JOKOWI GOES WALKABOUT

Stepping carefully Down Under

After two years in office Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has an Australian visit scheduled for November. Outcomes and hopes may not sync.  Duncan Graham reports:

Jokowi’s door knock comes a year after new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s invite when the men spent a half day together in Jakarta.  That speed date was billed as a relationships ‘reset’ after drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in April, 2015. Australia was outraged and ambassadors recalled.

Jokowi was urged to rapidly ride the goodwill wave that followed Turnbull’s unseating of Tony Abbott.  The former PM had been on the nose in Indonesia for coupling Australia’s 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aid with appeals to end the death penalty.

The President ignored the advice.  Turnbull’s popularity rapidly waned.  In July he called an election but plans went awry.

His conservative government now holds office by a whisker. A rise in right-wing bigotry has let the Islamophobic One Nation Party into the Senate, and the mining-dependent economy has slumped.

Then Indonesians learned they’re unloved.  An Australia-Indonesia Centre survey showed 47 percent of Australians view their northern neighbor unfavourably – preferring folk from almost anywhere else in Asia - even repressive China.

On the ledger’s other side 87 per cent of Indonesians had positive views of Australia, mostly gleaned from the media for few visit; here’s another matter to address as visa rules and costs are travel deterrents.

When announcing Jokowi’s first State visit Down Under, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi promoted the nebulous STD formula - Security, Trade, and Defence – as reason enough for chats.

Free trade is top of the menu, but unlikely to yield as Indonesia is deeply protectionist. More Australian investment depends on Indonesia establishing the rule of law and crushing corruption.

Marsudi said the President’s trip would ‘enhance economic cooperation’.  Also in bold type: Counter-terrorism, cyber crime and people smuggling plus fish and beef issues.  All necessary – and insufficient. 

‘Bi-lateral ties’ feature so commonly in these pronouncements that every male delegate should wear one; female negotiators could model ‘close-knit relationships’ which are forever ‘warm’.

Jokowi’s attendance at the 2014 G20 Brisbane summit was not a State visit.  This time he may include Sydney where his eldest son, businessman Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 28, had some tertiary education.

The President is expected to address the Federal Parliament in Canberra but he’s neither an orator in his own tongue nor a competent English speaker.  He won’t eclipse his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s stirring speech in 2012 labelled ‘transformative’ by hardnose political commentators.

The euphoria didn’t last. A year later international media revealed that Australian spies had been bugging the phones of SBY and his wife Ani.  Abbott refused to apologise.

There’ll be more official announcements as Jokowi’s schedules are sharpened, maybe a few cultural exchanges and some flavoursome clichés.  Turnbull has already matched Marsudi’s rhetoric with statements about ‘deep and broad-ranging’ partnerships.

So far nothing to indicate any lasting intellectual engagement to dilute the distrust exposed by the AIC poll.  Indonesian language and culture studies, which should be the foundation for better understanding, are dropping off the curriculum despite academic protests.

Earlier this year Australian National University Professor Frank Bongiorno wrote of Australian leaders’ ideas about Asia.  He said many have ‘a narrower vision of relations with Asia … As in the past, the temptation is to try to bend Asia to the economic and political purposes of the present’.

Some issues won’t bend to fit the Australian agenda.   Seaweed farmers in the eastern islands want Jokowi to scrap the 1997 treaty between Indonesia and Australia on the Timor Sea Exclusive Economic Zone.

The farmers are suing for damages allegedly caused by the Montara 30,000 barrel oil spill which polluted the Timor Sea after a 2009 drill rig blowout.

The treaty, signed when dictator General Soeharto held power, is also under attack by Timor Leste.  The former Indonesian province wants the document reworked to give a greater share of undersea resources. The parties have been before the UN Conciliation Commission.

Should the mild-mannered Javanese leader speak up Australia is likely to use the ‘legal processes underway’ excuse to dodge debate.

Less easy to avoid is Indonesia’s treatment of Papuan dissidents which concerns human rights advocates.  It’s also rattling Pacific nations which see a Melanesian bond with indigenous Papuans.  

Vanuatu and Solomon Islands raised their worries at a UN Human Rights Council session in June.  They were slapped down by Indonesian delegates using their standard ‘sovereign rights’ argument against outside involvement in domestic issues.

Australia’s official position has long been non-interference and recognition of Indonesia’s ‘Unitary State’, but NGOs don’t do the diplomatic waltz.  

Allegations of civilians abused by heavy-handed military don’t get much airplay in Indonesia; but they do in Australia where church groups and activists back self-determination for what they call West Papua.

