A POLICY BASED ON INTOLERANCE

 THE MILITARIST AS MILKMAN       

          

ABC TV’s Landline programme has declared that “Australia's dairy industry is licking its lips at the prospect of increased demand from Indonesia.”

The cow cockies’ cliched hopes are based on the applauded pledge by Indonesia’s incoming president and former general Prabowo Subianto to give 83 million school kids free feeds and milk.

The salivators are also assuming locals can’t meet the huge extra demand.

Why should they?  Till now there's been no clamour and little wonder.  Pearls & Irritations finds no joy in playing spoiler, but  here's an awkward fact:

Up to 90 per cent of  Indonesians can’t drink milk because they're lactose intolerant. Academic studies in Indonesia show  users can get struck by RAP - recurrent abdomial pain - aka diarrhoea -something Prabowo and his team should have known.

The condition isn't nation-specific.  One report asserts it’s “a common disorder caused by a deficiency of the lactase (correct spelling) enzyme in the digestive system. Lactose intolerance is three times more common in South Asians than in other populations.”

Prabowo’s detail-free notion snitched from an Indian poll promise during the election campaign earlier this year, has now been costed at Rp 120 trillion - around $13 billion annually.

Costs will explode should the idea shift from promise to performance: Collection, refrigeration, quality control, distribution and other essential factors have yet to be calibrated.   

Some economists are concerned massive spending might be illegal by exceeding fiscal caps.  Republic law prohibits the budget deficit from exceeding three per cent of the  GDP - currently around  Rp 5,288 trillion - $2,000 billion.

 Then there’s KKN - Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme - all terms borrowed from English.

 A UN agency reports that “corruption remains a serious problem and overall, progress has been slow” blaming a “deeply embedded institutional culture of patronage.”

If local businesses and regional governments are to be involved in buying and distributing the freebies, the graft will be enormous without strong policing.  This slanderous assessment is based on past performances of fraudulent administrations involved in big-scale projects that make Robodebt losses look like chook feed.

Could Australian  farmers get into the market?  They’ll need to be red-blooded investors aware of the graft dangers.  Canberra says dairy is our third largest rural industry exporting about a third of the 8.8 billion litres generated, usually powder to make commercial products like pastries, lollies and other tempting sweetmeats.

Above all is the big threat from Aotearoa.  Almost half of NZ's dairy exports go to Indonesia.  The trade name Anchor has become a synonym for butter wherever its found,  in hotels and shops with fridges.

The Kiwis have marched through the mire since last century and are now well shod  running Indonesia's largest integrated dairy farm and milk processing factory.  

A venture involving NZ and Indonesian investors, Greenfields started in 1997 by importing heavy-yield Holsteins and high-quality Jerseys from Western Australia into East Java.

Dairy farming is one of the toughest slogs in agriculture - seven days a week whatever the weather and personal mood, early rises, abundant muck and despite the alliterative aphorism about inseparability, not much money.

So little wonder few kids want to inherit their parents’ commitments to a business infamous for burnout, fickle prices and ruinous natural disasters.

Despite these miseries, the industry body Dairy Australia reports production will “grow slightly …. confidence in the Australian dairy industry is currently in its most stable period in a decade.”

If Prabowo's vote-winning rhetoric is honest, the policy could make positive changes;  it should help reduce living costs for the poor and cut the national curse of stunting.

About a quarter of Indonesia's toddlers suffer because they aren't breastfed and lack access to clean foods and decent toilets.  They don't grow properly and neither do their brains.

Wasting caused by non-nutritious meals affects more than 20 per cent of youngsters.  The Australian rate is less than two per cent.

Older readers would remember lugging steel crates of half-pint bottles of warm milk into classes,  a 1950s government scheme for all kids to get enough calcium (and farmers to make quids), a policy borrowed from Britain and lasting for two decades.

One result is that Australians drink more than 300 litres a person every year.  Indonesians consume 15 litres and no wonder.  Apart from the inability to digest, the price is out of the average buyer's range.

In villages and suburbs across the tropical archipelago, itinerants sell warming and sometimes diluted milk from a churn on a bike carrier. Where the thinner comes from is a worry - drinking tap water can lead to the runs.

