up scared of the Indonesians. We knew what the Indonesians had done in 1961. We had heard stories about that. And all of us, particularly us half-castes, always believed that however bad the Portuguese were, the Indonesians — or the Javanese — were twice as bad. That's the myth I grew up with. So for me there was definitely no coming back whilst the Indonesians were in Timor. It turned out to be — not a good thought, but a rather ominous thought, because we did lose a lot of our family on the first day of the invasion, actually. And subsequently, during the first four years of the resistance, between '75 and '79, we lost a lot of people.

So how did I feel? Well, we were all very down, and it was a question of: let's now rebuild our lives. We immediately had contact with people from the Australian side of politics who were supporters of Timorese independence, and they began to provide assistance and information. The Campaign for Independent East Timor was run by a man called Denis Freney, who was actually with the Communist Party of Australia. He would provide regular tapes of what was happening here in Timor, because my uncle, Alarico Fernandes — the man I talked about, my mother's oldest brother, who passed away last January, incidentally, in Indonesia — had the only radio contact with the outside world. So there would be all of these reports about what was going on here. Denis would have the tapes — the old-style tapes, the TDK tapes — and they'd bring them over every time there was a communication. We'd hear what they were saying about how the invasion was going, how the fighting and the resistance was happening. And usually at the end there'd be a personal message from my uncle saying: to my mother and my sisters, my brother-in-law and my nephews in Australia, please keep thinking that one day you will come back and be free, et cetera. This went on until his capture in 1978 by the Indonesian forces.

Steve: It must have been really hard for you as a kid, and as a family. You arrive eventually in Cabramatta — Darwin to Cabramatta — and in Australia it would feel like, for the average Australian, life just goes on. Nobody knows what's happening in Timor-Leste, and you're expected to just continue with life. But you have family members living through this constant struggle, and you're connected to that, right?

José: Yeah. Interestingly, we became friends with some Chileans who had fled the Pinochet regime. And of course there was constantly the Yugoslavian thing — the Croatians and the Serbians, who each would tell their own story. I often think the teachers who were teaching in Cabramatta — your usual Aussies — must have found some really rich and interesting stories. Some of them became friends beyond school. So it was a bit surreal, and it took a while. I would say it wasn't until about '81, '82 that I decided there was some normality that needed to be undertaken here — thinking, subconsciously, that there's got to be some form of assimilation I've got to undertake in order to survive in this society. The friends I was making were of a much broader circle, including many from Irish, Scottish and English backgrounds who had been in Australia for more generations. But Cabramatta fundamentally was a population of immigrants. If anybody there was more than second generation born in Australia, they were recognised — we used to call them Skippies, actually — because the others were born in Australia but of Italian descent, or of Yugoslav descent, something like that. And then of course later came the wave of the Vietnamese, around 1979, when I was in high school — from '78, '79 on, the big wave of the Vietnamese boat people came through, and then some Cambodians. It was all still reminders of what was happening here in Timor. So you had a number of different communities in the school who came out of conflict. A very unusual school, really, when you think about it.

Steve: I guess that diversity, as you're saying, really helps the transition. You find so much commonality with other people.

José: Yeah. I have lifelong friends who are Vietnamese and Cambodian, for example, as well as of Italian descent. And I often say Yugoslav, but no — some are Serbian, some are Croatian, even some Macedonians. For a while it seemed surreal. It seemed like an odd place to be, because I didn't feel like I belonged there. But somewhere along the way I made up my mind about assimilation. So unlike many of them, who would choose to play soccer, I decided I'd play rugby instead — rugby and cricket. My brothers would say that's because I was a pretty hopeless soccer player, and being a front-row forward was better than trying to kick a ball accurately. But that helped broaden my outlook, and then joining the Air Cadets helped — that was another broadening experience that took me somewhere else, meeting different people.

Steve: And what age were you when you made this transition and started to assimilate a bit more?

José: Probably when I was about 16.

Steve: And at that point, how much did a future life in Timor-Leste factor into your thinking? How did you see your future as a teenager looking at leaving school and studying?

José: I always continued to be interested, and I kept myself informed. That was helpful because there were other Timorese in the community, maybe four or five years older than me, who I used to hang around with, who would provide me with newspapers from places like the Campaign for Independent East Timor, some of the material being produced by the Catholic Church and the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, even some of the union material. So I was always informed about what was happening. The teachers I was studying under all knew that — I don't think anybody that taught me didn't get the "East Timor must be free" story. And that continued to be part of my life, even in Cadets. I remember rather funny incidents of going to camps at places like Richmond when the Australian military first started exchanges — running into Indonesian military staff was a rather confronting thing for me, but it was a case of: this is what's happening. The exchanges at first were quite small. It wasn't until they went to places like Canungra to do training — by then I was already out of university and a practising lawyer — that I became active in the demonstrations at those places. Canungra in Queensland, for those who don't know, was a jungle warfare training centre. Some of the Indonesian Kopassus and their commandos were being trained there by Australia in jungle warfare. And for us, clearly, they were then going to come back and be chasing and killing our people. So that became much more confronting years later. But the whole of high school was preoccupied with that — though more and more ordinary things kept creeping in: play rugby, play cricket, get a girlfriend. That takes a bit of your distraction away.

Steve: And then you went to university — at UQ in Brisbane?

José: No, I got a scholarship to go to the University of New England. When I did my HSC, I got into a few places. I got into the University of New South Wales — my main aim then was to study political science, politics, government, anything like that. The University of Wollongong, I applied to do economics. So you had those choices. I got an offer from the University of New South Wales, but I thought to myself: I'm not staying in Sydney, I really want to get out of Sydney. I went down and saw Wollongong and said, no, I don't want to come here. Then someone said, don't forget you also put in for a scholarship at the University of New England. So I thought — oh yeah, better follow up on that. And it turned out I'd been accepted to do a Bachelor of Arts. So in 1983 I went up for my three-year Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of New England, which was great. It was cold, but it had, again, a diverse student body — this time diverse from all over rural Australia.

Steve: Where is that?

José: It's in Armidale, in the New England district — Barnaby Joyce's electorate. Back then it was Ian Sinclair, the member for New England. It's very rural, very conservative, but with kids coming from all over the place — from all over far-western New South Wales, some even from Victoria. I had friends from Mildura, people from all the way up to Rockhampton. The university actually had a strategy to bring in students from regional Australia, partly because of the courses taught there — Bachelor of Rural Science and Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning were the big courses, and there was a Bachelor of Natural Resources, plus your traditional Bachelor of Arts faculty and an education faculty. Armidale back then had the Armidale Teachers College as well. Seeing kids from different parts of Australia was good. Again, I made lifelong friends — people I'm still friends with today. It was a wonderful choice to get out of Sydney and really see a different part of Australia.