The issue of almost 14,000 asylum seekers stranded in the archipelago en-route to Australia when the smugglers’ boats were stopped may also get an airing. Australia wants a ‘regional solution’ but Indonesians say that’s NATO – No Action, Talk Only.

Indonesia’s harsh treatment of gays is another issue which might rile protestors.

Although no Australians are currently on death row, abhorrence of capital punishment is widespread and likely to be raised in demonstrations. Security will minimise direct Presidential embarrassment, but accompanying journalists will not ignore placard wavers.

The shriller the statements, the more Indonesians will be inflamed as nationalism sweeps the nation. After the executions of Chan and Sukumaran The Courier Mail ran a front page mock up of a smiling Jokowi showing a bloody hand. 

Anything similar this time could result in the President cancelling his walkabout and staying home where the electorate still loves its leader.

But all this could be drowned by an event far from Australian-Indonesian relations.  Although official dates for Jokowi’s visit have yet to be announced insiders say it’s currently scheduled to start around 10 November. The Canberra Parliament then rises for an 11-day break.

By then the media typhoon will be swirling around results of the US Presidential election leaving space for little else.

##

(First filed on 18 October.  An edited version was published in Strategic Review on 4 November when more details of the President's trip were known.)

DON'T UPSET, DON'T ANNOY, JUST KEEP THE NEIGHBOURS OUT OF IT

Don’t stir the giant possum next door                                  

Back in the 1970s presenters on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (now Corporation) stations were urged to use a ‘mid-Atlantic’ accent.

This ludicrous instruction was designed to please the plumb-in-mouth British and the quick-lipped Americans. It only succeeded in annoying Australian nationalists who wanted their own ‘strine’ recognised.

But like the Greek philosopher Plato’s fabled lost land of Atlantis, the ‘mid-Atlantic’ was also the place where Australians secretly wished they lived, close to cousins.

That’s still the sad situation as the Federal election campaign cranks its way to the 2 July climax when more than 15.5 million citizens will go to the polls.  Australia is one of 22 nations (the majority in Latin America) that make voting compulsory. Turnout is usually around 95 per cent; the 2012 US Federal election had a 55 per cent turnout.

Australia has a bicameral parliament with 12 senators elected from each of the six states plus two each from the two Territories. The House of Representatives has 125 seats.

In what has been a yawn-inducing eight-week campaign, candidates have for the most part stuck to scripts prepared by party bosses. 

The first televised clash between Labor leader Bill Shorten and Liberal Malcolm Turnbull - the current Prime Minister - was a Bland v Bland show. Veteran political journalist Paul Bongiorno called it ‘the most unwatched leaders’ debate in its 32-year history’. 

At the time of writing most pundits reckon Turnbull, backed by the rural-based National Party, will win the Lower House by a whisker. However because this is a double-dissolution election with all Senate seats contested (normally only half the Senators retire every three years) predictions are best left to those studying chicken entrails.  Minor parties may hold sway in the Upper House.

Unlike the US presidential contest, foreign affairs are seldom mentioned as the two major contestants gargle the same chants on domestic affairs – the sacred trinity of more jobs, less tax and higher growth.

Agreed positions include the ANZUS Security Treaty with America and New Zealand (wholehearted approval), keeping asylum seekers in detention to deter others (accept with a tweak here and there), and avoid upsetting Indonesia.  Or as Australians say – don’t stir the possum.

An exception is the minority Greens Party which wants the offshore detention centres closed and more refugees welcomed, but so far attracted little support.

Occasionally a maverick breaks ranks.  The most important has been Deputy PM and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce commenting on Australia halting live beef shipments to Indonesia in 2011.  He implied this led to a surge in asylum seeker boats carrying Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians but coming through Indonesia.

As reported in Strategic Review on 4 April this year, the exports were abruptly stopped by the former Labor government when activists published videos of gratuitous cruelty at Indonesian abattoirs. The ban was imposed a few weeks ahead of the fasting month of Ramadhan when beef is in much demand, infuriating importers and consumers.

Indonesia, unwilling to feature in its neighbor’s domestic disputes, denied Joyce’s suggestion.  The minister’s more disciplined colleagues reheated the usual menu of excuses – the media misreported, the candidate misspoke, words were taken out of context, blah, blah.  But voters nudged, winked and connected the dots.

Cattle are once again being shipped across the Arafura Sea and the slaughterhouses have allegedly stopped brutalising stock. Animal welfare activists want the trade scrapped, but pastoralists are grinning again under their broad-brimmed hats. Australia is the world’s largest live stock exporter, and Indonesia the biggest buyer.

