East Timor’s former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has a knack of hiring international advisers who win access to his inner circle then publish tell-all books on leaving his employ. First there was Lynne Minion, whose Hello Missus: A Girl’s Own Guide to Foreign Affairs (2004) lampooned him mercilessly and sold like hot cakes. Now Paul Cleary follows the pattern, but in a more respectable book, worthy of serious attention.

A former correspondent of the Financial Review, Cleary worked in East Timor between 2003-05 as a press aide to Mr Alkatiri on oil matters, a position underwritten by the World Bank. He arrived in Dili with a strong sense of mission, determined to assist the Timorese to fight what he saw as Australia’s unprincipled grab for its oil resources. Like many others, he saw it simply as a David and Goliath story: a First World nation bullying a small, impoverished nation. Cleary traces the beginnings in the Whitlam government’s backing for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of the Portuguese colony, and identifies a pattern of cynical pursuit of oil riches, which he claims continues in Alexander Downer’s dealings with the foundling nation.