The Indonesian industry is slowly modernising and driven by large-scale NZ farming businesses, but smallholders with a few cows in stalls remain major suppliers.  Come dawn owners bike to roadsides to scythe sacks of grass and weeds to feed the barned beasts.

There's a widespread government artificial insemination programme boosting herd quality and making owning bulls and imported stock unnecessary.   It started last century because the second president Soeharto liked bovines.

Milk goes to local depots where it is strained, tested, cooled and packed in one-litre plastic bags that wholesale for less than one Oz dollar.

The big factories make the so-called long-life product using ultra-high temperature technology and retailed in cartons for double to triple the price.

For an insight into a nation’s culinary culture check shop shelves.  Australian supermarkets give ample space to milk and bread, products hard to find in Indonesian supermarkets and rarely in the open public markets where rice, noodles and veggies dominate.

Will the Prabowo plan make a difference?  If the school brekkies are really free, consistent and nutritious - yes.  

If milk is included megalitres will go down the gurgler.  So will General Prabowo's self-proclaimed reputation as a social problem fixer without using firearms.

First published in Pearls &Irritations, 1 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/the-militarist-as-milkman/

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HASSAN WIRAJUDA

The doctor of diplomacy keeps his cool Duncan Graham

Very soon, as the new government sets its tone for the next five years, Nur Hassan Wirajuda will get a call from the Presidential Palace outlining his future.

Will he continue as foreign minister, a position he’s held for the past eight years? Or will he be shelved in some Jakarta cubicle composing reports destined for compost, or sentenced to a dysfunctional outpost where the climate is as extreme as the politics?

By all accounts the cautious, slow-talking Dr Hassan has done a good job since he was promoted by former president Megawati Soekarnoputri in 2001 and retained when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono took office in 2004.

He’s certainly handled some awkward moments adroitly, like Australia accepting 43 Papuans who successfully claimed refugee status in 2006 a crisis that almost snapped the elastic links between the countries. Then there’s been the Bali bombings, the rise of Jemaah Islamiyah, Australian drug runners on death row and the 2004 tsunami.

The latest problem worrying Australia, and New Zealand in particular, is the classification of halal meat exported to Indonesia. The MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia – Indonesian Islamic Scholars’ Council) wants to handle this without government involvement.

“This is a mechanical issue,” Dr Hassan said. “The MUI can set the standards but administration is the government’s role. More time is needed and the deadline has been extended till next year.”

By now lesser men would have developed a nervous twitch every time an anxious aide approached with another crisis newsflash. But the 61-year old has retained his equanimity, and if his enviable head of jet-black hair didn’t come from a bottle it’s a sure sign of his unflappability.

“Internationally Indonesia is held in high regard, the best it has ever been,” he said during an Australasian tour that included the Pacific Islands Forum in Queensland. “Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy and has never been so free.” His Australian counterpart Stephen Smith agrees. Earlier this year he introduced Dr Hassan by saying:

“Indonesia (has) transformed to a modern, vibrant, tolerant democracy that is now quite rightfully taking its place in the world as a strong voice: a voice that reflects values and virtues and characteristics that we admire so much.”

Whether this glossy global image is due to the foreign minister or his urbane boss, or because Indonesia is rocketing into democracy without bloodshed, and pursuing terrorism with vigor are different questions.

In the arcane world of foreign affairs where acronyms rule (the minister is Menlu – Menteri Departemen Luar Negeri - the department Deplu) there are whispers that Dr Hassan’s time may be up. However he’ll only say that though he’d like to retain the job, every position has to run its course.

Unlike those who think ASEAN is a dead duck, an anti-communist mutual admiration club constructed by former president Soeharto 42 years ago and past its use-by date, Dr Hassan believes the grouping has relevance.

“No other forum exists that is able to do good and maintain the habits of dialogue,” he said. “It has more than symbolic importance. Many issues, such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea have been settled through ASEAN, which would otherwise have had to be handled on a bi-lateral basis.

“ASEAN helps exercise self-restraint, and good order. Others want to join. We are working to bring democracy to Myanmar.”

Does this mean Indonesia now has a role pushing democracy onto its reluctant neighbors, a South-East Asian version of the US?

“No, we take the subtle approach,” he said. “Rather than impose our model of democracy let’s sit down together. We are quite humble. We must do more to embed the roots of democracy in our own country and educate the populace about the benefits.