It’s the same with wheat, another market Australia is desperate not to lose; mature politicians know one perceived slight could reignite anger.  The most inflammatory issue is likely to be West Papua independence. Although Labor and Liberal swear support for Indonesian control of the province, some left-wing unions goad Indonesia by flying the Morning Star flag banned in Indonesia.

Andre Siregar, the Indonesian consul in Darwin, has reportedly asked for an outdoor mural of the flag to be erased. The north coast port is home to activists agitating for separatism. Siregar’s alleged involvement ensured wide coverage and a reminder of Indonesian intolerance.

Australians can relate to former Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau’s famous anxiety about being close to the US: ‘Like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, if one can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.’

Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, is not always friendly or even-tempered. As it’s not part of the Anglosphere few Australians know what to make of their huge northern neighbor. Around a million enjoy cheap holidays in Bali every year but few go further than the Hindu island and into Islamic Java where the real power throbs.

Last year’s Lowy Institute poll revealed Australians’ feelings towards Indonesia. It said these had fallen to ‘the equal lowest point in our past decade of polling … This places Indonesia on a par with Russia and Egypt.’  

Only 34 per cent of Australians surveyed regard Indonesia as a democracy, though the world’s fourth largest nation has had that status since 1999.

In the mid 1990s the acerbic Labor PM Paul Keating went to Jakarta and said: ‘No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete.’

Astonishingly Keating, an avowed democrat, got on well with then President Soeharto whose reputation was already being shredded by students and activists kicking against the dictator’s corruption. 

His decision to step down in 1998 amidst widespread riots was followed by Indonesia’s scorched earth withdrawal from East Timor.  Then came the 2002 Bali bomb and other outrages targeting Westerners.

Australians started rethinking the Keating doctrine, noting that a reciprocal view never comes from Indonesia.

 ‘Indonesia is important’ has become a mantra uttered by every Australian PM since Keating.  Tony Abbott, the man Turnbull overthrew last year, promised his foreign policy would be ‘more Jakarta, less Geneva’. It wasn’t, and Abbott’s clumsy and futile attempts to save two Australian drug traffickers from the death penalty added angst on both sides.

The routine comments about the relationship will surely be repeated again by whoever wins next month’s election. The voters will pay little attention; they fear Indonesia is too complex to comprehend, too weird to fathom and too unpredictable to trust.

It also remains too close for comfort – a situation unlikely to change this side of the next Ice Age. That leaves Australians having to ignore the facts, or accept and adjust. Or as they say in the vernacular: ‘Get real’.

##

(First published in Strategic Review 20June 2016 - http://sr-indonesia.com/web-exclusives/view/don-t-stir-the-giant-possum-next-door  )

TAKING REVENGE

By the way: 

The RAID - Redemption

Good morning delegates. Welcome to the committee formed to Respond to Australia’s Incursion Demeanor, which we’ll now call the RAID. I’ve asked Joe Taslim to be our technical advisor and take the minutes.

As you know our southern neighbors have been behaving like the arrogant colonial godless sons of convicts posturing as deputy sheriffs that we all know they are.

(Nods all round).

We’ve shown our measured displeasure by withdrawing our ambassador.  Even if we want to send him back we can’t because the road to the airport is flooded.

They won’t send their envoy home because he comes from Perth.  He’s waiting till the heat waves have passed.

Anyway, enough gossip. First item on the agenda – how to make Australia take us seriously – yes, Minister?

Thank you, Madame Chair:  I suggest we give them smartphones with GPS apps for their navy.  Then they can find our maritime borders.

… and we can eavesdrop Tony Abbott’s wife.  But do we have the money?

We’ll make them pay for it.  They give us more than half a billion dollars a year for aid projects like schools in Nusa Tenggara.  We can siphon off some of the cash.

Haven’t we done so already?  Anyway, seems a fine idea.  My cousin’s a Samsung agent – I’ll talk to him for a morning price.  (Sends SMS) Yes, delegate.

Order, order! I don’t think we should let this get out of hand. Let’s just urge the President to call his best friend.

He’s tried, but Abbott won’t pick up the phone. Perhaps it doesn’t work.  Along with his navy’s GPS. We could send him one. I’ll chat to my cousin. (Sends SMS)

Maybe the Australian Prime Minister has been attacked by black magic, like our President.

Tell him to pray.

But he’s a Catholic.

Tell him to pray for a conversion.

Here’s another one: Let’s re-arrest Schapelle Corby – that’ll turn their media feral.

Aren’t they already?

Excuse me Madame Chair; I think it’s time to talk tough.  First we ban visas on arrival for all Australian tourists. 

Treat them like they treat us. Make them fill in a 14-page form in Indonesian, apply in person in Canberra and pay ten times the price.  No Internet applications allowed.

