TRUST NEEDED - ON BOTH SIDES

          Dear Albo: Get to know the people next door.

 

 

On ABC TV’s The Insiders, the then opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he planned to visit Indonesia ‘as soon as possible’ – a statement rapidly drowned in the mainstream media’s trite election coverage.  In 1994 when the then PM Paul Keating said ‘no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia’, the response was intense.

Why did journos think Albanese’s comments not newsworthy?  One sad answer is that like much of the electorate they take little interest in the adjacent nation unless it’s jailing blasphemers, flogging adulterers or doing something that jars values the West thinks important.

It’s been pointed out – though as far as I can see only in the foreign media  - that Albanese’s first overseas visit as Labor leader was to Indonesia in 2019, as was his first trip as a minister in 2007.

Indonesian politics are more about personalities than policies.  President Joko Widodo first won office through his signature blusukan walkabouts.  In 2015 he drove security details nuts when he took then PM Malcolm Turnbull on a meet-the-people market tour which set a friendly and casual tone, benefitting  both nations.

That’s unlikely to be repeated when Albanese gets to the Big Durian as Widodo’s minders are now more cautious about unscripted tours.  But the Australian would find his poverty- to- power story – which is similar to Widodo’s riverbank shack-to-presidential-palace upbringing - could have a wide impact if well told.  It would certainly help erase the belief that Ozzies are privileged rich prone to belittle.

While Australia yawns or tut-tuts at mentions of matters in the world’s third largest democracy, it’s much the same t’other side of the Arafura Sea.   Last century youngsters were hungry to learn English and other cultures.  Their appetite was met by enthusiastic teachers following a policy of raising a generation equipped to handle the world. 

Instead, the energy has bogged down in ideologies and bureaucracy notwithstanding the intentions of forward-thinkers like Harvard-educated Education Minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim. He’s a 37-year old entrepreneur drafted by President Joko Widodo to shake up schooling, only to collide with the power of reactionaries seeing secularism behind reform.

 Monash Uni has already opened a postgrad campus in Jakarta. If the new Federal Government can back other ventures, preferably at high school and undergrad level and away from the capital, people would get to discover we’re not all Kuta hoons.

ANU-educated Indonesian Ambassador Dr Siswo Pramono (above) has been in Perth  promoting understanding and trust between the neighbours.. Photo:  Erlinawati Graham

 

 

Distrust of Western ways and Australian intentions is pervasive so all the more reason to try harder.  That doesn’t seem to be on new Ambassador Penny Williams’ agenda.  Despite knowing the language and past involvement in progressive causes (she’s a former Ambassador for Women and Girls) the lady has yet to make a splash. Since the start of this year she’s put out only ten press statements, mostly on trivial matters, and nothing on the election.

Apart from a tweet from Makassar, it appears she didn’t recognise Australia Day through any speeches or mainstream media.  (Her office hasn’t responded to a request for details.) Here was a chance to tell how Australian unions helped the revolutionaries liberate Indonesia from the colonial Dutch.  It’s a forgotten story for this century’s generation, so needs continuous retelling.

 

 

Here’s a job for Albanese if and when he reaches Jakarta and wants to remind the post 1945 Revolution generation that we were on their side.

If that’s currently considered too political for Canberra, Albanese should urge Williams to stress that her nation’s not a British franchise as many think because the Union Jack’s on our flag and the Queen’s image on our currency.

Nor are we the US ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region as former PM John Howard reportedly said.  The offensive tag remains fresh because Australia supported the East Timor referendum in 1999.  We can be proud of our initiatives and peacekeeping, and our billion-dollar aid when the 2004 tsunami ripped Aceh, but that doesn’t mean we’re loved.

For Indonesians, the Unitary State is sacrosanct so the loss of the Portuguese territory it invaded in 1976 has left a deep and weeping wound.  That’s not the only irritant.

Some argue the AUKUS alliance and build-up of foreign troops and weaponry in Northern Australia are ‘too close for comfort’ and could trigger an arms race. These alarms have been addressed, though only lightly.  Another task for Albanese.

Instead of explanation and education, we use trade to find ‘not just a respected partner but a valued one as well’. Former Agriculture Minister David Littleproud’s spiel was monetary: ‘Indonesia is Australia’s fourth-largest market for bulk primary produce … valued at $2.9 billion (last financial) year.’ 

The new PM’s message should be: We don’t just want to feed you, we want to know you.  We’ll listen, not tell.  We’ll talk with you, not at you. Albanese seems to understand this if his quotes are sincere. Before 21 May he said it was important to grow the relationship with a ‘future superpower’.

Despite Covid killing close to 157,000 and infecting six million (Reuters’ figures from official sources and widely considered too low) the Indonesian economy is going gangbusters.

