Australian Dictionary of Biography

Frank Antonio Favaro (1935–2000), businessman and Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agent, was born on 21 June 1935 at Innisfail, Queensland, elder son of Italian-born parents Ernesto Favaro, blacksmith, and his wife Guiseppa Fiumara, née Dibtoso. In June 1940, after the family moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, Frank’s father was interned as an enemy alien until September 1943, while his mother worked as a cook in a local pub for little return. Frank later described these years as having been ‘extremely difficult times’ (Panichi 1999, 27). The family briefly lived at Mareeba, Queensland, before settling in Darwin in 1947, where he attended primary school. Aged eleven, he lied to the police about his age to obtain a driver’s licence, so he could help out with his father’s small transport business. By 1955 he owned a profitable Fiat dealership. On 21 May that year he married Western Australian-born Margaret Ann Tunbridge in Darwin. When he moved with his family to Dili, Portuguese Timor, in 1971, he became well known as a coffee plantation owner, proprietor of the Hotel Dili, and a pilot with his own private plane.

In 1975 Favaro became deeply embroiled in Australia’s role in the increasingly volatile colony. Following a revolution in Portugal in April 1974, the incoming regime acknowledged the colony’s right to self-determination and independence. Two main competing groups sought to steer the former Portuguese Timor towards independence: Fretilin (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor), which sought immediate independence, and the more moderate Timorese Democratic Union (União Democrática Timorense, or UDT), while Indonesia would soon seek sovereignty over the former colony. Indonesian officials began regularly briefing Australian diplomatic staff in Jakarta about their covert activities to subvert independence. On 20 February 1975 the Joint Intelligence Organisation, concerned about the lack of Australian-held information, sought ASIS’s advice on a range of matters in east Timor. On 24 March, while he visited Darwin, Favaro was recruited by ASIS as a ‘traveller-agent,’ without pay, to provide information about unfolding events. Having been a cooperative contact for the Australian Secret Intelligence Organization when he lived in Darwin, he was willing to assist, in his words, as a ‘patriotic Australian’ (Toohey and Pinwill 1989, 173). He began providing information, often on matters of common knowledge such as export statistics contained in copies of the local government gazette. His reporting was unpredictable though; being unpaid he prioritised his business interests, and ASIS terminated his engagement on 22 September.

With his garrulous, sociable nature, Favaro had been a problematic choice as an ASIS agent. In Dili he promoted himself to local authorities and the Fretilin leadership as the unofficial Australian consul, the Department of Foreign Affairs choosing not to contradict this ruse. A ‘busily, bustling figure’ (Hall 1978, 141), even after hostilities broke out between Fretilin and UDT in August, Favaro flew visitors, including an Australian parliamentary delegation, around east Timor. He escorted a Bulletin–Channel 9 Network crew to Fretilin’s headquarters, sent ‘dozens of messages’ (SMH 1975, 2) back to Darwin, and conducted interviews with Australian media via his plane’s radio. Attesting that they never took sides between the warring Timorese political parties, the Favaros signalled their neutrality by flying over the hotel Australian flags sewn by Margaret and her sister.

Favaro’s ‘private thoughts’ (Plane 1999, 8), though, were with the moderate UDT. A ‘rumbustious’ and ‘good-heart[ed]’ person (Jolliffe 2000, 43), he passed messages of surrender from UDT sympathisers to the Fretilin leadership, and urged Fretilin not to mistreat its prisoners. Others described his engagements with the two parties as ‘clumsy and insensitive’ (Dunn 1983, 236), creating distrust. When he left Dili for the last time on 1 November 1975, UDT accused him of being a Fretilin spy. Fretilin itself considered him a spy for Indonesia, the Portuguese labelled him an agent provocateur, and the Indonesians considered him a spy for Australia. Gough Whitlam later judged that ‘Favaro’s role harmed Australia’s credibility with Indonesia’ (Canberra Times 1981, 24).

Though Favaro’s engagement with ASIS was fleeting, what was dubbed the ‘Favaro Affair’ became enmeshed in high-profile Australian political events. On 16 October 1975, in response to a question in Federal parliament, the minister for foreign affairs, Senator Don Willesee, had denied Favaro’s official involvement with Australian agencies in the former Portuguese colony. When ASIS subsequently confirmed that Favaro had been engaged, it appeared that Willesee had misled the parliament. Consequently, on 21 October Prime Minister Whitlam dismissed ASIS director Bill Robertson for authorising Favaro’s engagement without the government’s knowledge and against instructions not to interfere in the former colony’s internal affairs. After the dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November, the incoming caretaker Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser reportedly said that Robertson’s removal was ‘a powerful argument that Whitlam was not fit to govern’ (Jolliffe 2000, 43). For his part, Favaro maintained that he was a scapegoat, and that he had been told he was directly answerable to Whitlam. He reflected bitterly: ‘all I want is my reputation back,’ and ‘if they ever ask me again to do anything for them, I’ll tell them to stick it’ (Toohey and Pinwill 1989, 177, 166).

On returning to Darwin, Favaro spend several years repairing the damage his family’s property had sustained in Cyclone Tracy. He studied naturopathy and opened a macromolecular medicine clinic, and later worked as a natural therapist while living in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. In August 1998 his sons Gino and Ernesto reclaimed the Hotel Dili as the first foreigners to have their old title documents recognised under Indonesian rule. Suffering from diabetes, Favaro died of a heart attack on 2 October 2000 in Adelaide. He was survived by his wife and their children, Gino, Pina, Ernesto, Antonio, and Nina.