Great thinking – let’s go further and include immigration arrival and customs forms – all in Indonesian! Make them learn our words, like demokrasi, teknologi, bisnis - we’ll become a world language leader yet.

Profile them – anyone tall, white and blue-eyed needs to be detained!  And sniffed by a quarantine dog.

Do we have any dogs?

The Balinese do.

But they’ve got rabies.

Even better.

Hang on friends, I like what I’m hearing, but suppose they bypass Bali and head for Phuket?  Think how much we’ll lose in tax on Bintang sales.

Who cares?  It’s like banning exports of unprocessed ores.  OK, thousands will lose their jobs and the economy will crash but we’ll teach those greedy multinationals that we’re not a banana republic.

How about this: We bring back all those students in Australia and make them go to our schools and universities. That’ll cripple Australia’s education industry and boost our own …

What? No way!  My daughter’s in Melbourne on an Australian scholarship. I don’t want her coming back until she’s got a foreign husba … I mean, qualification.

Order, order!  I’ve got a message here from the TNI – they’re going to send the fleet into the Arafura Sea, provided they can get fuel.

AusAID can pay.  Do they have GPS sets?  I’ll talk to my cousin. (Sends SMS)

Excuse me again - I hear the Australians have bought lifeboats to send asylum seekers back to our shores.  What do we think about that?

They’re trying to corrupt us.  Let’s reflag them with the red and white, the boats, I mean, not the refugees. Fill them with  pencak silat fighters, and return to sender.  That’ll shake them up and shows we’re honest.   OK with you Joe? Is Iko Uwais free?

Delegates, thank you for your inputs.  I think we now have the basis for a policy.  We’ll have it ready once the elections are over. Duncan Graham

(First published in The Jakarta Post 16 February 2014)

LEAVE IT ALL TO GOVERNMENTS - OR DO SOMETHING OURSELVES?

Recovering from a rebuff                                               

What does the Indonesian government have in common with bikie gangs?  Both reckon revenge is a dish best served cold.

How else to explain the restrained responses to revelations that Australia spied on a friend, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his wife Kristiani Herawati? 

Dr Marty Natalegawa, the Australian-educated Foreign Minister and a man not known for intemperate outbursts said: “This was not a smart thing to do. It violates every single decent and legal instrument I can think of.
“It is nothing less than an unfriendly act, which is already having a very serious impact on bilateral relations.”

We braced for furious retaliation.  Would our embassy be besieged by militant mobs while the police took a smoko? Would outraged nationalists sweep hotels for Aussies ordering them out of the archipelago?  Trade bans, for sure. Maybe Boeing loads of Bali-bound tourists would be turned back. 

These things have happened before, though not this time.

Despite reports that defence and security cooperation have been diluted, and that the live cattle trade is being reviewed, the most serious response so far has been the recall of ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema.

There could be another explanation for the limited action: We’re not going to be punished – just ignored. As every wannabe celebrity knows, that’s a fate too awful to contemplate.

What an insult! A rich, mature, modern nation-continent that always punches above its weight (according to Barack Obama), snubbed by a corruption-riddled infant democracy where half the citizens live in poverty.

Now hear this: We’re the US deputy sheriff in Southeast Asia, a generous neighbour giving half a billion aid dollars every year.  Why so rude, so ungrateful?  Don’t you know who we are, how important and influential?

Even though Tony Abbott has declared that Jakarta is our new Geneva, the Indonesians have left Canberra where it is, a southern branch office of the northern Anglosphere where the serious power is headquartered.

There are other distractions and all internal: Elections, inflation, poverty, corruption, inequality, intolerance ...  Foreign affairs hardly register.

The spying revelations are our collision with the rocks of reality.  We have four times more space but one tenth of the population. The Republic ranks fourth in world population statistics – we’re number 52.  Indonesians see us as we view New Zealand; a nice place to visit, but not to be taken too seriously. 

We claim to be big on human rights and equality, but treat asylum seekers as criminals.  Our responses to the health and education needs of indigenous Australians are an international disgrace.

When feeling nasty the more knowledgeable add that our nation was settled by British criminals, our culture has been imported, our lifestyle is godless and we’re closet colonialists.

 

The ruling Javanese are masters of refined behaviour and subtle response. Reading their emotions takes time and insights. They prefer consensus to confrontation but have long memories. Anger over our often-misrepresented role in the 1999 East Timor independence referendum still bubbles away, not far below the surface.

Eventually the toxin of spying will be diluted by time and crises new.  His Excellency will quietly book a Garuda seat south and fresh bottled water will be set out in meeting rooms. Pragmatism will rule, though wounded pride will not be rapidly healed.

