The reasons they attract attention are threefold.

Firstly, because they are so damnably unnecessary and would not be happening if the government in Dili had behaved more sensibly.

Secondly, because they confirm Slugcatcher’s worst fears about the quality of advice given to the government of East Timor.

Thirdly, because they highlight the wisdom of Woodside Petroleum sidelining a decision on developing the Sunrise gas project in the Timor Sea.

Last year, much to the annoyance of the people advising the government in a freshly-liberated East Timor, The Slug grumbled about the stupidity of the country’s negotiating position on Sunrise and the terms of a seabed boundary with Australia.

It seemed then that the East Timorese had emerged from some sort of time warp that had trapped them in an era when governments could tell oil companies where and when they could invest.

Essentially, the claim was that Sunrise gas had to be processed in East Timor, even if it meant somehow piping it across a 3000m deep sea trench. Not only that, but most (if not all) the royalties should go to East Timor as some sort of “conscience payment” because the Indonesians had been horrible to them for the previous 30 years.

That times had been tough in Timor is not in dispute. But bad things that have happened in an earlier era cannot colour what happens in the future, and neither can you demand that someone else make good a situation which they did not create.

The Slug, blowing his trumpet just a little, warned then that East Timor was in danger of missing a golden opportunity and seemed to be failing to grasp the fact that having 50%, or even 20%, of something was infinitely better than 0% of everything.

As feared, Woodside pulled the plug on Sunrise – largely because the country was being just too damned difficult to deal with, and also because there is no shortage of gas in safer waters.

Instead of developing Sunrise, Woodside is focusing on Pluto, Brecknock, Scott Reef – and a host of other investment opportunities. East Timor gets nothing.

If a different negotiating position had been taken, it is possible to see Sunrise being developed today. The world wants the gas, and it’s prepared to help a once down-trodden country.

But that same down-trodden country just can’t help itself because it continues to live in the past and wants the world to feel sorry for it.

Well, The Slug is sorry, but The Slug is also realistic and right now he can see no way that anyone is going to invest a cracker in East Timor because it has proven itself to be impossible to deal with – and now it looks like slipping back into its troubled past.

Failure to agree with Woodside on the terms for Sunrise and a failure to sign a treaty with Australia, have played lead-up roles in last week’s riots.

If nothing else, the troubles in Dili mean that Sunrise will remain “gas too far” that will take many more years before it is developed – and only after a dramatic change of attitude in Dili.