The World Bank's Global Economic Prospects forecasts growth this year will hit 5.2 per cent, but there’ll be minimal trickle-down. Oxfam research shows the four richest men in Indonesia own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 100 million citizens.

Attitudes on both sides need renovating. Just as Australians can be racists, Indonesians aren’t always the pliant friendly folk of tourist brochures. In 1965 a bloody coup in Jakarta was followed by the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 real or imagined Communists and fellow travellers by civilian militias weaponised by the army.

We know of the Holocaust in Europe though not the genocide close by.

There have been other outbursts of violence, often focussing on minorities.  Ethnic Chinese are usually the targets along with so-called deviant Islamic sects.

Another eruption of hate could send a wave of asylum seekers heading our way as they did after the 1998 riots when President Soeharto quit, though they’d most likely come by plane, have full wallets and follow faiths other than Islam.

To ensure a benign view of the people next door, this distressing history is blacked out in Australia by the ‘moderate Muslim’ label. Likewise, the termites of corruption gnaw away in almost every departmental nook and immune to pest controllers. 

The first stage in fixing problems is to accept their presence and examine the reasons.  To date neither Indonesia nor Australia has been inclined to confront ignorance, misunderstanding and distrust which threaten the connections.   If Albanese really is a skilled negotiator he needs to be well briefed by experts outside the ultra-cautious DFAT club, offer friendship but be frank.

They’ll be a wake up when there’s an explosion of fury for some seemingly mild political stumble, like Scott Morrison’s 2019 proposal to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Mobs protested in Indonesia, forcing the closure of two consulates.

Friction points include the low-level insurgency between West Papuan separatists and the Indonesian military, hidden from world view by Jakarta censorship equal to the Chinese cover-up of its alleged anti-Uyghur campaign.

The late Australian Professor Jamie Mackie wrote: ‘The first and most dangerous of the problems ahead — and possibly the most likely — are issues relating to separatist movements in Papua
and the support they garner within Australia.

‘This tends to arouse suspicions in Indonesia that Australians have a hidden agenda to bring
about the dismemberment of Indonesia as a unitary state. Because of the complex, emotionally charged political dynamics within each country associated with this, it could easily get out of hand and prove difficult for both governments to resolve through calm negotiations.

Better to use the spruce up the relationship now than wait till what remains collapses into misunderstandings and ill will.  The next Presidential direct election will be on 14 February 2024 and there’s a chance former General Prabowo Subianto, who’ll then be 72, will have his third crack at the top job.

Prabowo is Indonesia’s Trump lite who’d ignite the wrath of human rights activists worldwide if elected. After his 2019 loss supporters rioted in Jakarta. Eight died and more than 700 were injured. Few think the violence was spontaneous.

Prabowo is now Minister of Defence, drawn into the inner circle by  Widodo who followed US President Lyndon Johnson’s advice on handling FBI Director J Edgar Hoover: ‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in’.

 

Australian academics have been quick to offer advice.  Some has been sound like this offering from Professor Rebecca Strating of La Trobe Uni warning that ‘the new government also needs to listen to Southeast Asian perspectives. States like Indonesia don’t want to be forced to make a choice between US and China.

 

‘Engaging with Indonesia requires creative, nuanced and modulated diplomacy. Sensitivity around sovereignty, autonomy and regional security is key.’ 

All fine and dandy, but these are elite issues which make little impact on the poor and struggling in a nation of more than 273 million. A decade ago Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranked Indonesia 96 among 179 nations.  Its position now is 102.  This frightens the Western investors Widodo says he wants to attract.

All the more reason to get to know the neighbours at all levels.  Mackie offered scores of suggestions in his 155-page Lowy essay – a useful guide for PM Albanese and FM Penny Wong,

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 3 June 2022:  https://johnmenadue.com/how-a-labor-government-could-revamp-our-relationship-with-indonesia/

 

 

 

 

 

ALL EYES ON JAW-DROPPING MOMENT IN YAWN-MAKING DEBATE

 

Voting season sees clichés bloom

 

 

 

 

Elections are spring rains bursting dormant seeds into carpets of weeds.  Common varieties include sun-intolerant promises and herbicide-resistant lies.  The most tenacious is Diurnarius proverbium, commonly known as journalistic clichés.

Just as Sisyphus had to push his boulder uphill only to see it roll down t’other side – and may still be doing so - reporters covering campaigns are forever cursed to fill space that immediately empties.

A La Trobe Uni study claimed 3,000 journalists’ jobs have vanished this decade past.  Sub-editors’ have taken the heaviest hits. These wordsmiths are the consumer protectors, the grammar paramedics who repair fractured thinking, staunch wild claims, and straighten twisted logic.

