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It’s become a ritual for every Australian leader
for the past half-century.
Before the Governor-General the new PMs swear an
oath of allegiance to the Crown, then another of office. The third is delivered outside Yarralumla. The wording varies but the message is the
same: I pledge to improve relations with
the folk next door.
Tony Abbott said it best and was the fastest to forget: ‘More Jakarta, less Geneva’.
There’s concrete behind the promise and that’s
not a metaphor: Having the biggest
Embassy in the world is supposed to show Australia is serious about cementing
ties.
Though not friendships. The universal symbols of
mutual affection and respect are open doors and heartfelt greetings. Visitors get neither at the iron gates of Australia’s
citadel in the heart of its giant neighbour.
The $415 million Embassy built in 2016 is a five-hectare
fortress. Missing is a moat. In reality that’s the Arafura Sea separating
the two countries by less than 350 kilometres.
The Embassy is encircled by blast-resistant walls
to deter terrorists like those who bombed an older building in 2004 killing
nine and injuring 150. All were
Indonesians.
The safety of occupants and visitors is essential. That principle also guides the design of
prisons. The diplomats locked behind the ring of steel (some live in the 32
townhouses inside) advise Canberra on policies towards the world’s third-largest
democracy.
To do this
they tune into political commentary filtered through newspapers and TV
newscasts from stations so partisan they make Fox News look balanced. From their ergonomic offices staffers assess the
moods and movements of citizens across an archipelago of 6,000 plus inhabited
islands.
More than 100 of the 180 Australians from 14
departments who work at the Embassy and three consulates have fled along with
Ambassador Gary Quinlan. He’ll miss a fine
residence which offsets the Fort Oz sterility.
In the arboreal suburb of Menteng, with former president Megawati
Soekarnoputri as a neighbour, it’s splendidly furnished with an impressive
display of Australian art and culture.
The spooks and bureaucrats now safe in Barton fill
time with encrypted calls to the Big Durian.
No whiffs of the reputedly aphrodisiac fruit or preachers’ calls to
prayers wafting over the walls to distract.
Also missing are the odours of coffee and smoking
sate, the cries of hawkers, the heat and floods, the crazy cacophony of Southeast
Asia’s biggest city. Instead the days pass calling contacts to ask what’s
happening, arrange Zooms and upload smartphone vision.
Contacts are not connections. Images on screens are
not human interactions. Indonesians are social people in three dimensions – four
if including spirituality. They want to
know us face-to-face and shake our hands. Their culture isn’t bookish, it’s oral.
We ask: What’s your job? We go slowly, gleaning
intimacies grain by grain.
They’re direct.
The political is personal. Are
you married? How many kids? How old are you? Where do you live? Where are your parents from? What’s your
religion? Favourite food – and how do
you cook it?
If the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic
Partnership free trade agreement comes into force on 5 July, business will claim
a triumph of closeness.
Nonsense. More of our cereals and meats might appear
on the slabs of traditional markets, though few consumers will know the origins
of their goodies. But backstories featuring
wheatbelt header drivers and station hands mustering on horseback would excite.
Don’t go, don’t know. Though more than nine million Indonesians travelled
overseas last year, only 160,000 made it Down Under. That included around 20,000 students. The
tourist industry alleges harsh visa rules, which don’t apply to Malaysians and
Singaporeans, deter Indonesians.
In the same period, 1.3 million Australians flew
to the Hindu enclave of Bali, population 4.2 million. Few ventured into the islands beyond where
the other 266 million live, most of them Muslim, to learn more about this
complex nation.
Few in government know how to build mateship when
differences are often extreme so here are some pointers.
Sir John Gorton, PM between 1968 and 71, is
largely forgotten in Australia and totally so in Indonesia. Though not his American wife Bettina who
spoke Indonesian and Javanese, collected batik and lectured journos on
Indonesian culture.
A 1983 obituary read: ‘She won great success as a
result of her deep interest in the cultural life of the region, her warm, open
approach to the people she met, and the effectiveness of the speeches she made
in the Indonesian language.’
Since second president Soeharto was dethroned in 1998 things have been kicked downhill by riots in Jakarta, killings in East Timor, spyings and executions in Java and brutalities in West Papua.
There was a brief pause in 2015 when a tie-less Malcolm Turnbull was taken by President Joko Widodo on one of his famous blusukan (walkabouts). They went to the vast Tanah Abang market and were given a Gilling-style welcome.
An Australian VIP snapping selfies among the masses like a happy tourist? He should have brought a didgeridoo and wowed the crowd. Playing was one of Bettina Gorton’s many talents. Fears of terrorists and Covid-19 curb such interactions; these need to be measured and not permanent as the paranoid urge.
The 1914 public assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria helped start World War I but didn’t stop other leaders and the led getting together as the years rolled on.
The pandemic offers a
chance to reset relationships between Indonesians and Australians. That’s going to take an almighty bipartisan effort
across all activities and not just the STDs – security, trade and defence.
Covid-19 Update: The government has deployed 340,000 military to help police enforce social distancing, raising fears the Army is getting back into civilian affairs. The nation has 25,216 confirmed cases and 1,520 deaths.
First published in Pearls and Irritations, 1 June 2020: https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-more-jakarta-less-geneva/
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