This interregnum gives time to evaluate and renovate the relationship. 

First step is to appreciate that recovery is too important to be left to the lumbering politicians. They haven’t just smashed things up; they’ve compounded their clumsiness by unapologetically trashing decades of finely crafted goodwill. 

When two such different societies live so close, navigation errors can lead to a capsize if there’s no ballast in the relationship.

Instead of waiting for diplomats to start shuffling forward let’s seize the opportunity to repair.  Organisations like the Indonesia Institute could take the lead and bring together academics, journalists, businesspeople, NGOs and others on both shores of the Arafura Sea.

Our task?  To reclaim mutual respect and understanding.

What to put on the agenda? The 2012 Asian Century paper, a document that seems to have been trampled in the current disarray. Despite originating in government, reception has been generally positive and bipartisan.  A place to start.

Hang on, these things can wait, it’s the Christmas break.

Not in the world’s most populous Islamic nation. The next president might not be so friendly, and the hole we’ve dug to date even deeper.

(First published in Our Indonesia Today, January 2014)

GETTING ON WITH THE FOLKS NEXT DOOR

Not spying – just a mutual awareness doctrine

Well, hi there neighbor – good to see you Mr Bambang; you’ve been away so long you must have plenty to talk about.

Maybe we could get together after Friday prayers and have a few cold ones to catch up?  No?  OK, some other time maybe.

A chat now?  Well sure, that’s fine; I’ll just tell Julie where I’ve gone so the missus doesn’t think I’m having a foreign affair!

Not funny, eh?  Sorry, but we Aussies like to share a joke or two to crack the ice. I’ll be round in a tick as soon as I’ve made a couple of calls to Canberra.

Now, what’s the problem Mr Bambang?  Our dogs barking too much?  The new satellite dish blotting out your sunlight?  Those antenna wires singing in the wind? I find them damn annoying too, as I told our community head when he complained.

Look mate, let’s keep this man-to-man.  I know there’s been a bit of tittle-tattle in the street, and to be perfectly clear the good lady wife does tend to chat a bit to the American neighbors on the other side.

She particularly likes Mrs Michelle – you know how it is with women - and maybe she passes on a thing or two to her husband when they’re talking about Syria and Iran and the price of rice.  But it’s all harmless stuff.  As you and I keep assuring the folks roundabouts, we cooperate, we’re good friends, we respect each other.

Alright Sir, calm down. Let me explain what happened – fair dinkum. That means straight up and down – no funny business. Not that we ever do.

One day the maid was polishing a wine glass which she inadvertently put against the wall and heard noises from next door.

Well, I explained how sound travels, and we all had a go – it was jolly fun really, more like a game.  And to tell the truth (as we always do) I thought this might be a handy way of protecting you by gathering information. Gotong royong and all that looking after each other stuff that you guys do so well.  Gee, I love your culture.

Look Mr Bambang, don’t get annoyed.  To be frank (as we always are) you’re off in Bali quite a bit, and there’s more than a few shady characters coming and going in your absence.  Who knows what they’re plotting behind your back?  Some of them might want to hop the fence and get into our back yard.

Calm down, no need to take umbrage. I agree that using the wine glass was a mite crude so I’ve asked our techies to  see if things can’t be improved.  I specifically told them not to drill holes in the wall, but they might have got a bit too enthusiastic.  I’ll send Greg around to clean up the mess.

I see you’re still annoyed so let’s put our cards on the table, as we always do.  We’re mates, right?  Please Sir, I’d like your confirmation.

I’ll certainly sack the maid and get rid of the wine glasses – how’s that?  Not enough? Well, I could call for a report and get a committee together to put up some recommendations. But with Christmas and the New Year and your election coming up I can’t see any reporting this side of Idul Fitri.

Can we just stop beating about the bush?  Everyone knows we listen to each other all the time – it’s impossible not to with all this megaphone diplomacy.

I bet you folks have already got my cellphone number and password, which is TRUSTUS if you’re interested.  See – we’re open and transparent. Ha, ha.

Let’s hit this thing for six.  Of course it’s not spying – these are just operational matters.  Spying wouldn’t be cricket as my cobber Marty says – an idiom picked up when doing his paper round in Australia, along with his designer stubble. 

Let’s call it for what it is – a Mutual Awareness Doctrine (MAD).  It’s in both our national interests. 

Enough robust exchange of views.  Let’s have a quiet chat off the record.  Grab a seat will you – a bit closer to the vase of flowers, thanks.  Duncan Graham

(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 November 2013)

##

HIDING BEHIND THE FLAG

 Words for the blood, not the brain                                     

‘Nationalism is an infantile thing – it’s the measles of mankind’.