“For example, in the last election we had 38 parties because the threshold is 2.5 per cent support with many parties frantically searching for candidates. In Germany the threshold is five per cent.

“That doesn’t mean our democracy is immature. There is no conflict or contradiction between democracy and Islam. It is the duty of Muslims to take part in the political process.

“We don’t see democracy in quite the literal way (supremacy of the people) that it’s seen in the West, but more through the traditional concepts of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus).”

Dr Hassan started his professional life as a lawyer. He was born in Tangerang (best known for housing Jakarta’s international airport) and got his tertiary education in the US where he won a doctorate in international law.

He also went to Oxford University to study diplomacy, a skill he exercises with aplomb, forever wary of being misinterpreted. Like many diplomats he can use many words to say little, useful in a profession where calling a spade by its proper name may result in it digging your own grave.

“Well, you said that, I didn’t,” was his standard reply when invited to endorse contentious statements. When asked if Indonesia was the only true democracy among ASEAN’s ten members he replied: “I don’t say so.” On only one occasion during a one-on-one interview in Wellington, NZ, did he offer an unequivocal and immediate “No!”

This was to the suggestion that the issue of Papuan separatism was Indonesia’s ‘pebble in our shoe’ as the late Dr Ali Alatas, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister under Soeharto, once described East Timor.

Earlier this year Dr Hassan caused surprise by criticising Myanmar’s treatment of its Islamic Rohingya minority when refugees alleging persecution started arriving on the Sumatra coast. This broke the ASEAN tradition of not interfering in other nation’s internal affairs. So in the same spirit why not open Papua’s borders to foreign journalists?

“We’ve got nothing to hide but the people of Papua must be allowed to determine their own future without foreign visitors,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with demonstrations but the people need time to do things without disruption.

“Papua, like other provinces, now gets 70 per cent of royalties from its natural resources. If you want to go to Papua come and see me in Jakarta."

(First published in The Jakarta Post 19 August 2009)

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CHARLES PILLIET

The curious yarn of a Kiwi in Java © Duncan Graham 2008

Hanging on the wall of a cramped kampong house in Singosari, East Java is a set of grainy soft-focus photos of the family’s ancestors. Sunshine, termites, damp and age haven’t treated them well, and the pictures started with a disadvantage.

In the early days of photography the rules were rigid; you had to dress formal and look severe. Today it’s difficult to sense the soul behind the monochrome stare, humanity in the flat featureless features.

And so it is here with the portraits of a gaunt, long faced foreigner in a bow tie flanked by Javanese teenagers, or with his housekeeper, equally stern. They seem to say; ‘We don’t trust this newfangled technology’.

The man wearing the ‘butterfly’, as they say in Singosari, was Charles Mainwaring Pilliet, a New Zealander who fled a disciplinarian father in his homeland to become an adventurer in South East Asia. He eventually died in 1959 in East Java aged 90, nursed by Mutmainah one of his adopted nieces.

Now 68 she recalled the day of his passing vividly: “As we took the body out of the house a powerful wind sprang up,” she said. “Windows banged open or slammed shut. The trees shook and bent their branches. We knew he was a paranormal.

“He was fanatical about the number seven. We had seven windows in the house and seven trees in the garden. He gave me seven bracelets.”

Who was this strange septenary Kiwi who apparently supported the Indonesian revolution and loathed the Dutch? What was he doing squatting in an Indonesian village and dying poor after being cheated of his wealth by the Madurese wife of a Scottish banker who got Pilliet to sign over his estate to her husband?

At the end of his life the old Kiwi was reduced to boiling buffalo bones to extract fat for sale as a rheumatism cure and getting the kids to hawk this door-to-door.

Now his great, great nephew Michael Pringle is trying to put together the missing threads in the tapestry of his colourful relative’s life. Pringle came to Indonesia 11 years ago to research the story and will return in January to see if he can sew a more complete narrative.

Unfortunately the old man’s books seem to have vanished. Mutmainah said he kept thousands in cupboards and wardrobes, but only the furniture remains.

Pilliet was born in 1869 in NZ’s South Island into a family with legal, journalistic and political connections, and ancestors from France. His mother died when he was three. It seems he didn’t get on with his stepmother and was raised by his grandfather.

