| William’s birthday party | [singing ‘Happy Birthday’] | 00:00 |
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| CAFAGNA: Two-year-old William Pires was born into an independent East Timor. The family gathers around the table that William’s grandfather left behind when he fled the country with his seven children in 1975. They’ve returned to help realise their father’s dream. | 00:11 |
| Pires family stand to camera | Music | 00:32 |
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| CAFAGNA: Emilia Pires is the eldest. She is East Timor’s Finance Minister. Sister Aurora teaches at a Catholic kindergarten. Palmira runs a not for profit job training agency. | 00:34 |
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| Alfredo Pires, the birthday boy’s father, is East Timor’s Secretary of State for Natural Resources, and Fernando works for an international aid agency. | 00:49 |
| Family ‘snapshot’ | Together, they represent what is desperately needed in East Timor – skills and hope for the future. | 01:00 |
| Religious statue against sunset | Music | 01:08 |
| Sunset over beach | CAFAGNA: When the Indonesians left in 1999, they destroyed almost all the infrastructure, but worse than that, when they left they took with them the human capacity to run the country. | 01:15 |
| Governor’s Palace | After seven years of independence, East Timor is still trying to find its feet. But a new generation of young leaders has emerged. They’re now grappling with the basics of how to run a country. | 01:27 |
| Bracks’ plane lands | And they’ve asked one of Australia’s most successful political leaders for help. | 01:45 |
| Bracks greets Cafagna at airport | Steve Bracks won three elections in the State of Victoria. He’s a friend of East Timor Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, who’s called on his expertise in running a government and a public service. He’s volunteering his assistance. | 01:51 |
| Bracks and Cafagna in car | CAFAGNA: What struck you when you first arrived? Was it a shock? STEVE BRACKS: Well, the enormity of the task. I mean anyone that arrives in Dili and sees the destruction which occurred -- and still the aftermath of that, it’s not completely recovered, the destruction that occurred in 99 – the torching of buildings, disabling of roads and pavements and a whole range of issues – it’s a long term project. | 02:09 |
| Traffic/Washing/Kids playing |
| 02:32 |
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| CAFAGNA: On the face of it, East Timor is struggling to function as a nation. The basics of a civil society are just not there. | 02:37 |
| Man plucks chicken | No water, poor housing, no decent education, and still, little security. | 02:45 |
| Women with children, washing | It’s starting from scratch isn’t it? STEVE BRACKS: Pretty well. Yeah it’s starting from scratch. It’s like saying in an equivalent state in Australia of about a million people, your infrastructure’s disabled, a lot of able bodied men have been killed as breadwinners regrettably in the fight for independence and you’ve lost your senior administrators in all public functions. | 02:56 |
| Bracks. Super: | Off you go and run the country. That’s what it’s like, and that’s the job required, and I think we shouldn’t underestimate that task. It’s a big task. | 03:15 |
| Aerials. Oil rig | CAFAGNA: East Timor is ranked among the poorest nations in the world, but now it’s rich - oil rich from reserves in the Timor Gap. It has billions in the bank, and there’s probably more to come. | 03:25 |
| Pires family ‘snapshot’ highlighting Alfredo | Music | 03:41 |
| Alfredo unrolls maps |
| 03:48 |
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| CAFAGNA: Secretary of State for Natural Resources, Alfredo Pires, is one of the new generation of East Timor leaders. He and his siblings have returned to rebuild the nation. | 03:55 |
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| ALFREDO PIRES: This government’s problem is a problem that I never imagined it could have, spending money properly. | 04:07 |
| Alfredo. Super: | It’s things like a window’s broken… I need… I’ve got ten pieces of paper of work in order to get that repaired. | 04:12 |
| Teacher leads kids singing | [Singing] | 04:21 |
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| CAFAGNA: This is Manleuna Primary School, a thirty-minute drive from Dili. It has more than eight hundred students and just eighteen teachers. | 04:31 |
| Children into classrooms | The government provides only 75 cents a year per student. The buildings are falling apart and there aren’t enough chairs for the children. | 04:44 |
| Rosa shows school books | School Principal Rosa da Cruz says these books have all been donated by a school in New Zealand. | 04:57 |
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| ROSA DA CRUZ: The Ministry of Education doesn’t provide any books. We get support from New Zealand. | 05:04 |
| Rosa | They provide books, pencils and pens. | 05:10 |
| Classroom | CAFAGNA: There’s another obstacle to learning for many of these children from the poor rural surround; quite often they’re starving. | 05:19 |
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| ROSA DA CRUZ: A few of them have collapsed with hunger. When I ask them why they haven’t eaten they say they have no food. | 05:29 |
| Rosa | I feel so sorry. I want to help but my salary is insufficient. What can I do? | 05:41 |
| Children play in school yard | CAFAGNA: Rosa da Cruz says her written pleas to the government for funding don’t even get replies. | 05:48 |