If Nobel prizewinner Albert Einstein’s quip is right, then it’s time to extend vaccination programs in Indonesia and Australia before the epidemic hits.

For there are troubling signs that rational thought is being infected by the virus of base political rhetoric.

Consider the comments of new Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.  The Queensland politician feels uncomfortable with Indonesians buying 10,000 square kilometers of Northern Australia (an area twice the size of Lombok), to raise cattle for consumption in the Republic.

Like all populists the minister knows that his views play well with the xenophobic.  These suspicious folk were revealed last month (Aug) through an Australian government-commissioned survey. This showed almost half the respondents believe Indonesia is a threat.

Mr Joyce doesn’t disparage directly, preferring the fuzzy phrase ‘national interest.’  But the message is clear: Who’d want sinister foreigners with their funny habits, strange language and curious religion sitting on our land? Goodness, they might even make it more productive.

Nonetheless Mr Joyce’s mutterings have copped some stick, as Australians say.  A maturing electorate?  Maybe - or because his boss, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is trying to be nice to the people next door and show his Asian credentials.

Despite Mr Joyce’s concerns a sale will probably go through after scrutiny by the Foreign Investment Review Board. The Chinese, British, Americans and many other nationals, including presidential hopeful Aburizal Bakrie, have owned leases over big pastoral stations (ranches). Discrimination against Indonesia is unlikely, even though the reverse operates.

On this side of the Arafura Sea there’s no way Australians can buy even a grain of the Archipelago.  Apart from leasing a condo the best we can do is enjoy property held in the name of an Indonesian spouse or business partner.  The risks are obvious.

Mr Joyce is a member of the conservative National Party (in coalition with the Liberal Party majority), but even some supporters, particularly those with properties for sale, reckon he’s singing yesteryear’s song.

Not so in Indonesia. What Perth academic Professor Krishna Sen calls ‘nationalistic fervour’ remains top of the pops.

Writing on The Conversation website she made the embarrassing (for Australians) observation that the present Indonesian Cabinet is smart, well-educated and understands more about Australia than its counterpart does of Indonesia.

Three key members of the Indonesian Government, including vice president Boediono, studied at Australian universities. Six have PhDs.

So all the more surprise that such a sophisticated ministry seems determined to bang the nationalistic drum with its policies, knowing that the risks of rousing the masses are real and damaging.

According to the London-based economic think-tank Global Trade Alert, Indonesia has implemented 198 protectionist measures that ‘are harmful, or almost certainly harmful to Indonesia.’ Another 88 are in the queue.

Further proof that foreigners aren’t wanted came with the release this month (Sept) of figures showing a six per cent drop in work permits. For Australians the figure is even greater - about a third, down to just over 2,300 in the past year.

Employers here and elsewhere usually want the best person for the job.  Are qualifications and experience of less value than birthplace? Does citizenship trump merit?  In the current climate the answers are ‘yes’.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal Jakarta-based management consultants John Kurtz and James Van Zorge commented on ‘the curse of nationalism’, adding: ‘Policy changes in the mining, retail, horticultural and oil and gas sectors have led foreign investors to reassess the risk of doing business here.’

Foreign companies take profits out of the country so are easy to demonize: ‘You are poor because they are greedy’. Investors also take risks and create jobs. That’s usually overlooked

Elections are great opportunities for politicians to offer slogans rather than plans. Mr Abbott’s one-liner ‘stop the boats’ resonated with an electorate deeply worried about Middle Eastern and Sri Lankan asylum seekers being ferried to Australian shores by Indonesian fishermen.

How that’s going to be achieved is another matter. The plans revealed so far, including Indonesian ‘transit ports’ for refugees, seem set to inflame emotions.

National flags are useful symbols but can also mask purpose. All the indicators are that next year’s presidential election will be a policy-free affair driven by personalities draping themselves in red and white.

The dog whistling has already started. Terms like ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘sovereign rights’ stir the blood but dull the brain.

In 2010 President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono addressed the Australian Parliament.  He said the first challenge facing the two nations was to ‘bring a change in each other’s mindset’.

He continued: ‘The most persistent problem is the presence of age-old stereotypes – misleading, simplistic mental caricatures that depict the other side in a bad light.’

It will be sad and damaging if next year’s candidates follow Mr Joyce’s misleading and simplistic view that the nation will be better off without outsiders, their money, expertise - and friendship. 

(First published in The Jakarta Post 28 September 2013)

ASIAN CENTURY: WHO'S ON SIDE?

Trade and treaty partners – or friends and neighbours?             

Student Zulino Rizky Hafiz is a bright lad hoping to become an engineer.  His parents in Surabaya are among the new Indonesian middle class, able to find $1300 to send their high school son to Perth’s Tranby College for a fortnight.