Steve: So, three years in Armidale. Can you talk about your transition into studying law? And perhaps — you mentioned getting involved in politics in Australia with the Queensland Labor branch — how do they combine?

José: Well, at university in Armidale, actually, I was a year ahead of Milena Pires. Who previously nominated to run for president.

José: And was a member of our Constituent Assembly, our ambassador to the United Nations — a very capable person with whom I still maintain a very close professional relationship today. She's a great person, one of the most honest people, full of integrity, that I know in this country. She was there a year behind me, and I had a lot of interaction with her, particularly because she studied politics as well — the same subjects I did. And I was always involved in politics there too, with the student bodies that supported East Timor, as it was then known — involved in any rallies, any student open days where you'd have tables with information on them, et cetera.

That's also where I met my ex-wife, the mother of my three children, who was from northern New South Wales, up around the Mullumbimby area. I spent three years there. She was actually a year ahead of me, so she got out earlier and took a teaching job in Queensland. So I started to look around — I was already a member of the Labor Party by then, and I got in touch with some Labor politicians in Sydney, but it was very competitive. So because she was there, I moved to Queensland, and I was lucky to fall into a job almost straight away. The first one was with Henry Palaszczuk — the father of Annastacia Palaszczuk — who was then the member for Archerfield.

Steve: She was the Premier of Queensland for a number of years.

José: That's her. But she was only a kid when I was working as her father's electoral officer — in a very, very economically downtrodden part of Brisbane, if not Queensland: Inala. And I did some relieving work. That's where I got to know Wayne Goss really well — I did some work on Goss's campaign and helped his office — and former minister David Beddall. That's how I got involved. And I had actually already applied to do law at the University of Queensland in my last year of my Bachelor of Arts. So as soon as I arrived in Queensland, I started my first year of law part-time, and I did that whilst I worked. By the third year of doing it part-time, too many of the people I'd got to know — including Wayne Goss and Matt Foley, who became Attorney-General and Justice Minister — all said: look, just take time off, finish your degree and start practising law. And so I did. I stopped working and started working at night instead — I got a really great job at Pizza Hut in Inala, cooking pizzas, taking pizzas home, which was good — and I'd go to uni during the day. That lasted for a bit, and when I'd done enough of that, I did my articles of clerkship for two years with a solicitors' firm that was prepared to accept me.

But by then, my political involvement had increased tremendously, to the point where I'd been elected secretary of a local branch in Yeronga, in the southern suburbs of Brisbane.

Steve: So did you have aspirations to get into politics in Australia at that time?

José: Yeah, I did. And I actually ran for pre-selection for the seat of Archerfield — and lost. Not by much, but lost. It was in the midst of the quotas debate the Labor Party was then having, and the person who ultimately won was Karen Struthers, who had been head of the Queensland social services union. Karen ultimately became a minister. When I lost Archerfield, there were people saying: run for something else. That was in 1995, I believe. I just said, no — that's done. By that stage I'd started to put much more time back into Timor, and I decided to put all my effort into that. And kids — my first daughter was born in '95, and the twins came along two years later — so there was little enough time. But I was always in the party. In fact, I chaired the Queensland State Labor Party's law, law reform and constitution policy committee for six years, I think, and then got elected onto a national policy committee on government and service delivery. But that was really close to 1999, and things were heating up, so I stepped down.

Steve: But I guess you're gaining skills and getting insight into things that would become very valuable.

José: Yeah — and meeting politicians all the time, and future politicians, who I could lobby and talk to. And I've got to tell you: despite the fact that the Hawke government was quite horrid when it came to East Timor — in its policy it downgraded the importance, with almost a de facto recognition of Timor-Leste's incorporation into Indonesia, just saying it would be vigilant on human rights — I still found so many people in the Labor Party who were supportive, saying: this is wrong. And it grew after the Santa Cruz massacre.

Steve: That was in '99?

José: No, the Santa Cruz massacre was in 1992. I'll never forget — Wayne Goss was premier at the time, and we had a Christmas do for a branch and he came along. We were talking about it, because the massacre was in November, and the Christmas do was in early December. His words were: "Mate, that's a bloody awful, terrible thing that those Indonesians did." And then a word I won't repeat. That's all he said. So I always knew I had support from the people I hung around with in the Labor Party.

Steve: But you've previously told me that even amongst the Timorese diaspora in Australia, people thought the Timorese independence campaigners were delusional — and you were kind of outcasts in some sense.

José: In the early days. One of the reasons we moved out of the migrant hostel in Cabramatta so quickly was because, out of about 38 family groups there, only two were families that had links with Fretilin. The others were UDT, Apodeti and others. And after the invasion, they would say things like: you guys are to blame for this — this is why the Indonesians are invading, it's because of what you did. And what did we do? That carried on for a bit. And there were a lot of Timorese who really didn't care. But the new generation of Timorese, who were either being born or becoming teenagers and maturing in Australia — they became much easier for us to convince that there was something going wrong here.

And then, within the Timorese diaspora itself, globally, there was a conversion, where a number of leaders who had originally gone across the border and signed the Balibo Declaration — sorry, the Bali Declaration, but we call it the Balibo Declaration; it was inviting the Indonesians to come and save Timor from the communists — even some of those people who signed it then asked Indonesia to leave. They left, and quite a few of them ended up in Australia — people like João Carrascalão and Domingos de Oliveira. And in Australia, from the mid-to-late 80s onwards, they were very much again talking about the need for Timor to have self-determination. Then we had the convergence in the diaspora that occurred in the late 80s, including major conferences around the world, where the Timorese diaspora became much more unified around the one goal: self-determination is our right, Indonesia must leave.

But there were people — and they were stronger than just saying "you're delusional" — there were people who would say: you're creating trouble, they're going to kick us out of here, so stop making trouble. It's the fear of living under authoritarian regimes, right? They just wanted to stay. Stop being perturbers of the peace. In fact, I was at a conference where a prominent minister in previous governments here in Timor-Leste actually yelled out that his family didn't run away from Timor to run away from the Indonesians — they were running away from you guys in Fretilin. That type of stuff. That's how divided the diaspora was.

Steve: It's a really interesting observation that there was so much division amongst the diaspora.

José: Well, there was a civil war. The civil war was bitter. There were people that were killed.

