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Defence Minister Richard Marles telling Indonesians of “shared collective security” is irony rich. In February neither nation saw basic fishing craft sail 800 km here, drop passengers and head home.
Indonesians worry about their confrontational neighbour Down Under. It points missiles in our direction and invites foreign nuclear-capable bombers to use nearby airfields. The Aussies are also shopping for warships and submarines to sail in seas that lap our shores. Alarming?
Relax folks. These weapons are meant to smash someone else far away; they'll just fly overhead and sail past. She’ll be apples.
This was the comforting message carried last week by Marles in his two-day dash to Jakarta to meet counterpart Prabowo Subianto and offer congrats. He’d just had a major but delayed promotion to President of the Republic.
The official results of the 14 February election won’t be available for another three weeks. The two losing candidates’ teams have combined, alleging “fraud, meddling and favouritism" and demanding an inquiry.
These issues didn’t bother Marles or another in-and-out visitor to Jakarta, Defence Force Chief General Angus Campbell, also scrambling to shake Prabowo's hand.
This led to a flurry of mainstream media stories on a detail-free but adjective-heavy "very significant defence cooperation agreement within the next few months.”
Most Indonesians paid little attention; as in Oz, domestic issues top their concerns. The price of rice has risen 20 per cent in the past few months.
Biggest fleet coming
Marles reportedly told Prabowo his government plans to build the largest naval fleet since World War II for "mutual security … the single deepest and most significant defence cooperation agreement in the history of the two countries.
"Australia and Indonesia have a shared destiny and a shared collective security and that is the basis on which we are moving forward with our own defence planning."
The bureaucratic hype sounds bracing but the words are bullshit. The “collective security” was exposed when an Indonesian fishing boat or boats carrying 39 mainly Pakistani asylum seekers crossed an open sea, beached their human cargo, and then zipped away undetected
Either the fishers are extraordinary skilled seafarers, or shared surveillance is a nonsense. As a footnote to his talks Marles added the ministers are “discussing the issues of people smuggling and people trafficking.”
Then there’s the issue of acceptance. Prabowo won’t take over till October when he’ll have to fill a Cabinet of disparate Ministers. Not all will like their neighbour or its prezzies.
Thanks, but no thanks
As ANU Professor Hugh White has pointed out, Indonesian “economic growth is driving it towards a position of political and economic influence that it seems both uninterested in and incapable of exploiting.”
In other words, Jakarta hasn't been keen on being courted by the US (via postmen from Canberra) or China, but falls back on old cliches about treating all equally, staying midstream and not joining pacts.
Australian defence funding for this financial year is AUD $50 million (US$33 billion). Indonesia, eleven times larger than Australia in population, wants to spend US$25 billion.
Despite the archipelago’s intense religious-based hostility to the godless Communists, the government has no desire to confront Beijing. The PRC is buying megatonnes of Indonesian resources - particularly coal and nickel - and lending billions for infrastructure projects like high-speed rail.
Indonesia has already been caught in a ‘debt trap’ say some economists, owing more than US$27 billion according to reported Bank Indonesia data.
China has 55 people to every Australian and an economy that could devour Oz and its neighbours without belching. It already has a nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missile that could reach and vaporise Canberra.
Curiously the idea that buying lots of ordnance from Western countries and signing pacts might help Australia in a stoush with a monster has merit for some, like Marles and Campbell.
Though they argue they're concerned with defence and not aggression, it's hard not to see otherwise.
The arms trade is far more important than the educators, civil engineers, climate scientists, inventors of better ways to provide peace, medical workers who want to find cures for nasty diseases - and just about everyone else who’d like to be close to Indonesia and help the people.
In a statement ahead of his trip Marles said the two countries have a long history of close cooperation on maritime security and would "share an ambition to further broaden and deepen our defence relationship.
“This is a shared challenge for both of our countries and we need to be working cooperatively.”
Villainy nearby
To placate edgy nationalists he signaled to journalists that “there’s no support for any independence movements … we support the territorial sovereignty of Indonesia and that includes those provinces being part of Indonesia, no ifs, no buts, and I want to be clear about that.”
If "we" means himself and a few senior conscience-cauterised Cabinet members he may be right. Otherwise, he's wrong. Politicians, NGOs and churches distressed at reports of brutality, evictions and killings are backing the Free Papua movement, well-embedded in Australia.
Indonesian human rights activist and lawyer Veronica Koman lives in Oz though she's wanted in her homeland for alleged incitement and spreading of fake news online about West Papua.
Jakarta took over West Papua from the Dutch after a staged referendum in 1969 when the hand-picked local ‘leaders’ voted unanimously to accept Indonesian control.
Since then the issue of independence has bubbled along more like a hot spring than the cool pool of Marles’ rhetoric, at times erupting into heated confrontations. In 2006 then PM John Howard turned up the heat by giving 43 asylum seekers from West Papua refugee status.
Seven years later the Australian Signals Directorate clumsily bugged the private phones of Australophile President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his late wife Ani. The couple and their country were furious.
In 2017, Indonesia parked military cooperation following an alleged mocking of the national ideology of Pancasila by an Australian language teacher.
Last year a US-dominated multi-nation defence exercise dubbed Super Garuda Shield was held, prompting this comment from China:
“The US needs to earnestly respect regional countries’ effort to uphold peace and stability … stop meddling in South China Sea issues, stop sowing discords and creating trouble.”
The real challenge is bringing the people on both sides of the Arafura Sea closer and less distrustful. Not so easy when the tip of a Tomahawk missile looms just over the horizon.
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First published in Michael West Media 2 March 2024: https://michaelwest.com.au/richard-marles-indonesia-australia-relations/
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