OUR  LEADING LADY’S NOT LEADING

“So much for Australia’s engagement with Asia,” wrote former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer this month, punctuating a claim that the media gives “close to 20 times the coverage to the US presidential elections as Indonesia’s.”

Kicking journos is an easy sport but needs two teams to engage - and in Jakarta our captain isn’t on the pitch.

In 2021 career civil servant Penny Williams was appointed Ambassador to Indonesia - a good news story that should have drawn the salaried reporters of Australia’s mainstream media that still retain offices in Southeast Asia.

The news value went beyond a well-qualified woman running our largest overseas mission, more a fortress since the Jemaah Islamiyah suicide bombing two decades ago that killed nine Indonesians and sowed fear into friendships.

In 2020 the neighbours celebrated 70 years of diplomacy. Until Ms Williams presented her credentials to President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo her 22 predecessors had been blokes. Not all had known the culture well or the language.

Ms Williams was different. As a young student from Tasmania, she’d spent time in Jakarta and learned Indonesian.

Her previous positions included High Commissioner to Malaysia, and  first Ambassador for Women and Girls, so clearly a DFAT favourite.

Then the bonus: She was also a Mum in a nation where the personal trumps policies. Westerners rarely get quizzed on their academic qualifications, more likely their reproduction records. Ms Williams scores four, presumably now adults.

Hoping to continue the positive and professional dealings enjoyed with her forerunner Gary Quinlan,  your correspondent offered congratulations and sought a sit-down interview:

Please tell us your plans for making the most of this splendid opportunity to start again by repairing a rotting relationship - so bad it's measurable and worrying. Here was a task for a smart woman.

No acknowledgement.  Resend. Resend.

Her politely badgered staff gave assurances she’d read all requests. Then a question about my questions - curious, because top newsmakers rarely need digestion pills to chew up humble hacks without burping.

“I'm keen to get the Ambassador's assessment of RI-Oz relations and how these can be improved.

“Apart from hearing what she'd been doing, I'm interested in her thoughts on getting messages about Australia through to the wong cilek (ordinary folk) and helping our middle and working classes (ANU terms) better understand their neighbours.

“Trade and security issues are regularly canvassed in the media so I'd prefer to stay on fresher matters; if she leads into pastures new I'll follow.”  The in-box stayed empty.

At the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival last October (right) she confirmed awareness of my long-term quest. I gave her a copy of my latest book Tyranny of Proximity and asked again for a sit-down. She said she’d check her schedule. 

All pleasant and respectful, but nothing happened.  Another stir; after two years of requests came the answer: “Unfortunately Ambassador Williams is not available at this time.” 

Assuming this might mean she’s unwell I wished her a speedy recovery. She turns 60 this month with no reports of incapacity.  The consolation prize offered was a ‘catch-up’ with a Consul-General, though not as the Ambassador’s stand-in authorised to speak on the record.

Ms Williams is entitled to favour certain scribes - that's commonplace.  Being snubbed is every journo's occupational hazard; we toughen up or quit. Personal slights get flicked off the carapace, but her apparent indifference to the Fourth Estate seems total.

 If the Ambassador has given any serious speeches or in-depth interviews in the local or Australian media since her appointment by the Morrison Government they’re well hidden.  In 2021 the Embassy website listed two ’Articles and Speeches’ and nothing since.

Ms Williams' three-year engagement will end soon,  so the Albanese administration will be listing candidates.  A model to consider is the late Richard Woolcott, ambassador 1975-78.

In a Pearls & Irritations obituary, John McCarthy, another former ambassador to Indonesia (1996-2001), wrote of his one-time colleague’s communication skills and “outstanding capacity to engage with everybody - from the most elevated to the rest of us.”

The most effective ambassadors are also activists and entrepreneurs.  Former TV entertainer Tantowi Yahya became a national figure in NZ (2017 -22) by running big concerts and debating West Papua independence.  

In Washington (2010 - 13) Dr Dino Patti Djalal got expats to invest in their homeland and was dubbed Indonesia’s ‘Marketeer of the Year’.

Nineteenth-century British editor Walter Bagehot asserted that an ambassador "is not simply an agent - (s)he is also a spectacle."

Nothing in this commentary suggests Ms Williams is not a competent administrator and energetic envoy, applauded by her employer. Maybe she squirrels away effectively in the shadows winning new friends and engineering deals to benefit all.

But to engage with Indonesia the media needs much more, an inspirational up-front leader, ideally from outside the bureaucracy. Essentials include a winning style and enthusiasm for using the press to articulate our democratic values and concerns in the marketplace of public opinion.

Or does Canberra fear that an adventurous and assured ambassador might upset the pricklies in Jakarta and start another tsunami in a rice bowl while an election campaign is underway?

(An invitation remains open for Ms Williams to respond to this commentary.) 