The best also purge clichés, the fast food of the media. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, hacks file tediously long pars because they’ve no time to write tight prose.

Members of the jury note the evidence, largely founded on the metaphor of a Great Trek, the path to power.

It’s marked by ‘milestones’ although Australia’s been driving kilometres since 1974, long before most candidates sat in a classroom.   

Clearly their teachers were outstanding, alerting 25 million citizens to avoid tautologies and hyperbole.  Yet we still have to endure leaders revealing that ‘everyone knows’ their position. This is usually ‘fence sitting’, uncomfortable if made of pickets, more so if ‘the stakes are high’.

There’s no escape because observers are ‘glued to their screens’ as ‘all eyes’ are on the policy, the non-policy, the stuff-up.  If too dark to see, no worries. There’ll be ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.

At any moment it could all go ‘pear shaped’ or lead to a ‘train wreck’.  These disasters are best avoided by ‘looking forward to the future’ or ‘at this point in time’ which fills more space than ‘now’.

A few tips to get through to 21 May: When the vote-hungry state they’ve ‘made their views clear’ be sure they haven’t.  Adverbs are another giveaway that the speaker is flogging fraudulent goods. 

Mark Twain urged keyboarders to kill qualifiers, but politicians treat them as a protected species.  Like the wretched ‘elephant in the room’ which the humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens led through the porch in 1882 so overdue for euthanasia. 

In their haste to snatch a quote however trite, reporters trip on a ‘stumbling block’, a term first used in 1588.  Avoidance requires a ‘stepping stone’, originally laid two centuries earlier for the rural English to cross rivers.

Modern newsmakers seek the same safe passage to avoid wetting their feet with truths ‘when we come to them’, the pronoun referring to any bird the speaker doesn’t want to encounter and ‘ruffle feathers’.

The journey to leather-seat limos and the misnomer  ‘honourable’ has many ‘turning points’, ‘backflips’ and ‘watershed moments’ though only if the path runs along a high ridge.  That’s unlikely as few tread such ‘lofty heights’.  

At that altitude they need to beware of the appearance of  ‘bellwethers’ which have nothing to do with a charming climate, but are castrated rams trained to lead others to slaughter.

That’s when the ‘bloodletting’ starts – a repulsive noun to use when Putin is doing the real thing. 

Also  ‘bombshell’ and ‘decimate’ which means cut by ten as Roman legion commanders did to crush rebellion, not destroy all as many believe.

With such a toll it’s time to put ‘another nail in the coffin’ though undertakers at the last funeral I attended used cordless drills and self-tapping screws.

To avoid unpleasantness at ‘the end of the day’ they can always ‘offer an olive branch’ though that will get them pilloried for destroying the environment.

Politics is a colourful show with ‘red lines’, ‘green lights’, ‘white hot’ rhetoric and ‘blueprints for the future’ – a term from the ‘drawing boards’ of  19^th century architects, long before computer assisted design software and photocopiers.

‘Of course’ sport gets ‘a good run’, though the codes are mixed when hopefuls ‘drop the ball’ or get into a fight where ‘the gloves are off’. Matt Canavan was told to ‘pull his head in’ by a colleague, then ‘slapped down’ by the PM, after attempting to ‘muddy the waters’.

These profundities from the National’s senator reported by  Jane Norman on ABC News.  She cleverly spotted ‘climate cracks’ invisible to the eye, naked or clothed.

George Bernard Shaw called ‘the majesty and grandeur of the English language … the greatest possession we have.’  As with eggs in one shopping trolley words should be handled with care.

Unfortunately this advice usually ‘falls on deaf ears’, an insult to the hearing impaired competent in Auslan; when told by a politician to ’read my lips’ they do so better than most.

Fortunately a few bespoke journos remain.  Among them the ABC’s Annabel Crabb who delights with this offering about the PM’s visit to Perth; ‘He tends to return there compulsively, like a tongue to a dental cavity,’

 How can we fix the problem? Dash back to the undergrad texts written by campaigning British-American journalist and grammarian Harold Evans (1928-2020): ‘Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and clichés’.

Or to update:  Repetition dulls while creativity can make the message memorable.