Steve: I think it's easy to look at it as though there was this homogenous group that was kicked out of Timor by the Indonesians and then united together quickly. But it actually took 10, 15 years for there to be a coalescing around Timor's independence.

José: And it really didn't all come together until probably after the Santa Cruz massacre — and by the time the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Ramos-Horta and Bishop Belo.

Steve: What year was that?

José: You're testing my memory now — 1995, I think that period. By that stage there was really a united organisation. We'd been through a few iterations. There was the National Council of Maubere Resistance. Then there were some people, particularly from UDT, who didn't like the term Maubere, because that was very much a Fretilin term — the Maubere was the salt of the earth, the ordinary person, what you'd call the [TERM — see notes] today, or what the Nicaraguans called the Sandinistas; Sandino was the poor person, the peasant. They didn't like that, so it became the National Council of Timorese Resistance, and everybody said: okay, that's fine, we can handle that one. And that began to bring people together. So there's the CNRT — not the same one that's governing today, but the original CNRT. By that stage, there was some internal bickering between political figures belonging to different groups, but I think most Timorese understood: this is it, we've got to be unified in order to get Indonesia out.

Steve: So can you tell me about your journey to return? How that played out, when it was, what role you had.

José: Well, that was inevitable — it was going to happen. I was asked to come back. During the ballot itself here in Timor, there were people who came back to work with the UN and so on. On the 5th of May 1999, Portugal, Indonesia and the UN signed a trilateral agreement that opened the way for the popular consultation. It had a couple of dates, and they kept getting shifted — a couple of times I was going to come, and the dates kept shifting. But I was quite prominent as a spokesperson for the CNRT and the whole cause in Queensland, and our little grouping in Queensland, as well as other people in the Australian CNRT organisational leadership, said: look, you should stay, because you speak really good English, you can articulate these things, you're getting a lot of media, and it's really important that you play that role. I was anxious to come back and work, but then I thought — in what area? Would I go and work for the UN as an electoral observer? No, there are plenty of people who can do that. So I thought: this is the best role I can play. It was a busy time, but I think I had an effective role. The record is there — anybody can go and look at the various television networks' archives, and the interviews are all there at the crucial times: passing on the right message, and after the ballot, when the violence started, putting pressure on the Howard government to do something about it, to move on with a peacekeeping mission, that type of thing.

Steve: So when did you actually come back?

José: I actually came back in November of that year. The 30th of August was the vote. INTERFET came in — was it the 15th of September, or the 7th? Australian-led, though I forget the details — there were French, there were Italians, there were even US special forces here, and also the Portuguese and others. When they came and established themselves, and as soon as Xanana came and established his office, I was contacted and asked to come and work in Xanana's office. It was just in the lead-up to the UN setting up the Consultative Council — the National Council, a consultative body that was going to act like, not quite a parliament, but... Because Sérgio Vieira de Mello, as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, under his mandate essentially had the powers of a dictator. He was the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, et cetera. So the UN set up this national council where the various Timorese political parties, including the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, were represented.

Steve: So they were practising for when they were going to be governing, right?

José: Yeah. And I was asked to work as an advisor in Xanana's office, as the president of the CNRT.

Steve: Xanana Gusmão — the current prime minister.

José: Yeah. That lasted a very short period of time, because it became quite obvious there were dynamics at play — Fretilin was asserting itself, and leaders like Lú-Olo and Alkatiri and Ana Pessoa, who were on the council, were not just rubber-stamping decisions. I think Sérgio de Mello thought that's how it would be. And I personally faced a conflict, because I'd always been a Fretilin cadre. So I finished off my tenure — I helped do some things, myself and a couple of other Australian lawyers. There were no Timorese lawyers, and I didn't like that much either — the fact that, other than myself, there were no Timorese lawyers working in that capacity. But I also felt: well, there are other people advising him. So I pulled out from that, and started putting a bit more time and effort in with some of the non-profit organisations and religious organisations working here. In Brisbane, I had worked closely with the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission group that had established an organisation called the Brisbane East Timor Office, and during the Indonesian period they had provided assistance for water and sanitation and so on.

After that little trip here in November, I had family issues to deal with, so I went back to Australia. And by the time I'd arrived back in Australia, I was getting demands: look, we're sending over [NAME — see notes], who's really sick, he's going to need medical tests — can he stay at your house? Sure. And then there was someone else, [NAME — see notes], who was a UDT vice-president, and he needed treatment badly. He was medevaced to Brisbane, and he died in the Mater Hospital within a day of arriving — so I took care of his wife and his kids there. And then there was a bunch of different people coming, whose names I won't mention, who had to come for one reason or another. And I'm finding myself back in my legal practice and being the de facto coordinator, trying to deal with these people and providing accommodation for them in my own office.

So I had a discussion with my then wife and said: I'm thinking of going back to Timor. She said: but how, in what capacity? Then I got a phone call from a guy who was head of the UN's economic affairs department, a man called [NAME — see notes], a senior Indian diplomat, who said: Dr Ramos-Horta has asked me to contact you. We are setting up the investment and business office, to work through the legislation — because we've got Australian companies, Indonesian companies, Portuguese companies — how we can get a simple registration system going and start to promote that part of the economy. So I rang Alkatiri and said: could I do that? And he said: you'd be working in my office, because they're going to make me the cabinet member for economic affairs in the transitional government — they had a transitional government and a transitional cabinet. I thought: brilliant. So despite a salary cut — because although the UN paid well, it wasn't as good as the salary I was getting back home working in the law — I thought, this is brilliant: it's law, it's corporate law. I can really make a difference here.

So I came and worked, and within six months of being here, I quit my law firm and decided to stay. The reason I did that was that Sérgio's office said: he's going, and we want to make you director of this office. So I became effectively the director of investment and trade under the United Nations Transitional Administration. It's a job I kept until midnight on the 20th of May, because the following morning I was sworn in as a member of government in the new Timorese government.

Working for the UN was an interesting experience. They were trying to do stuff, but in that organisation I learned that diversity can sometimes be problematic — people from different countries with different cultures and different ways of doing things.

Steve: Too many points of view.

José: Too many points of view, too many approaches, too many ways of doing things. In our area, we had Pakistanis, PRC Chinese, Malaysians, Singaporeans, an Australian with a PhD in small business in Indonesia — whose name shall remain unmentioned — and a couple of Portuguese advisors. Trying to deal with that team was really, really difficult. Our main interlocutor in a lot of the initiatives going on in that sector was the World Bank — good people from the World Bank, actually, including an Australian called Craig Wilson, who spoke good Bahasa Indonesia and had worked as a diplomat in Indonesia. He was extremely helpful in ensuring capacity building for the new Timorese bureaucrats. So I was involved in recruiting the first batch of public servants, most of whom are still either in their positions or have become ministers or something.