He’s been taking part in the Australian government and private BRIDGE programme linking schools on both sides of the Timor Sea.

“I appreciated the informality of teachers and students feeling free to ask for help, though I didn’t like the way teenage boys and girls get so close,” the 17-year old said on his return.

“I never knew we had a neighbour so different.”

Last October Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced Australia’s entry into the Asian Century.  Proposals included developing a new ‘Asia literate’ generation.

Her White Paper also sought the removal of ‘unnecessary regulatory impediments and disincentives to doing business in Australia and moving goods, services, people and capital across our borders.

Despite Keith De Lacy from the Australian Institute of Company Directors reportedly saying the policy was ’a bit patronising’, there was widespread applause – even from Canada. Toronto University’s Professor Irvin Studin called it a ‘strategy of vaulting ambition, with 25 national objectives ranging across social, economic and foreign policy.’

So far, so good.  However as others have written, Ms Gillard’s speech read well, but was more ritual delivery than new direction. Former PMs Paul Keating and Bob Hawke made similar statements about friendship and future.  These were warmly applauded and then quietly forgotten – and not just because the urgings weren’t married to cash.

The observations of young Muslim Zulino, offended by displays of teenage libido, were spot on.  The two countries need more than Canberra-imposed policy to span the gap, geographically close yet culturally distant, requiring huge prolonged efforts and political will to build even the foundations.

Look at the differences:

Australians are mainly big, white, brash, irreligious, pragmatic and well paid.  We live in a nation where powers are separated and the rule of law rules.

Indonesians are generally small, brown, restrained, religious, superstitious, exploited and poorly paid.  They live in a nascent democracy dominated by moneymen and the military. 

We’re eighth on Transparency International’s corruption perception index, with New Zealand number one.  A year ago Indonesia ranked 100.  Now it’s 118.

Our background is as recent transplants, Judaeo Christian, British democratic, colonial now multicultural. Our independence was granted amicably.

Indonesia’s history is ancient with Hindu and Buddhist traditions, feudal, patriarchal and colonised.  Liberal Islam dominates.  Independence was bravely won only after four years of brutal fighting.

The most significant political event in Australia is asylum seekers.  It hardly registers in Indonesia facing an election next year where the concern surrounds quality of candidates.

They tolerate government interference and celebrate community – we praise individualism and personal freedom. In Indonesia inter-faith unions are illegal, de-facto relationships rare. Citizens have to carry ID cards and follow an approved religion. We don’t, and won’t.

For every one of us there are eleven of them. Population growth rate of just one per cent - sounds manageable?  Another baby was born while you read this sentence.

Our friends speak English and live far away in Europe and the US, but we remain in the Anglosphere. Their friends are – well, we don’t really know, but fear they’re in the Middle East.

We speak the international language.  They use a language unrelated to any European tongue and unknown elsewhere

We eat foods based on wheat and milk, and drink alcohol.  Often to excess. Their diet is based on rice and water.

Indonesians are on their own from cradle to grave.  No Centrelink. The welfare system is the family. Our education and health services are free. Theirs are not.

There are more Muslims in Indonesia than the Middle East – and more Christians in Indonesia than Australians in the world.

Democracy only returned in 1999 with minimal bloodshed. But the purge of the old guard was incomplete. Money politics is rampant, widespread and resistant to change.

We do all sports well on excellent facilities. They play soccer badly and practise in the street. So how can such two such radically different cultures intersect peacefully? 

Governments seem to think the way is through trade and aid.  So Australian taxpayers give around half a billion dollars a year to Indonesia. 

There’s no sign kampong folk know of this generosity, or if they did it would enhance their understanding of the people next door.

Despite the fact that the construction industry is rotten with kick-backs much of that money has gone on building 2,000 schools in remote areas in the belief that better educated kids, particularly girls, will benefit all.

It’s hard to argue – unless asking why the Indonesian government isn’t doing the job. 

Indonesia has budgeted US$8 billion on defence this year, including $1.5 million for new military hardware. The nation hasn’t revealed any external threat.  The armed forces are used to put down internal separatist movements, like those in West Papua.  More money goes to the military than any other government agency.

This year Indonesia is spending US$22 billion on subsidies, most of it on fuel, sucking up 20 per cent of the national budget.  Drivers enjoy the cheapest pump prices in Southeast Asia with a litre of standard petrol at 45 cents.

The refusal to scrap the handouts has been widely criticised by the World Bank and Indonesian economists.  They claim the money could be used to build the country’s crumbling infrastructure that’s crippling development.

