Already a subscriber?At just six months old, energy executive Niny Borges was carried on her mother’s back across mountains separating Timor-Leste from the Indonesian province of West Timor.
The extended Borges family had scattered in the aftermath of Portugal’s withdrawal from Timor-Leste. Her aunts travelled by boat to Australia – there was no “stop the boats” fever then – and found themselves in Melbourne, a centre of pro-Timorese activism. One of them started the family reunion application under Australian immigration law. By the time it was approved, she had moved to Darwin, and in 1979 the Borges family landed there.
Nearly 50 years have passed. Borges has gained a politics degree from Wollongong University, a law degree from Sydney University, and a Masters in Law from the University of London. She’s helped to set up Timor-Leste’s electricity market after independence, and had a hand in the negotiations for the Timor Sea Treaty – which the Australian government
She seems more comfortable talking about her current role, naturally, and doesn’t want to talk at all about the bugging of the Timor-Leste negotiators. But I’m keen to find out a bit more about what drove Borges – and two older sisters who have also had stellar careers – to advance so relentlessly. At Sydney University law school, the lifestyles of the privately educated students she encountered for the first time were foreign to her – she worked at Country Road, and made cold-calls for a furniture store. She focused on human rights law. As her last exam approached, she suffered a punctured lung and was offered a deferment. But she had come into contact with the Fretilin movement, led by future president Xanana Gusmao, and felt there was no time to lose.
“At the core of it was negotiating something that meant so much to me as well. So, you’re not just learning it. You’re not just doing it. You’re engaged in it – really.”Australian of having bugged their negotiators to gain an edge in the talks over oil and gas worth an estimated $US50 billion – a fortune for the tiny nation. Borges was part of the team then, but as a representative of Equinor today, she doesn’t want to comment., Borges had moved on.