Steve: Was that the point when suddenly you're sworn in, you're part of a new government, and you've got to develop all the scaffolding and infrastructure? Was that a paralysing point of: where on earth do we start? I imagine there's just so much to get going.

José: We knew there was a lot to do. We were under no delusions about the difficulty of the job that was coming up. In fact, the Prime Minister then was Dr Mari Alkatiri, and his little spiel to every single one of us he asked to join was: you're not going to join this government to get glory — you might even get burnt. He said: we've all got to be prepared to get ourselves burnt, but the task is to be the first government, to try and build something and leave it behind.

We had a budget of $64 million to run the whole country. Then there was the Trust Fund for East Timor, which had allocations for purchasing medication and fuel, et cetera. The portfolios I initially got were investment, tourism, environment, natural resources and energy policy. For investment, I only had 60,000 US dollars — the whole budget: salaries and wages, fuel, everything. If there was a trip we wanted, we'd go and talk to one of the donors, and there was plenty of that around. There were plenty of donors — the Chinese government, for example, took the whole Ministry of Commerce and Industry to China for two months or something. That was their way of trying to exercise influence and power over things, obviously.

But for me, the most difficult thing was actually confronting a total lack of legal framework. We were mandated by the constitution to apply Indonesian law, and we had access to those Indonesian laws — but a lot of the time, the Indonesian laws referred to institutions and administrative bodies that we didn't have. I'd had this debate — going right back to prior to the restoration of independence, when we were still under UN administration — with a Dutch judge who was here as head of legal affairs. I remember his phrase: look, you just apply things mutatis mutandis. A typical legal phrase, right? It means you make it fit the circumstances — so that's a square hole, you've got a round peg, just push it in. And a lot of that was done.

But the UN also enacted legislation at that time that's still around today. For example, the bank licensing law that was written in 2000 is still, today, the same law. There is a new draft before the parliament — there had been some before — but that's the law. And I remember my conversations with [NAME — see notes], where he said: we don't need anything substantive in a banking law, because when you Timorese become independent, you'll write your own laws. It was highly dismissive — and quite wrong, because they weren't counting on the fact that we weren't going to have the resources to do that.

Steve: I think that's one of the things we have to remind ourselves when people get frustrated right now in Timor-Leste — it's actually a pretty remarkable achievement, what's been achieved in 25 years, in terms of legislation and everything else, when you're starting from absolutely nothing. It's great perspective to keep. We're not going to have time to go into everything you did in government administration, but I'm curious: looking back, are there one or two things where you think, I'm really proud of what I managed to put in place? And then perhaps, what are the areas where, if you look back, you would change things — what would you do differently?

José: Without a doubt — and I have to say this with the precursor that the driving force behind the Petroleum Fund Law was Dr Mari Alkatiri. He had it in his mind, years before, that Timor-Leste needed some form of sovereign wealth fund to make sure we evaded the resource curse. He was the driving force. But the greatest honour I had was the responsibility, as his vice-minister responsible for minerals and energy policy, of leading the team that drafted the Petroleum Fund Law, took it to public consultation across the whole country, went to Parliament, convinced the Parliament of the worthiness of it — and it was approved by a full sitting of parliament, unanimously. For me, it was actually the proudest day of my life.

Following on from that, we did the Petroleum Activities Law, which has been amended a few times since but essentially remains the same — it'll probably undergo some major amendments now — and the petroleum tax law. That package of three laws — for me, they were landmark work for the country, and they had the support of a lot of people, including a parliament that devoted its time to actually learning everything, to listening to us as the government, and the experts who worked with us — too many for me to name, foreign experts as well as some Timorese. That was something where I've always thought to myself: this is it. There is nothing else — I could go back into politics, or be pushed back into politics — that is going to beat that. So that's it. I'm done with that, because I'm proud of the legacy we left. I'm proud of the fact that we were able to convince so many people, that we got so much consensus. And that was because of the fabulous work the team did. Quite often during that process, whenever there was a problem, I was the one that had to deal with it — but when things went well, it was the team. But that's how it is.

Steve: A huge achievement. So the Petroleum Fund — that's the sovereign wealth fund that was set up pretty soon after independence, right?

José: The process of drafting it began in 2004. It was approved in Parliament in 2005, and then the money started flowing in from Bayu-Undan in 2006 — and that's the reason we did it. Drafting the thing was quick, but we wanted to make sure we consulted with everybody. We did consultation in every one of the municipalities. My team, including the foreigners, drove out to these places, sat down in front of people, showed them graphs. We did consultations across national television broadcasts, et cetera. We sat down with the National Parliament for weeks on end. And that's because we knew we needed to get consensus. We didn't want it to be a controversial piece of legislation.

Steve: And I guess the results speak for themselves — the Petroleum Fund now has $18 billion, Bayu-Undan stopped production recently, and the Petroleum Fund is underpinning Timor-Leste's development right now.

José: The management of the fund has been very good. We established the fund before the money started coming in — some money started coming in, but then there were all the mechanisms of the investment advisory council, and how the investment of the fund would take place. Initially, it was all to be invested in hard, government-backed securities like US Treasury bonds. But the governments that have come since have engaged with investment agencies and investment managers, and the strategy has been really, really good — the fund has performed way beyond what your standard treasury bond return of, say, four per cent is; possibly double that, at eight. But again, if the fund wasn't there, then you wouldn't be doing any of this. There is sometimes a little bit of: you might have set it up, but we're the ones who managed it and made it big. Well, if it wasn't there in the first place, the risk was that the money, when it came in, would just be used in the state budget fully. Whereas the Petroleum Fund Law says it's got to go into the fund.

Steve: It enshrines discipline.

José: Exactly.

Steve: José, how about areas where you may have made mistakes or fallen short — things you would change?

José: Probably in the way I managed relationships with other people — particularly people with whom I worked in government, or people who worked for me. I found it very difficult, coming back from Australia and a work culture where timeliness was important, where thoroughness was a given — not something you had to give strict instructions about. And with practices that were not totally honest or ethical when it came to dealing with public assets, I exercised zero tolerance. I'm sure I rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way.

