WHAT THEY THINK OF US

Little time left for reform                                                                Duncan Graham

Is disturbing news about Australian-Indonesian relations so commonplace it hardly warrants attention?

That’s the obvious conclusion following the Lowy Institute’s latest survey of attitudes to those living south of Latitude 10.

The independent international think tank released its findings Shattering Stereotypes last month (March). Apart from a few broadsheet reviews it’s been rapidly yawned off the public agenda.

That doesn’t mean it’s been dumped into departmental recycling bins in Jakarta and Canberra, or the few campuses that still teach Indonesian studies.  Diplomats and academics are clearly worried about the latest Lowy findings.  Whether politicians will translate anxieties into remedies is another matter.

The poll results are more gado-gado (vegetable salad) than nasi putih (white rice). First the happy news: Indonesians generally feel warm towards Australia and the temperature is rising – 62 per cent compared with 51 per cent six years ago, though still behind Japan, Singapore and the US.

The downside is that almost one third believes Australia could be a threat, eight percentage points above perceptions of communist North Korea.  More distressing is that 12 per cent favor the Indonesian government encouraging militant groups to attack Australia. 

Survey author Fergus Hanson noted dryly: “This minority of extreme anti-Australia sentiment will continue to concern Indonesian and Australian policy-makers.” 

He might have expanded his statement to include all who live in the target area.  Twelve per cent is small until translated into numbers – a nightmarish 28 million potential provocateurs is more than the population of Australia. 

Fortunately most Indonesians reckon the land next door is an advanced economy, a good place to study and likely to act responsibly. Despite the growth in economic nationalism that’s worrying mining ventures a majority welcome Australian investment. 

The data was garnered last November and December by interviewing 1,289 Indonesian adults face-to-face.  That was just after Australia announced that Darwin on the north coast would house up to 2,500 marines, but before news that a naval base near Perth could harbor US nuclear submarines and that the Australian territory Cocos Islands might become a base for American drones. 

These are the pilotless high-altitude spy planes used so effectively in Afghanistan.

The Australian government is playing down these proposals, saying the base (which would be just 1,300 kilometers south-west of Jakarta) is just pie in the sky, not drones on launchpads.  Unfortunately such subtleties don’t count much in forming public opinion based on headlines rather than the qualifying small print.

Defence analyst Alan Dupont, Professor of International Security at the University of New South Wales was quoted as saying he supports the US Alliance, but Australia again risks being seen as America’s ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region.

(Ten years ago the then Liberal Prime Minister John Howard won the badge for a bellicose comment suggesting Australia would consider pre-emptive strikes against neighbor nations if it felt threatened.)

“I am 90 per cent sure the Indonesian government was blindsided on this and they are still not fully in the picture,” Professor Dupont told the Lowy Institute according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

 “They will look at Cocos Island, which is closer to Indonesia than Australia, and will think, good God! In Jakarta there is a well-disposed government but they will be scratching their heads and wondering where the Australians are going on this.”

Clearly Australia is going for boosting ties with the US as it starts focussing on the growing might of China.  The problem is that between the southern continent and the South China Sea lies another nation whose leaders don’t seem to get consulted.

Commenting on his survey Mr Hanson, program director for polling at the Lowy Institute wrote scathingly in The Australian newspaper about Australia’s relationship with Indonesia.  He rated it as “one of our greatest foreign policy failures” with Australian politicians treating Indonesia “with reckless abandon” and showing “patronising short-term thinking.”

Two years earlier on the eve of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s successful visit to Australia where he addressed Parliament, Mr Hanson was saying much the same in a thoughtful policy brief titled Indonesia and Australia – Time for a Step Change. 

“Mutual public distrust and stereotypes are so entrenched that dramatic leadership gestures are needed to produce a step-increase in relations,” he wrote.

Although the relationship with Indonesia was one of Australia’s most important, “stagnating relations” were focused around “a mostly negative set of security-related issues … business-to-business links are underdone and mutual public perceptions are poor.”

So what to do?  In 2010 Mr Hanson offered four options:

§         A long-term vision for the economic relationship that’s more ambitious than the Free Trade Agreement.

§         A greatly expanded education aid program twinning Australian universities with Indonesian campuses and increasing the number of Australians studying Indonesian.