First published in Pearls & Irritations 9 May 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/voting-season-sees-cliches-bloom/

 

 

 

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BE VERY AFRAID - IT'S OPEN SEASON ON TRUTH

You wouldn’t read about it        

                                         

The virus of fear-politics, spread well by Donald Trump, is now infecting the Southern Hemisphere.
In Australia it’s ‘border security’, an imagined armada of desperates eing persecution and seeking sanctuary in the Great South Land.  This is being used to spook voters ahead of a general election, probably in May. 
In Indonesia it’s the sale of books which might rouse readers to favour the return of Communism as the 17 April Presidential vote looms in the world’s third largest democracy.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is warning that law changes, forced through Parliament by the Labor Opposition and Independents this month, will threaten electors’ comfortable lives.  Deep in the psyche of many is the guilt of occupying a vast resource-rich continent of only 27 million when the archipelago next door has ten times the population.
The changes allow seriously ill asylum seekers currently held on Nauru Island and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea to be transferred to the mainland for medical treatment.   Mr Morrison claims this will give the green light to Indonesian people smugglers keen to restart their nefarious trade.
There are about 14,000 Middle Easterners, mainly young men, stranded in Indonesia.  They flew into the Republic earlier this decade lured by promises they’d be ferried across the Arafura Sea. Their dreams have been thwarted by the Australian Navy turning back boats, a policy with the jingoistic title ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’.
While sailors from Down Under have been scouring the horizon for SIEVS (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels), though in reality rickety wooden inshore fishing smacks, Indonesian soldiers have been rummaging stores in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Java hunting publications they claim will endanger the state.
Their principal targets are revisions of the coup last century, which took General Soeharto from Army barracks to the Presidential Palace where he stayed for 32 years wielding absolute power.  He stepped down in 1998 after mass protests and died a decade later.
The publications tend to be histories which don’t conform to the official line of what happened on 30 September 1965; that night six generals and a lieutenant were murdered in Jakarta, allegedly by members of the Communist Party (PKI).  A dreadful bloodletting followed with an estimated half million real or suspected Reds slaughtered in a purge of the party.
The Soeharto story has always been that the massacres were a spontaneous response of pious Muslims outraged by the actions of the godless Marxists. This has been proved false through the scholarship of overseas academics writing in English. 
Some of this research is being picked over and re-worked by Indonesian authors, then printed locally in Indonesian.

Last year Canadian Geoffrey Robinson, professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles released his account of the 1965 events in The Killing Season.

Months earlier Australian post-doctoral fellow at Yale University Jess Melvin published her meticulous sifting of Indonesian Army documents from the period in The Army and the Indonesian Genocide stating categorically that the slaughter was organized by the army.

There have been many earlier accounts, like the University of British Columbia professor John Roosa’s Pretext for Mass Murder, which was translated and banned, though none quite so definitive as Dr Melvin’s work.

Governments having problems with dissidents like island solutions. Survivors of the post-putsch putdown were sent to forced labor camps, like Buru Island, 2,300 kilometers north east of Jakarta.  Here the writer and Nobel Prize nominee Pramoedya Ananta Toer was held for 13 years along with 12,000 others, mainly intellectuals and creatives.

Robinson, who was formerly with Amnesty International, called Buru a ‘concentration camp’ and ‘penal colony’. The New York Times label was ‘Soeharto’s Gulag.’ The government’s terms were  ‘resettlement projects for political rehabilitation.’ 

For a while it seemed President Joko Widodo was inclined to side with the human rights activists who have been urging an open inquiry into the events of the 1960s and a search for reconciliation.

. 

That hope slipped away with his 2016 appointment of Wiranto as coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs.  Robinson claims the former armed forces commander has said the 1965-66 violence was ‘legally justifiable’, which doesn’t mean it was morally right.

The Indonesian Army is claiming that even though the Communist Party is officially banned, only they can stop the PKI’s resurgence, so an authoritarian policy is essential, which includes burning books.  Yet this is illegal, according to a 2010 Constitutional Court decision which overthrew Soeharto’s censorship laws.

The boat-banning Australian Government says the 1,000 men left on Manus and Nauru will never be allowed to settle in Australia.  (Some proven refugees have been accepted by the US in a swap deal with South Americans.)

Opponents of the island camps call them ‘hell holes’ (the official term is ‘Regional Processing Centre’).  The detainees wait in a political limbo hoping some other country will come to their aid, or that conditions will improve in their homelands and it will be safe to return.

That seems as remote as the islands.  According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees more than 65 million people have been ‘forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.’

With those number the fate of a few hundred in the far-away Pacific rocks no boats in Europe and North America.  A New Zealand offer to take 150 a year has been knocked back by PM Morrison claiming they could eventually get citizenship and move across the Tasman.

Cynics also note that closing Manus and Nauru would deny Australian politicians the stick to whack their opponents in an election season.  In the spirit of not letting the facts spoil a good yarn, the government has stayed silent on revelations that in 2017 almost 28,000 people sought Australian protection visas.

But they came individually, smartly dressed and by air, often masquerading as students or tourists before seeking sanctuary. It’s not an image terrifying voters like that of a fleet of over-crowded boats heading Down Under.

Do fear campaigns still work?  We’ll know in about three months.

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First published in Strategic Review, 26 February 2019: http://sr.sgpp.ac.id/post/elections-alert-beware-of-boats-and-books