The other one would be that I think we should have put much more emphasis on the training of people. We always had scholarships available for people in the petroleum sector, but I think we underestimated the need to train people at lower levels — line managers, even people below that at supervisor level in these ministries. I wish I had been able to convince some of the multilateral and bilateral institutions to do more of that training. I guess it's because we were working, we were trying to do stuff —

Steve: Trying to develop a country.

José: — and it became difficult to say: we're going to slow down a little bit, because these people need to catch up, so we need to do some training for them. Those were the major mistakes I think I made. Because, for example, by taking away people's privileges of using government motor vehicles, including government fuel, when they were people who had played a very high role in the clandestine resistance whilst I was living a relatively free life in Australia — that was going to be perceived as me behaving wrongly, when I wasn't. But that perception created problems, and it manifested itself when we had crises in the country. There are people who probably left my political party because of decisions I made. We had, for example, electricity projects where some of the people who had to coordinate with the villagers were given these really large motocross-type bikes — great bikes, none of these little mopeds. The project was over, and they expected to be allowed to keep them. I said: no, this is a government asset that under the agreement comes to us — and in fact, the Ministry of Agriculture said they needed them for their forestry guards. So recalling those back, and going to the step of getting the police to go to the house —

Steve: You're not a popular man.

José: No. So when you ask about mistakes — maybe I could have dealt with it better, maybe I could have approached it better, but I don't see how the solution would have got any better.

I would say the biggest mistake was not understanding the culture that had been inculcated by the occupation of a previous — not just a previous country, but a previous culture. And by culture, I don't mean just ordinary living culture, but administrative culture, legal culture, citizenry culture. Totally different. That is a mistake I made — not properly and fully understanding that.

Steve: So you worked in government administration, and then you had a stint in politics —

José: Parliament, yes. A member of Parliament.

Steve: — as an elected official, and then into private practice. Can you touch on your time in Parliament, and then the transition from that into private practice?

José: Parliament was good. It was challenging. I really enjoyed it — and that's where I worked out how much I missed the law and being a court litigator. We had a really challenging parliamentary situation, because a whole bunch of people from the previous government, including ministers, all of a sudden found themselves on the parliamentary benches, and there was a new government, with people on the government bench who had never really experienced any of that. So the dynamics at times became rather confrontational. That was after the 2007 election. We were still undergoing the aftermath of the military and security crisis we'd had with the rebels. And then in 2008, within the first year of the Parliament, President Ramos-Horta was shot by that rebel group which had previously been supporting him and what he was all for. There were the challenges around the response, where martial law was declared, with broad powers to try and catch the people who did this — who shot Ramos-Horta.

My own personal story is that one day I'm standing at home, after I've been to Parliament, and two carloads of police — including some wearing hoods — arrive with machine guns, and they're saying: we're here to take you in. I said: for what? And they said: investigation into the shooting of the President. So I picked up the phone, rang Dr Alkatiri, and he said: okay, let me take care of this. I went with them, arrived at the police station, they opened the door to the investigating room — and the chief investigator just looks at me and says to the guys: what's he doing here? They said: wanted for investigation in relation to the shooting, Alfredo Reinado. And he's just shaking his head. He said: I know nothing about this. I don't know who ordered this. By then, curfew had kicked in — because we had a curfew for about six to nine months; nobody allowed on the streets after, I think it was, 6pm or 8pm. Anyway, then it was: look, you can go home, we don't want you, there's nothing here. And I said: so who were the police that came to get me? We know nothing about that. We don't know who did that. We don't know who gave that order. It was a bit chaotic.

Steve: Did you ever get to the bottom of it?

José: The following day, I raised questions in Parliament, and even some of the people on the government side were concerned, thinking: hang on, if this can happen to this guy... Anyway, it came through some back channels that it was a mistake — you're actually looking for someone else: a mestiço, a half-caste with light skin. And I actually spoke to the prosecutor who was handling the trial when he came to Parliament a week later, and he said: I have no idea. For them to go and grab you like that, they would have needed a warrant or some instruction from me, and you're nowhere within this investigation. But back then I was also the parliamentary spokesperson for the party, so I was doing a lot of interviews with Australian media and the like, and I guess it was a way of saying: shut him up for a little while. More than scaring me, it just made me a little bit more indignant. And that was the last time anything like that ever happened — no one's ever tried anything like that again. It was a crazy time, that whole period. We went through this martial law period — where it was actually called the state of siege, not a state of emergency — where all sorts of arrest powers were handed over to the police, et cetera.

Steve: My very crude understanding of this period from 2006 to 2008 is that amongst the resistance fighters there was essentially discontent — a large group of people feeling as though they weren't being rewarded, or were being rewarded disproportionately less than others. That's kind of how this emerged, and then there was a bit of a breakout from a rebel group, right?

José: Yeah — it was based on region. Basically, people from the west within the army were claiming that those from the east were getting the promotions, they were getting everything, and the west was being discriminated against. When that group made that decision, it actually created — over one night — Dili was burning. There were people from the west going into the houses of people from the east, chasing them out, burning their houses. A lot of people from the east were feeling unprotected. They all ran into refugee camps — the National Hospital became a refugee camp, the churches became refugee camps. The park in front of Hotel Timor — for five years, that was a refugee camp: thousands of people living there in makeshift tents. It took a long time to get those people back into their houses. A lot of it, I think, also had to do with communal conflicts arising out of land and squatting — people squatting on other people's land. So it became a time for payback and things like that. And this east–west thing — people would stop you in the street and say: are you from the east or the west? It was a difficult situation.

Steve: So Parliament had a really important role then in unifying the nation across that period.

José: We were trying. And I think, to its credit, the National Parliament on both sides was made up of people from both east and west, and this lorosa'e–loromonu thing, as it was also called, gradually quietened down. It's always existed, this thing between east and west, but it's breaking down more and more, because there's intermarrying occurring, and I think Timorese are now more mobile. In the early days — up until, say, 2010 — sometimes I would take trips out birding, going looking for crocodiles, hiking, with people from the east who were 28, 29 years old, and it was the first time they'd been to Bobonaro, and vice versa. People from Liquiçá — it was the first time they'd been to Baucau; they'd never been to Jaco. A small place, but people weren't seeing it. Well, today it's different. Mobility, and I think the growth and access of social media, have had a tremendous impact on reducing that. So I wouldn't heighten the role of the National Parliament as having played a particularly positive unifying role — but the fact is that everybody would denounce it at every turn. They would say: we're only one Timor, there is no east, there is no west. Everybody would say it. I can't think of one example where anybody tried to use the parliamentary microphone to try and reignite or widen the division.