According to the taxation directorate general, there are 60 million potential taxpayers - but only 20 million are listed and paying taxes. Just half a million businesses are registered out of an estimated 22 million. The government has long promised a massive shake up of the graft-ridden tax system but has yet to deliver.

The Jakarta-based think tank Perkumpulan Prakarsa (welfare initiatives for a better society) reckons the government may have lost half of its tax revenues (nearly USD 60 billion) through corruption and incompetence in tax collecting.

Education and development consultant Robert Cannon has aired some of these criticisms before, but there’s been little reaction.

How the Indonesian government gathers and spends its money is entirely its business. A nation that can’t even dig taxes out of the big miners and stuffs up its defence budget is in no position to point fingers.  But we can select our aid priorities.

Indonesia’s education system is in crisis.  As an Al Jazeera 101-East programme revealed this year, more than half the teachers are underqualified and many don’t always front for work.

The country is at the bottom of the Pearson Study of 40 nations’ schools.  Using aid money to bring top chalkies and administrators to Australia to learn how to teach, write syllabi and run schools would be far more beneficial than paying Indonesian contractors to plaster walls.

And why build schools when an estimated 150,000 classrooms are in urgent need of repair?

The BRIDGE project that helped open teenager Zulino’s eyes to Aussie culture is a splendid initiative that pre-dates Ms Gillard’s statement by four years.  So far it has attracted less than 100 school partnerships.  There are 9,500 schools in Australia.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

We’ve been neighbors since Gondwanaland split. For much of that time we’ve viewed each other with suspicion laced with ignorance and travel warnings, inter-cut with moments of great generosity like our magnificent response to the Aceh tsunami and other natural disasters.

Suddenly we’ve heard that they’ve got money.  That means they must need foods and goods. It’s time to say hello, see what they want and how much they can pay.

Are these the foundations for a good and lasting relationship?

We want to join Asia but does Asia want us?  I haven’t heard anyone in Indonesia talking about the Australian Century.  Hillary Clinton launched the Pacific Century a year ahead of Ms Gillard’s statement.

The ideas in the 320-page White Paper are good.  They are also too few and too limited.  Maybe too late or poorly considered.  Like expanding a scheme to allow 1,000 young Indonesians to wander and work in Australia for a year. Previously the number was 100. In addition there are 500 scholarships for the talented and smart to study in Australia.

Generous? Do the maths: Indonesia has 240 million people. About 44 per cent are under 24.

Uncapped Working Holiday Visas have been available for years for other, mainly European nationals, keen to go Down Under.  What better way to learn of another culture by getting dirt under the fingernails, make friends alongside workmates, and build lasting contacts?

For Indonesians it’s the Work and Holiday Programme.  Note the syntax slip.  For this deal applicants have to pass an English test, be tertiary graduates and approved by their own government. 

The scheme is reciprocal but officials on both sides have nailed up the door. Australians are only allowed to teach English, work in hospitals and tourism.  There are reports of students giving up on the paperwork and going elsewhere.

Though jobs are not restricted in Australia, Immigration demands applicants have at least AUD $5,000.  Fees, insurance and air fares put visas even beyond the reach of the new Indonesian middle classes, defined as those who earn more than US $3,000 (29 million rupiah) a year.  Indonesians rightly claim this restricts opportunities to the rich.

The Opposition is proposing a ‘reverse Colombo Plan’ flooding Indonesia with Aussie undergraduates.  Professor David Hill who pioneered the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies forecast bureaucratic barriers.

He told The Australian: ‘Obtaining a temporary resident permit for study in Indonesia is something that individual students find very, very difficult’.

Australian leaders may be serious about an Asian Century where curious and open-minded youngsters can poke around their neighbor’s culture to erase prejudices.

But it’s clear they haven’t got the Indonesians on the same road, relying on change through symbiosis, not strategy.

 Ms Gillard described the policy as a ‘roadmap showing how Australia can be a winner in the Asian century.’ If so the track is tortuous and potholed, and the GPS is malfunctioning.

Discrimination, incompetence or both?  If implementation of such an easy policy can’t get into first gear, what hope for the rest?

Indonesia needs to stop being fearful of its neighbour.  We’re not all Kuta bar slobs determined to fracture the Unitary State and steal jobs off becak drivers.

Just as they’re not all fundamentalists bombing towards a Southern Hemisphere caliphate.

The Asia Century policy is a gentle shuffle forward and a welcome shift from the drivers of defence and security.  The hype makes it sound like a Southeast Asian version of the open border European Community that’s helped dissolve ancient hatreds and foster unity through people-to-people contacts. 

It’s not. It should be.

(First published in On Line Opinion, 7 March 2013)

##