Good Guys, Bad Guys: Images of the Australian Soldier in East Timor

It is said that pictures tell a thousand words, but to Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, the images of Australian soldiers pointing guns at suspected militiamen in East Timor made one word stand out: ‘belligerent’. Images that meant one thing in Australia represented quite different and often opposite meanings in Southeast Asia. In the Australian press, the Australian soldiers were constructed as ‘the good guys’ helping out a neighbouring country in trouble. The press in some Southeast Asian countries told quite a different story — that of the Australian soldiers as intimidating and therefore the ‘bad guys’ of the region. Through a textual analysis of these images, this paper examines the ways in which the Australian soldiers have been represented in the press in Southeast Asia. This paper also discusses the role the reading of these images played in negotiating Australia's role in East Timor and the region.