Steve: So you had this period of five years in administration, trying to administer with the lack of laws. You then had a period of five years where you were able to develop many of the legal frameworks which, from your experience, you knew were required. And then you stepped out into private practice and set up your own firm here. Can you talk through the process of setting up a firm?

José: Well, I didn't really set up my own firm — I joined someone, and I guess the two of us coming together was setting up a firm. Sahe da Silva, who is also an Australian-trained lawyer and had worked for a large law firm in Australia, had returned to Timor in 2007. His father, Estanislau da Silva — who has been a minister, including Prime Minister for a short period of time, Minister for Agriculture, Minister Coordinating Economic Affairs — had been here all the time. So Sahe started to practise law in 2008, representing mostly Australian clients, including ANZ Bank and others, and he built a law practice.

The thing about the parliamentary regulations is that a member of parliament can actually continue to exercise his profession — as a lawyer, for example. He can still go and defend people in court, he can still advise people, et cetera. It's a really odd thing in the parliamentary regulations about the status of the MP. A member of government definitely cannot, but a parliamentarian can have another profession — they can be a doctor, they can do something else.

Steve: Does that emanate from, I guess, not being able to pay parliamentarians much?

José: No, I think it's just traditional — I think even in Portugal it's the same thing. Having said that, we weren't really well paid. When I was in government as a minister, it was $600 a month, plus $100 for fuel and $100 for telephone.

Steve: So you're not doing it for the money.

José: No. But for a lot of people, it was enough money, right? And they were jealous that people were getting even that much. Parliament was not that much more — I think it was $1,200, because the Petroleum Fund had already started to flow in. So I did some legal work, providing advice on things where there was no conflict of interest, obviously. And Sahe and I joined forces and became Da Silva Teixeira & Associados in 2013, and we've practised together since. We had relationships with Portuguese law firms that have come and gone. Over the time, we've employed maybe at least eight lawyers — Timorese and Australian — who have left and gone on to do other things; even Portuguese have left and done other things. But we've gradually grown to a stage where we probably have to either grow more or limit the number of clients we take on.

Steve: And what would you say is your bread and butter?

José: It ranges. Everything from being local legal counsel engaged by the Asian Development Bank, with EDTL, on the procurement and contracting for the construction and production of energy at the solar power station in Laleia — that big one, which has occupied our lives for the last five years — through to work with the IFC, to representing clients in land disputes and particularly litigation, and international commercial arbitration. I'm an accredited international mediator with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators for international commercial arbitration. We've done legislative drafting in the past — the copyright law, which we worked on with the Parliament, contracted by USAID at that time to finalise the drafting inputs that had been put in by the Parliament through public consultation. It ranges.

Of all the lawyers in the firm — and we have eight lawyers employed full-time at the moment, with a couple of others who do work for us from time to time — I'm the one who does all the court litigation. Nobody else likes going to court. So I spend a lot of time in court on a number of different matters, including criminal matters. I even do pro bono criminal work every now and then, for deserving folk, where I think there is a question of law that needs to be tested. And the rest of the firm does company registration work, a lot of new business startups, estate planning, and employment disputes — a lot of employment terminations and employment disputes.

Steve: Okay — so it sounds like you can pretty much do anything and everything.

José: We pretty much can. We assist foreign governments, representing them in Timor-Leste in relation to the extradition of citizens to their country — names remain unmentioned. We do a lot of that type of stuff. And we've got a very interesting case where we represent the Chin Human Rights Organisation, who have asked us to lodge a criminal complaint of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Timor-Leste under universal criminal jurisdiction — which is an area of law that is taking on more prominence. It exists under customary international law; it's not codified. But interestingly, the Timor-Leste Criminal Code has a whole chapter dealing with these crimes — crimes against humanity, war crimes, responsibility under military structures for war crimes, et cetera. And it permits the Timor-Leste authorities to arrest and investigate any perpetrator if they are here in Timor-Leste — if they are physically present. Not a problem if they're physically present. Under universal criminal jurisdiction, that takes it one step further: even if they are not, they can be investigated. So we've brought this case, and it's going through the courts. It's moving through — at the moment it's making its way to the highest court in the land, the Court of Appeal. It's been going since January, so we'll see where it goes.

Steve: I've actually been following this just out of curiosity. What would an ideal outcome look like here, once this passes through the Court of Appeal?

José: Well, an ideal outcome, from our point of view — we believe that the Timor-Leste Constitution, first of all, states — and I'm not going to cite clauses or articles — that Timor-Leste embraces and integrates all international law. Our argument is that universal criminal jurisdiction is part of that international law. It's not codified, but it exists under customary international law. Just to give you an example: piracy. There is no codification anywhere for piracy, and yet every country in the world will enforce against piracy. That exists under customary international law, the same way universal criminal jurisdiction does. So it must only be consistent for a state like Timor-Leste to implement that.

Secondly, under the Timor-Leste Constitution, the state of Timor-Leste also has an obligation to exercise solidarity with peoples and nations that have suffered, or are suffering, the same things Timor-Leste suffered during its struggle for independence.

Thirdly, we believe the Timor-Leste Criminal Code only requires the person to be here in the case of an arrest. The fact that the person is not here doesn't stop the prosecutor from opening an investigation and seeking evidence — sending out warrants, seeking notifications —

Steve: Through other international partners.

José: Yeah, exactly. And interestingly, under ASEAN — the ASEAN Amity Pact has a clause about each nation cooperating with the others in relation to judicial matters. That's very clearly there. So the scenario could well be — well, not could well be, we say should be — that the perpetrator not being here is not a hindrance to an investigation being opened: hearing witnesses; hearing from victims — well, none of the victims are alive — hearing from witnesses who saw these things; receiving evidence, putting all that into evidence; and then notifying those who have been accused through the proper channels and the proper ways of doing it — there are a number of international mechanisms for doing it — and saying: you respond. They don't have to respond, of course. But from our point of view, this is how the system works. It's not: he's not here, so we're not doing any work. To us, that's not only the lazy approach — it's the legally conservative and incorrect approach.

Steve: The strength of Timor-Leste's democracy is actually one of the things I think people don't speak about enough — being the most democratic country in Southeast Asia, and the country pursuing, and enabling you to pursue, these types of things, and how outspoken Timor-Leste is on a range of other international issues. I think it's fantastic.

José: Yeah. This was done as a private criminal complaint — any individual can lodge a private criminal complaint on anything. We did not expect to get as much support as we did from President Ramos-Horta on it, and there are some who have been critical of that. But also, we didn't get open support from the Prime Minister or the executive — but nor did we get criticism. I think that speaks volumes. I think it shows that Timor-Leste is prepared to deal with these things properly.