| Comorra Power Station | This is the government owned Comorra Power Station, which is meant to supply Dili with electricity. There are daily blackouts and this is the reason, the plant’s 23-year-old diesel engines are considered obsolete. Some haven’t been serviced for 5 years. | 05:57 |
| Cafagna with Filomeno | Filomeno Moniz de Rego is the Acting Plant Manager. He shows me the equipment used for the daily running repairs, tools from the plant’s one toolbox. | 06:23 |
| Filomeno | FILOMENO MONIZ DE REGO: If there are two generators that need servicing we have to share the tools. | 06:36 |
| Inside power station | CAFAGNA: It’s hot and dangerous work, yet they have no protective clothing. Here too, written requests to government for funding remain unanswered. | 06:42 |
| Filomeno | FILOMENO MONIZ DE REGO: It’s a joke, but it’s the reality we are dealing with. | 06:53 |
| Maintenance workers in power station | We have submitted many proposals for additional tools but have received no replies. | 06:59 |
| Pires family ‘snapshot’. Emilia highlighted | Music | 07:07 |
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| CAFAGNA: Tell me how rich East Timor is. |
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| Emilia. Super: | EMILIA PIRES: Well right now we have about three billion dollars in our fund and oil can also be a curse as you know, so right now I’m even reading all these books on, you know, resource curse to make sure that we do not fall in the trap. We need to manage our resource properly, so that we don’t follow those other countries that even though they are very rich, but they are poor. | 07:16 |
| Emilia in meeting | CAFAGNA: Emilia Pires is the country’s Finance Minister. She’s unforgiving in her dealings with a dysfunctional public service. EMILIA PIRES: When I first got here I inherited like | 07:51 |
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| ten divisions, quite a few dysfunctional, and the worst part is people not communicating with each other when they have to, so that the services get out the door. | 08:10 |
| Emilia | Advisers themselves do not speak to each other, you know, from the different division and then things get stuck. | 08:23 |
| Damaged buildings/People on street | STEVE BRACKS: I think what’s not widely understood, it wasn’t only in ‘99 the destruction of infrastructure of buildings of roads, of power systems. It was also, of course, a significant number of skilled and able people who are running organisations were driven out of the country; driven out for fear of retribution against their family. | 08:32 |
| Bracks. Super: | So, you know, people running water authorities and power systems. So getting that expertise back, getting people trained, that doesn’t happen overnight. | 08:52 |
| Cafagna with Palmira into classroom | CAFAGNA: Another Pires sibling, Palmira, is trying to teach the basic office skills necessary in any bureaucracy. While Palmira is teaching those at the bottom of the government hierarchy, | 09:00 |
| Bracks addressing cabinet | Steve Bracks gives lessons to the top. Here he’s addressing Cabinet Ministers. | 09:16 |
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| STEVE BRACKS: No one else of course is going to present in a positive light, what the government is doing, except you. No one else, there’s no one else out there to do that, so it’s very important that that’s done consistently well. | 09:21 |
| Gusmao addressing press conference | CAFAGNA: After nine months of work with the East Timorese Government, three of Mr Bracks’ major recommendations have been accepted. The establishment of a Civil Service Commission, an independent Auditor General’s office, and the setting up of an Anti-Corruption Commission. They were announced by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. | 09:38 |
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| PRIME MINISTER GUSMAO: We must make sure that corruption does not pay in Timor-Leste, that the risks of engaging in corrupt behaviour are real and substantial. | 09:59 |
| Gusmao greeting people arriving at conference
| CAFAGNA: East Timor’s sixty-two year old Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has been at the helm during much of the country’s tumultuous history. He says he wants to grow pumpkins on retirement, but not yet. | 10:14 |
| Damaged buildings | First, he says, the public wants to see his promises delivered before they lose patience and perhaps resort to the sort of violence seen too often here. |
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| People on Beachfront | When people come to you and say I have no running water, no decent school, no power, the roads – you know all the problems – what do you say to them? | 10:42 |
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| PRIME MINISTER GUSMAO: We have a mandate for five years. Don’t ask me to do in one day what we have to do in five years. | 10:53 |
| Gusmao. Super: | You know, we have a very good team, a very young team and I am their… you could say father. They are very young, very strong, very committed. If we say inexperienced – yes, we are in some way – but every day I get, I get more confidence in them. | 11:01 |
| Road works | CAFAGNA: They’re making some progress on some of the urgent problems. One of them is housing. | 11:31 |
| Damaged houses | Tens of thousands of houses were destroyed in the violence of 2006. | 11:47 |