  First published in Pearls & Irritations, 17 January 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/our-leading-lady-in-jakarta-is-not-leading/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RI & OZ ON SAME PAGE - BRIEFLY

Smiles for now, but miles to go                         

It was good to see.

Edging gingerly from impartial commentator to partial citizen, the sight of Sydneysiders Scott and Jenny Morrison at the Presidential inauguration fleetingly eased one journo’s heart, corroded from witnessing too many erosions of goodwill.

What appeared to be the only white faces in the VIP rows of Asians, Arabs and Africans sent a positive signal, as the diplomats’ cliché goes.  The Prime Minister’s presence said: 

Australia shares the triumph of the people’s will in the world’s third largest democracy.

With the exception of China, which cares nothing for democracy but still sent Vice-President Wang Qishan, most nations outside the region didn’t bother, or made gestures, not statements.  Donald Trump’s envoy was Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.   She’s 14^th in the Presidential line of succession.

Lots to read here.

Back home the ScoMos and the Widodos got a page-top family snap in the national daily The Australian, plus a happy-clapper crowd pic and crisp analysis from correspondent Amanda Hodge.

Not quite up to the matey 2015 coverage when Morrison’s predecessor Malcolm Turnbull shared a blusukan (walkabout) in Tanah Abang market with President Joko Widodo, but a refresher for the often volatile relationship between two vastly different cultures.

Remember PM Tony Abbott proclaiming ‘more Jakarta, less Geneva’ in 2013? Soon after everything tumbled like Humpty Dumpty off the wall of good intentions when spy agencies were caught tapping President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s phone

Before he left for his one-day in Jakarta, Morrison said the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement was about to get the green light in Canberra, so hoped Jakarta was also clear to go.

Widodo reportedly replied ‘no issues’, though that’s still uncertain as Indonesia has a new parliament.

Although free trade topped Morrison’s list he has another agenda, according to Ambassador Gary Quinlan (right).  He told The Jakarta Post that the PM wants his nation’s citizens to “see Islam through Indonesian eyes.”

Morrison plans to tell Australians that the Islam practised by almost 90 per cent of Indonesia’s 270 million people is “moderate, tolerant and inclusive”.

Quinlan said on an earlier visit the PM had explained his personal commitment to interfaith dialogue to Widodo as a major way to improve relations between the countries and “as a model of how two close neighbours can be a beacon to others”.

If Morrison follows through and uses the PM pulpit to talk about Islam, the Liberal Party leader will be finding turnoffs. In last year’s Australian census more than 30 per cent said they had no religion; the number increases with every national stocktake.

A ‘Worldviews of Generation Z’ study last year by Australian academics found that although teens generally accepted religious diversity, many were concerned about the impact of religion on life in Australia.

 Just 2.3 per cent of Australia’s 25 million people say they’re Muslims. Islam tends to get a bad press as extremists draw the flashlights.  This has distorted understanding of the complexities and riches of a religion followed by a quarter of the world’s population.

Almost 90 per cent of the people next door are Muslims – a fact Australians need to accept and understand if the neighbors are going to go beyond trading goods and develop friendships.

Australian politicians tend to mute their religious views for fear of alienating advocates for separation of State and faith.  Morrison may be the ideal advocate for Islam; he’s upfront about his evangelical Pentecostal Christian beliefs so mud thrown by Islamophobes alleging he’s a covert Muslim won’t stick.

During the Federal election this year, Morrison broke with long-standing political wisdom that prayer should be private.  Instead he invited the media to witness him vigorously proclaiming the Gospel in his local Horizon church in suburban Sydney.

He said he prayed for victory – and got his present.

Quinlan said Government-to-Government relations were “very good with a new level of maturity on the political calculus.  Both countries are heavily involved in solving problems and having a strategic sense of each other.

“However improving people-to-people relationships is a big challenge because it depends ultimately on the attitudes of Australians and Indonesians to each other, not just on government policy.”

His concerns are underpinned by this year’s Lowy Institute survey of Australian public attitudes.  The poll asked Australians about their country’s ‘best friend in the world’.  New Zealand topped the list ahead of the US and UK.  Four per cent of respondents said ‘China’, just one per cent ‘Indonesia’.

Despite more than a million antipodeans breasting Bali’s bars and beaches every year, the Institute says its long-term polling ‘has demonstrated the wariness with which Australians and Indonesians regard each other.’

 “We have to move on - there’s too much ignorance among many Australians about Indonesia, often based on out-of-date images,” Quinlan said. “Indonesia is growing so quickly and developing so fast, there’s widespread creative energy among young Indonesians. We need to tap more of this potential, especially for young Australians.”

Quinlan urged more Australians and Indonesians to experience each other’s countries and to speak out about the success of contemporary Indonesia, but recognized many were media shy.

“I hope having the PM explain Indonesian Islam will help dispel the ignorance.”

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First published in The Jakarta Post 26 October 2019