What this case actually does is send a really strong signal to Myanmar, and that is: until you guys get your things sorted out, don't even think of appointing someone here unless they're totally clean skins. And everybody knows that the Myanmar generals and the retired generals are investing everywhere around the world, right? They're investing in places like Indonesia — most of them like to invest in Indonesia — and Vietnam, they like to invest there. If any of these guys turn up in Timor — that's it. The message is there. It's quite clear. The objective was never to get a prosecution and a court hearing — we're not that naive. The objective was achieved, which is to send a message saying: the rule of law operates here.

Steve: That's a really interesting sidetrack. José, you've kind of told the recent history of Timor-Leste through your story. I want to touch on a few topical business issues now, if you don't mind — I've got a list here. Maybe one of the things to start with is land, because you've introduced me to this thing called surface rights recently. My understanding is that foreigners can't own land in Timor-Leste. Fifty-year renewable leases are available for foreigners, but I think people question the security of that. Can you talk about the land situation more broadly, and then how surface rights are applied for people looking to invest in the country?

José: Yeah. So the difference for commercial investors between just having a lease and a surface right has to do with the bankability of it. A surface right is a right in rem — it's actually a property right — whereas a leasehold is a contract to use, which can be terminated at any time. That is not the case with a surface right. In Timor-Leste, like a lot of civil law jurisdictions, there is a distinction between the land itself and the surface above it —

Steve: Anything above the land.

José: Anything above the land: buildings, the empty space that you build buildings in. In fact, at yesterday's inauguration of the Manatuto solar energy project — they obtained surface rights for the period of the project. There is a proper state surface rights law, which sets out the basis on which the state awards surface rights to investors. So that's one way of doing it when you're dealing with state-owned rights: no longer do you just take a lease from the state, but you can apply for surface rights as well. There are legal conditions that have to be met. However, if you're talking about private land, any individual Timorese can sell off the surface right to his or her land, in perpetuity, to a foreigner. It's permitted. We've done plenty of those. And as more and more certificates of title get issued, more and more people will be able to actually register their surface right as well.

And people say: but how does that work? Well, if you've got the land and you're the owner of it, but you're prepared to allow someone else to use the surface and to give it away, then you're limited — you can't use the land, because there's something on top of it already. The closest thing in the English-law jurisdictions is strata title. In jurisdictions similar to Timor, the surface right is actually also used in a strata-title sort of situation. And that is available, again, in perpetuity. It took a while to convince people — this happens in all civil law jurisdictions, but until about 10 years ago, we had successive justice ministers who just refused to accept that this was a possibility within Timor. But that's long gone now — that's no longer the legal theory — and I think it's a game changer for investors.

I do have some concerns, as an individual. I think the government must enact policy and law that ensures there are some conditions on the issue of these surface rights.

Steve: In terms of the dispossession of landholders — to prevent that?

José: Or the same concern that Australia had for such a long time when I was there: the fact that foreign ownership increases to the level where foreigners effectively become the largest owners of land in the country. So I think there have got to be some limitations placed — some safeguards. I'm not going to point to any particular group or class of investors right now, but I think we can all see the proliferation that exists of who's building and doing construction. My understanding is that most of those are under leaseholds, but I think that's just because either they, or the people advising them, are rather unwilling to use surface rights or don't know about them. If a bank sees that you've got a surface right, they will regard that as much, much superior security than if you have a lease. And actually, a 50-year lease is the maximum — 50 plus 50.

Steve: Have you seen cases where surface rights are used as collateral?

José: Oh, absolutely. That is happening — in major projects as well.

Steve: That's fantastic. So how about the situation where people say you could have three different titles over a given piece of land — from Portuguese, Indonesian or current times?

José: Well, that's where you've got to sort it out, because we're in the process of defining who is the definitive owner, right?

Steve: So that's this titling process that's playing out right now.

José: And you can pretty much already — even without a certificate of title — know that someone is the only claimant owner over that land. I've bought land on that basis myself, by doing thorough due diligence — by going to the Ministry of Justice land and property registry. Each parcel of land throughout the country that a person claims to own or occupy must have an NUIP number — a unique number for the identification of the land parcel. And that NUIP, as we call it — you can check on the registry, and it will say: José Teixeira is the only claimant over this. Or it could say: José Teixeira claims as A, there's a B claimant, Maria, and there's a C claimant, Arthur — and then that land will appear on their map in red, as in dispute. There is a process now for people like myself, and others who have land that is green on the registry, to make an application for them to issue title. They're just moving slowly at it. But I know clients who've got dozens of titles issued already through this process. It's the safest way to do it. And if they've already got that title, once you get the surface right, you will get a title for the surface right over that as well.

Steve: When I worked in PNG, there was a guy who used to say the best way to know if there are other claims over the land is to just send in some heavy machinery — and within a couple of hours, you're going to have all sorts of people turning up.

José: Still the case here. But there are less crude ways of finding that out. Well — sometimes you don't discover that there is a dispute unless you do that, no matter what the paperwork says. But the paperwork is definitive. Once you have a certificate of title, no one's going to be able to take it to court unless they can prove fraud.

Steve: Okay. It's really nice to know that this is all progressing.

José: Yeah — we should have moved faster. But look, I hosted a number of visitors last week in relation to a project, and they asked me: why isn't a cybercrime law in yet? Why isn't this in yet? We were actually up on the fifth floor of Timor Plaza, and I said: look out over that. When I arrived here in November of 1999, none of those buildings, none of those posts, were standing. Everything was burnt to the ground. Ground zero. Imagine Nagasaki, Hiroshima — but burnt by the withdrawing militia and Indonesian military. Everything you see has been built since then. Twenty-seven years of rebuilding — physically, and institutionally quite a way too. I can't think of another example except Cambodia — and I've been to Cambodia, but Cambodia was their ground zero; the buildings were not knocked down the way they were here. You can go on the internet and Google photos of Timor when the INTERFET choppers first flew over Dili, and all you see are these blacked-out, box-shaped things on the ground — houses, burned. That's how it all was. There's still one building you can go and have a look at that shows you what everything else looked like. It's been given to the Portuguese school, up behind the National University and just up from the National Stadium — an old Indonesian building there. The only reason that building was standing is because it was three storeys high, but it's burnt out — that's what it looked like. That's what everything in Dili looked like. So everything's been built up from scratch.

Steve: It's huge progress, as you say — 27 years.