| DP Camps | Since then, up to 100,000 people have been living in cramped, unhygienic camps scattered throughout Dili. In a bid to entice these people to return home, the government is offering a cash incentive, up to $4,500 a family. These hospital grounds were taken over by the refugees who set up camp in 2006. Today it’s being dismantled. | 11:55 |
| Pires family ‘snapshot’ highlighting Aurora | [singing] | 12:34 |
| Aurora in school | CAFAGNA: Sister Aurora Pires teaches the youngest at this Catholic school. It’s only just returning to normal after being inundated by refugees fleeing violence in the nearby hills. | 12:45 |
| Cafagna and Aurora shows former camp | SISTER AURORA PIRES: You can just imagine, that was just at Easter, Easter this year. We still had… for each mound you see, was a tent. CAFAGNA: So it was turned into a refugee camp? SISTER AURORA PIRES: This was turned into a refugee camp. | 12:58 |
| Children play in Mauk/Rebuilding in village | CAFAGNA: She takes us to the town of Mauk, twenty minutes drive away, where those who were living on the school grounds are now rebuilding their lives. Leoneto Guterres shows us the remains of his burnt home, the house he’s constructing and the tent he’s living in now. | 13:14 |
| Leoneto shows tent | LEONETO GUTERRES: What I hope for the future is that this kind of crisis will not be repeated. | 13:37 |
| Leoneto | Further, I would like to ask the government especially our present government, to give a guarantee to all the people in this country, that our future generations will not experience the same problems as we went through. If we have no unity, how can we rebuild the country? | 13:43 |
| UN vans | CAFAGNA: The international presence is still thick on the ground in East Timor - security forces, voluntary agencies and foreign government projects. | 14:09 |
| Foreign Affairs office | This building, for example, was donated by the Chinese. It was the biggest construction in town, but used only imported Chinese labourers. It’s the new office of Foreign Affairs and it boasts Timor’s first ever elevators, but no one uses them for fear of being trapped in a power blackout. | 14:19 |
| Cars splashes children/boats at water’s edge | If the Bracks’ principles of government succeed in East Timor and political stability holds, there is cause for optimism. | 14:43 |
| Pires Mum cooking for family | Back in Australia, the Pires matriarch prepares lunch for the extended family, for the expected visit of Emilia. | 14:56 |
| Emilia greets mum/ Family have lunch | But while Emilia lives in East Timor, her heart remains in Melbourne, where her husband Warren resides. | 15:11 |
| Emilia and Warren | How long have you been married? AMELIA PIRES: On the 21st of April, we make one year, and we haven’t had our honeymoon. WARREN: We haven’t had the time for it! | 15:19 |
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| CAFAGNA: How much time have you spent together in that one year? | 15:27 |
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| WARREN: Three weeks… it’s about three weeks, I’d say. Something like that. EMILIA PIRES: Yeah. CAFAGNA: How you coping Warren? WARREN: Oh well, it’s not easy but we hope it won’t always be like this. | 15:30 |
| Family at lunch | CAFAGNA: It has to be a quick lunch. Emilia needs to attend meetings across the globe to discuss East Timor’s oil fund investments. | 15:44 |
| Emilia at table | EMILIA PIRES: From there I go to Kuwait, and then from there I go to Dubai, and then I pick up a car and go back to Abu Dhabi, and then Bangkok. | 15:52 |
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| NEPHEW AT THE TABLE: Wow! | 16:00 |
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| EMILIA PIRES: And then I go to Bali, Bali – Timor… MUM: Stay there for a long time – |
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| EMILIA PIRES: No, only for one day and then I take off again to Washington. NEPHEW AT THE TABLE: And I thought I was busy! CAFAGNA: The people we’ve spoken to | 16:04 |
| Emilia interview | refer to you as a future leader, do you see yourself as a future leader? | 16:14 |
| Super: | EMILIA PIRES: No. I see myself more as a technical person. I don’t like to be politician, even though everybody says I am a politician because now I am the Minister of Finance. | 16:17 |
| Emilia and Cafagna in house | The only ambition I have is to make sure that this country turns around and I want to make sure that we are the next miracle of this region. That’s all. | 16:31 |
| Photo of Alfredo Pires | CAFAGNA: Alfredo Manuel Pires died a year before his life’s dream of an independent East Timor. | 16:47 |
| Emilia farewells Warren at airport | EMILIA PIRES: I remember my father saying you have to educate yourself, no matter what. We ended up in Australia with only the clothing on our back, and then we rebuilt our lives from scratch. We made it | 16:56 |
| Emilia | and we got our education, because my father use to say, educate yourself, because nobody can take that away from you. And this is what I say to the people here. | 17:08 |
| Football game on beach | Music | 17:18 |
| Cafagna and Aurora | SISTER AURORA: My father I would say he would be very proud of his children, he would be very proud, | 17:35 |
| Sunset at beach | but he would say always be aware to do justice for East Timor, for the Timorese and not for yourself. | 17:40 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Josephine Cafagna Producer: Mavourneen Dineen Camera: Peter Rothwell Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen | 18:01 |