He came, he saw, he wandered
A wet Sydney welcome Credit Tribune
Forecasting outcomes from international leaders’ chats is a fraught exercise. Media hustlers offer topics and hint scoops. Flops get overlooked. And so it was with Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s trip to Sydney earlier this month.
Before heading Down Under for a billed three-day visit (in reality just one full day) Jokowi briefed selected Australian journalists to steer the news agenda onto his road.
It was supposed to be an EV batteries mineral deal yielding billions in investments, plus extracting major concessions on discriminatory travel rules. Neither happened.
Former ambassador John McCarthy deflated some of the hype: ‘Truth be told, our relationship with Indonesia has become a mite boring. Never mind. In this business boring is good.’
Then he unscrewed the lid the media manipulators wanted locked by claiming that Indonesia will never be a ‘quasi-ally’ of Australia.
‘We need its heft (not ‘fence-sitting neutrality’) …to work with its fellow Southeast Asians to bring China and America back from the brink. This will involve more than engagement. It will involve activism. We need it as a strong pole in a multi-polar region.’
If such sturdy stuff was on the Sydney agenda it never surfaced.
Credit: Detik News
Instead, the leaders’ business was so speedily dispatched Jokowi had time for more EV battery talk with Peter Dutton, a wet harbour police boat cruise and jolly pix with endangered Sumatran Tigers, ironically safer in Taronga Zoo than their natural environment. Their Bali and Java rellies have already been shot into history. Literally.
As a brief break not bad. As a strategy spruik, not good, and few know because the hidden message was to appease Indonesia’s radical nationalists ready to inflame real or imagined Western plots in the upcoming election campaign as they’ve done before. Hence this hose-down:
‘We recognise the importance of Indonesia’s territorial integrity and your sovereignty as a nation. And we respect that, and we work with you on a range of issues covering the difficult geopolitical circumstances of our time.’
Decoded this means a couple of things: First we’ll tell you more sometime about AUKUS nuclear-powered subs in your waters. Second, we won’t back Papuan separatists like we supported your independence during the 1945-49 war against the colonial Dutch.
Having deplaned on possibly his last visit as president (he steps down in October 2024 after an election in February) Jokowi stayed media shy, doubtless fearing questions about human rights abuses, persecution of gays and a retreating democracy. Or maybe the World Trade Organisation.
The joint leaders’ list of must-dos ‘reaffirmed the importance of the multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core … focused on improving WTO functions and having a fully functioning dispute settlement mechanism by 2024.’
This is gold-standard hypocrisy because Indonesia is giving two fingers to the WTO by stopping many critical mineral exports.
Late last year the global authority ruled the bans violated its tariffs and trade agreement. But Indonesia refused to restart its port bulk loaders, arguing it needs the ores to stay in the archipelago and be processed.
The Asia Times reported Economic Coordinating Minister Airlangga Hartarto saying developed countries controlling other nations' exports was a ‘form of modern-day colonialism that will inhibit Indonesia’s economic growth and development.’
‘Down-stream processing’ has been an unhatched egg in Australia for so long it has addled as we continue to ship cheap iron ore to China and import its costly steel products. Jakarta has watched our inability to change this system so is taking action by building Chinese-funded smelters.
It has more nickel than any other country and more than it can currently use. The European Union wants raw ore for stainless steel and EV batteries, so complained to the WTO.
The EU won but Indonesia’s response was: We’ll appeal and keep doing things our way. According to Reuters Jokowi said: ‘We want to be a developed country, we want to create jobs. If we are scared of being sued, and we step back, we will not be a developed country.’
That’s a road Canberra won’t explore because we think we’re sticklers for international rules and use the WTO to clobber countries like China that has banned our wines and barley ostensibly for political reasons.
The meeting also celebrated the third anniversary of the Indonesia -Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Proof that the free trade deal has yet to live up to expectations comes with the Foreign Ministers being told to ‘renew the plan of action’.
The IA-CEPA includes quotas on work and holiday visas, eventually allowing entry for 5,000 Indonesians a year. This unused clause waits for another meeting - whoever that may be from Indonesia - and preferably with more time.
As he wanted, Jokowi’s plans to sell EVs to the neighbours and get WA lithium topped the talking points. While a presidential tick helps, in the end, any deals will be done by investors who’ll decide whether trade makes business sense.
Australian bankers reckon the risks too great to invest in Jokowi’s Nusantara new city signature project in East Kalimantan which is already looking parched for want of dollars. Who’ll put money into a show where the state is corrupt, returns hard to detect, and worries whether the cheerleader’s successor will be waving Widodo’s flags?
Having given much space to pre-visit predictions, the AFR discovered a ‘strongly-worded communique’ driven by ‘international tough-mindedness’, language invisible to other readers.
The 40-point document was thick with soft synonyms suggesting the leaders’ teams ‘welcomed, recognised’ and ‘underlined’ ideas, but blandishments are decorations, not enforceable treaties.
As Ross Taylor, former president of the Perth-based Indonesia Institute and a persistent advocate for fairer and cheaper entry permits for Indonesians, claimed there’s a ‘huge market’ wanting to enjoy the Wide Brown but finding the process discriminatory and onerous:
Why not treat Indonesians like we handle Malaysians and Singaporeans who get cheap online visas? Because - as Lowy research shows - we don’t trust ‘em, and it’ll take real tiger talk to start a change.
John McCarthy should be at the next leaders’ love-in.
##
First published in Michael West Media, 17 July 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/unpacking-the-presidents-mien-just-how-successful-was-jokowis-visit-to-australia/
No comments:
Post a Comment