José: And I must say, the level of spontaneous, intermittent violence that would occur — it's gone. All of us would live in fear of driving down a road and all of a sudden people are stoning each other — a lot of it driven by, say, the family of a former Indonesian militia member coming back, and a suburb having a go at them, that sort of thing. Even that is getting better. I think the security situation is getting much better. So yeah — a lot of changes.

Steve: The next thing I'm going to ask about is ASEAN and the WTO. A lot of talk, a lot of focus and attention. ASEAN is going to be chaired by Timor-Leste in 2029. What do you think that actually means for business in the country?

José: I don't think the difference is as much as just ascending to ASEAN — I think whatever it's going to mean for business has already come from that. For me, it'll put Timor-Leste more on the map. I think it'll stimulate — and we've all noticed it — some more action from government to try and put in place the infrastructure to be able to host it. I was told it's something like 400 meetings. And don't forget, we're going to have elections in the interim — a presidential and a legislative election. Elections tend to have a paralysing effect on governance in Timor-Leste. Six months before, at least, people start to get really scared of signing things, scared of moving things. And if that happens, then we're going to lose six months. And there will be a change of government next time — I'm convinced of that. Even if the same grouping wins, there will still be a change in personnel. So change is definitely going to happen. And that always means a lead-up period for the new decision-makers to get their heads around how governance works, to get the courage to make decisions. Some of them want to revise what others did, and stuff like that.

This was actually the most wonderful thing about the solar energy project yesterday. It began in 2022 under a previous government, and although, when the new government came in, one of the most senior figures in the government wanted to cancel it, the top man on the job — the Prime Minister — said: no, approved, go ahead. That made sure it happened. So if more of that works, then there's no problem. But there is a tendency sometimes to also want to stop something, give it to someone else — that type of thing.

Steve: I guess elections are disruptive in all countries as well.

José: Indeed they are.

Steve: I've taken a lot of your time, José. A couple of questions before we wrap up. Where are you seeing momentum right now in Timor, when it comes to investment and businesses that are growing?

José: Obviously the infrastructure and construction sector — there's a lot of momentum there. Regardless of merit, there's a lot of action there. I think in the telecoms area there's some movement — a new player, someone's bought into telecom, fibre optics coming in. I think when that's put to bed and we start to get access to it, there's going to be a lot of movement in that area. Other than that — tourism is the one we all keep talking about and thinking we want to move, and I actually do think this is something that ASEAN can help us with in the lead-up to 2029. I see a bit of movement in that area. There are some interesting initiatives in the area of commodities — other than coffee and the traditional stuff, there are a few other commodities. And I think there's always potential for Timor to grow in livestock production and export — and that is an area that is continuously growing. I'm talking about export to West Timor. I know a lot of people who live on the south coast, where there's a lot of livestock because the grass is generally greener over that side, and they're making quite a bit of money out of those sales.

I'm not going to comment on the minerals sector and whether that is going to go much further or anywhere, because although there have been discoveries announced, it's a different story when you talk about actual processing. That's going to involve a whole new swathe of approvals and authorisations. Finding the stuff is one thing, but extracting it is going to mean cutting up the hillsides, and that's going to have a bit more of an impact on the people who live in those areas. Already I'm getting stories of people saying: they're telling us the whole mountain is going to be taken. And with that, leading up to an election where everybody's sensitive to public opinion — I really don't think that sector is going to be a mover and shaker.

Steve: Okay — interesting take. I've got two closing questions for you, José. Firstly: is there a failure that you are most proud of, or grateful for?

José: A failure?

Steve: A failure — like, what's your favourite failure? The failure you've had that has maybe taught you the most, or one that you look back on and think: I'm really glad that happened when it did.

José: Oh, that's a hard one — in my whole life? Probably a couple of job applications that could have taken me somewhere else, on a totally different path. There are a couple of those. I don't think I can be so specific, but — declining an offer by an Attorney-General in Queensland to appoint me to the District Court in 1998, fairly close to 1999, was probably a good decision. Though do I count it as a failure? Because it would have been a promotion, right?

Steve: Yeah, it would have been a promotion.

José: I'm not going to cover the personal side of things. So that's probably one. Actually, there probably is another one, which is more materialistic. I had the opportunity to acquire a very substantially large piece of land in Dili — at, back then, a bit of an expensive price, but today not so much. And I was driven more by mistrust of the person I was dealing with. When I look at it in hindsight — because I've since done due diligence on it for others who are developing it — I've discovered that it really was a great opportunity to have bought. I would have been in a much, much better financial situation today. But it was one of those things where cautiousness — and I'm naturally a cautious person — led me to fail to take an opportunity that I think was really a golden-egg opportunity. That's probably the greatest failure I can say I made.

Steve: I like it — if that's your worst...

José: Well, I'm not talking about personal things — there were a lot of those! But that's a great one.

Steve: Thank you. And then: five years from now, what's a good outcome for you and for Timor?

José: For me personally, I want to see my law firm thriving — not necessarily with me being there on a day-to-day basis. I'd rather be living in my house on a little island, doing some writing, working a little bit more on community-based projects — little communities, more remote communities — on things like reforestation and environmental protection. I want to work a lot more in that area in five years, including doing pro bono work defending environmental causes, which are becoming more and more necessary. That's where I would personally like to be.

Where do I think Timor-Leste will be? I think Timor-Leste will be in a better place, because the more optimistic side of me says that this current generation of leaders who are dominating the leadership are on their way to stepping down. They don't want to, perhaps, but I think there's a new generation of leaders emerging. And they're varied — they're not people who have necessarily been allied to me. But the ones who are going to be running for the presidency, for example — I think they're great, great leaders for the future. So I think the new generation will have stepped up more than a notch, maybe two, and really begun to take the reins — not just of governance, but of business. I'm always inspired by, and in awe of, some of the young Timorese entrepreneurs I help from time to time with their businesses, even with their startups. They're unstoppable. And there's a whole generation of people who are no longer going to put their hands out to government and expect to be given something. People who are saying: we're not waiting for government, we're just doing it. I think that's a critically important thing that's happening now, and in five years, we are going to be in a much better place in that regard.

Steve: Agree — I think it's a super bright future. José, is there anything you haven't said that you would like to say before we wrap this up?

José: Thank you, Steve — other than the fact that it's been a pleasure to work with you on the Timor-Leste–Australia Business Council and what you've done there. I think that council is going to be sustainable, and it's going to be a good organisation — not only because of the efforts of the people involved, but particularly the expertise you've provided and the assistance you've provided to make it happen.

Steve: No — thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Cheers.

José: No problems. Wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.

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