Pilliet worked as a merchant seaman, then a miner before leaving for what was then the Dutch East Indies.

“His experiences on the west coast of Sumatra were extraordinary,” said Michael Pringle who is writing a biography of Charles’ father Walter. “Charles hunted tigers and elephants up remote rivers and undertook extremely dangerous exploratory forays into regions which had never previously seen a white man.

“ He suffered numerous bouts of malarial sickness and was probably lucky to have survived. In 1899 he was exploring the northern coast of the Celebes (now Sulawesi) sleeping in the open to avoid leprosy and other diseases that were rife in the villages.”

In Sulawesi Pilliet apparently fathered a daughter with a local woman, though the child later died. He set up house in Kupang, owned a lugger and traded in pearls in Western Australia and Singapore, amassing considerable wealth. He became the British consul in Dili where he worked as a spy monitoring German activities in the area.

He seems to have been fascinated by Eastern religions and philosophies. He read widely and in 1923 moved to Lawang, about 15 kilometers north of Malang where he built a house and had coffee plantations.

“He had a Javanese housekeeper who moved her two young nieces in with her for company,” said Pringle. “Charles became very fond of these children and almost adopted them as his own, picking them up from school and treating them with great affection. He was well regarded by the people of Lawang and taught the local children English in his house.”

Stories vary about his time during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. One version has him being transported to the Changi prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore, though Mutmainah is adamant that didn’t happen.

She said he was arrested by the Japanese and released later when they discovered he wasn’t Dutch. This seems unlikely because New Zealand, along with Australia, was fighting with the Allies and Pilliet would have been considered an enemy alien.

However Mutmainah said that after the war he did stay for a year or more in Singapore where he had a Jewish friend. This may have been during the four-year war for Indonesian independence.

When Pilliet returned to Java he was a poor man though he got some support from his family in NZ.

Why didn’t he go back to his homeland? Mutmainah said this was because of his antagonism towards his father, but Walter had died in 1885 aged 45 from typhoid when young Charles was still a teenager. If this was the reason the hostility must have run deep.

What attracted Pilliet to East Java? Mutmainah said he spoke Indonesian, but not Javanese. He doesn’t seem to have gone native and continued to read newspapers from Singapore, drink whisky, make his own wine and dress as a European.

Pringle is particularly keen to trace his great, great uncle’s books. These were probably in English because the old man refused to use the Dutch language. They may well have been sold to libraries and were probably about philosophy.

If you have any clues or anecdotes, please contact Michael Pringle at tixall@xtra.co.nz
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(First published in The Jakarta Post Saturday 11 October)
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AMRIS HASSAN

STAYING IN THE SADDLE © Duncan Graham 2007

It looked like the start of a rough ride for any Indonesian ambassador, particularly a novice on his first posting to a Western country.

The headline in the New Zealand capital daily read: Plug Pulled on Musical. The story alleged that pressure from the Indonesian embassy had resulted in a composition titled Papua Merdeka (Free Papua) being dropped from the official program of an international music festival.

But Amris Hassan, Indonesia's ambassador to NZ, Samoa and Tonga didn't seem to be thrown at encountering a potentially dangerous diplomatic hurdle so early in his new career.

Pragmatically the accomplished horseman noted that the story was a single column piece on page six of Wellington's The Dominion Post and hadn't been followed up by any radio or TV stations.

Also the allegedly offensive mixed-media presentation by Australian activist and composer Martin Wesley-Smith, critical of Indonesia's handling of conflict in the province, had been shown a day later than scheduled at the same venue.

"It might have been a different situation in Australia – maybe page one," Hassan reflected as he composed a denial. "Here in NZ relationships with my country are in good shape. But I can't influence the media any more than President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono can in democratic Indonesia.

"The NZ media by contrast with Australia isn't so interested in issues of conflict and hasn't been so negative. The problem is getting the NZ press to recognize us. Sometimes there's only one story a month about Indonesia."

Hassan took office last December after a nine-month drought with no ambassador. The Wellington job should be a posting worth fighting for – the city is a crucible of cultures and the timber-clad embassy an old-world delight. But it's been more like an airport waiting room with four ambassadors in the past five years.

Hassan flicked questions about the diplomatic revolving door across to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Jakarta, but said he intended to remain in NZ and create some stability.