·        Overhauling traditional approaches to public diplomacy.

·        Developing an outward-looking agenda of positive cooperation.

What’s happened since then?  Not a lot.  Australia continues to be the biggest aid donor, but the Lowy poll shows Indonesians are unaware of this generosity, believing Japan and the US top the list. AusAID needs to build its image along with schools and health programs.

The number of Australians studying Indonesian is in free fall.  More than 80 per cent of Australian visitors to Indonesia don’t travel beyond Bali.  Less than 200 Australian undergraduates are studying in the archipelago. Travel warnings continue despite Jakarta’s protests.

While Indonesian citizens have mixed feelings, the present leadership seems relaxed about its neighbor, readily stamping out sparks from frictions like drug arrests in Bali and cattle mistreatment, before they are whipped into firestorms by radio shock-jocks.

Vice President Boediono, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and the President’s politician son Edhie were all educated in Australia.

However in 2014 there’ll be an entirely different leadership that may not feel so benign or knowledgeable of Australia’s fears and foibles. There’s little time left for Mr Hanson’s reform remedies to be dispensed and swallowed, let alone take effect.

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WHY INDONESIANS DIED IN SOUTHERN SEAS

 
 Oyang 70: Photo credit -  NZDF)


RI crew on stricken ship ill-prepared, say NZ Police

Indonesians crewing a doomed trawler were not trained in evacuation procedures, had not been taught to launch lifeboats and could not understand orders, a coronial inquest in New Zealand was told yesterday. (Mon 16 April).

Five Indonesians from Tegal on the north coast of Central Java died when the 38-year old Korean ship Oyang 70 sank in the Southern Ocean on 20 August 2010. It capsized after trying to lift a massive haul of fish.

Police evidence read to the inquest revealed a culture of fear, ignorance, uncertainty and language barriers on board the ship, which was ruled by an “angry man … who cared more for fish than the safety of his crew (and where) complainers could lose their jobs.”

The Korean skipper Hyonki Shin went down with his ship, “hugging a post and crying while drinking clear liquid from a bottle.”

A life jacket offered by one of the Indonesians was rejected by Mr Shin. No orders were given to launch life rafts so the Indonesians took the initiative and released the boats.

Only the bodies of Samsuri, 39, Taefur, 35 and Heru Yuniarto, 25 were recovered. There’s been no sign of the other Indonesians, Tarmidi and Ha’arais, or the skipper.

The men’s widows have been paid compensation of NZ$12,000 (Rp 90 million) with extra if they have dependants. The money has come from the NZ Government, not the Korean ship owners or their insurers.

There were 51 men on board the Oyang 70. Thirty-six were Indonesians the rest Koreans and Filipinos with one Chinese. The 1,600 tonne ship was owned by the Sajo Oyang Corporation, which recruited the Indonesians through an agent in Java.

Much of the first day of the week-long inquest before Wellington coroner Richard McElrea was taken up with Detective-Sergeant Michael Ford reading survivors’ statements.

Their evidence included stories of regular engine breakdowns, having to work up to 20 hours followed by a three-hour break, living in leaky cabins with cockroaches, working in a flooded engine room and not understanding orders shouted in Korean.

There were no Indonesians at the inquest, though NZ lawyer Craig Tuck, who is not charging for his services, represents the families. He’s a member of the NGO Slave-Free Seas, which is working to improve conditions on foreign-crewed ships.

They men told police that around 3.30 am on the day of the tragedy they were ordered to pull in the net even though batteries had not been fitted to an electronic sensor designed to check the size of the catch.

The haul of southern blue whiting was “extremely large … the biggest ever seen”, probably close to 80 tonnes. The net became wedged on the stern.

Late and unsuccessful attempts were made to cut the net and dump some of the load, which dragged the boat down on the port side. Water flooded in. Measures to right the trawler failed.

There was “shouting and crying … yelling and banging” as the crew jumped into the icy waters, 750 kilometers east of NZ’s South Island.

The ship sank within ten minutes. The men were rescued by another fishing boat and have since returned to Indonesia.

The tragedy was followed four months later by the sinking in the Southern Ocean of another Korean ship, the No 1 Insung with the death of 22 men, including two Indonesians.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 April 2012)