"I admit the constant changes have been a problem. The process of ambassadorial appointments is a long and tedious process through parliament," he said. "However I understand the way things work."

So he should. Before taking up his present job Hassan, 48, was a member of the House of Representatives in Megawati Soekarnoputri's Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP). In the parliament he was deputy chair of the commission on defence, foreign relations and information, with a reputation for moderation and balance.

Before entering politics he lectured on international relations at the University of Indonesia for 14 years. He was educated at the American University of Cairo and got a masters degree in Britain.

His father, Professor Fuad Hassan was also a diplomat and Minister for Culture and Education in Soeharto's New Order government.

Hassan claimed his background and experience provided the contacts necessary to by-pass bureaucrats and get things done. And that seems to be the case with some early first wins.

These include resumption of the defence forces' cooperation program that had been frozen since the 1999 East Timor independence referendum, rising trade favoring Indonesia, and an increase in Indonesian students and workers in NZ. These wins despite operating on a budget and agenda designed by his predecessors.

"However I'm still not happy because up to 80 per cent of that trade is oil and gas and you don't need an embassy to sell petroleum products," he said. "I want to see more Indonesian manufactured goods on sale here – particularly footwear and furniture.

"NZ education standards are good and relatively affordable when compared to the US and Europe. There are two NZ schools in Jakarta. Many Indonesians are now apprehensive about going to America and Australia. I think NZ can fill that vacuum. It's no longer looking just to the Pacific."

Not so easy – with the journey handicapped by geographical ignorance rather than a history of conflict and suspicion. Hassan said he's found many Kiwis remain Eurocentric and seem to think that Indonesia is somehow linked to India.

Indonesian business people were overlooking the chances of selling NZ meat and wine to Indonesia's growing middle classes and exploring a big niche market, he said.

Then there are the transport problems. Garuda has pulled out of its NZ service and freight tonnages are too small to warrant a direct shipping service. This means all containers have to go through Australia or Singapore.

There are only 3,000 Indonesians in NZ, a nation with a population of four million. There are almost three times as many Malaysians in the country – probably because both nations are members of the Commonwealth.

Apart from real or imagined attempted bans on musical compositions about Papua, there are few serious issues of conflict between Indonesia and NZ. A few sailors and tourists decide to tear up their work contracts and visas and disappear into NZ's multicultural crowd where ID cards are not required and jobs are almost everywhere.

This is a problem – but Indonesians aren't the most serious offenders. There are no illegal fishers, and if there are any buxom drug mules rotting in Indonesian jails they're not getting top media coverage. There are human rights activists in NZ hustling the Papua issue, but they don't have the profile of Aussie activists.

"I've been asked why we haven't signed a treaty like the one negotiated in Lombok last year between Indonesia and Australia," Hassan said.

"We don't need one. That just assumes there are problems."

Hassan said he wants to see more NZ journalists going to Indonesia on exchange programs, more Islamic scholars visiting NZ to talk about religious tolerance and the new democracy – anything positive to encourage Kiwis to recognize the crowded islands to the north of their big empty neighbor.

Other plans include developing sister-city relationships and maybe having an Indonesian film festival. This last task shouldn't be too difficult. Hassan's wife is film producer Afi Shamara. Her most famous work is the 2003 metrosexual comedy hit Arisan. Other films are Ca Bau Kan (A Courtesan) and Biola Tak Berdawi (The Stringless Violin).

If Hassan can stay in the saddle, ride the rodeo of Jakarta politics and last his full term he should do well in NZ. He's affable, open and handsome, with language skills so high he can even decode Kiwi vowels.

He's already been photographed on horseback in a thick wooly jumper, the uniform of the bush. Stand by for pix of him wearing a beanie at a rugby international and barracking for the All Blacks

Relishing the outdoor life is a quality Kiwis respect. Intellectuals are fine – but only if they can also tramp the mountains, sail the estuaries and ride the bloodstock.

"I'll do what I can, but it has to be both ways," he said. "We must both have higher profiles."

So what's been the best job – academic, politician or diplomat?

"There were fewer burdens in Parliament and it was easier to make headlines," he said. Maybe he'd already forgotten about Aussie composers with a political agenda.

First published in The Jakarta Post 24 Feb 2007)
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