WHY INDONESIA IS MORE  MONARCHY THAN  DEMOCRACY          

    General Soeharto who ruled Indonesia for 32 years last century used to stage a ‘Festival of Democracy’ every five years.  This was export quality irony - the results were known before the poll papers were printed.

That’s not the case this year as the Republic now has an apparently independent Komisi Pemilihan Umum, (General Elections Commission, KPU) to police the process in what is supposed to be a democracy.

International authorities label it ‘flawed’ which is being kind.  Local academics predict more dilution after the February election whoever wins.

The KPU is not the problem - it’s the parties.  Three of the 24 contesting the presidency and a confusion of other national and regional positions have ‘democracy’ in their title.  The other 21 idly pass the gift of the Greeks around in their pronouncements like a smoke with a few sucks left before it’s stubbed out.

(The global leader in grand misnomers is North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.)

If democracy means the people have the power then none of Indonesia’s major parties nurture that essential. There are annual meetings and flash events to show that all bleatings are heard.  But these displays are for the shepherd to tell the flock where it’s heading, not why.

The largest party by membership and seats is the ruling Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (Democratic Party of Struggle) led by Megawati Soekarno, 76, the daughter of first president Soekarno.  She was the fifth president (2001 - 04) and now party president for life.

PDI-P is supposed to have half a million followers, but as with the first Elizabeth only the Monarch’s voice may be heard. One card-carrier is the current President Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo, constitutionally barred from standing for more than two five-year terms.

A decade ago Mega reluctantly launched his career from Jakarta Governor to national politics.  She couldn’t muster public support for a dynasty through her unpopular daughter Puan  Maharani, chair of the House of Reps - Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR). 

Despite Jokowi's wins in 2014 and 2019, and an approval rating of around 80 per cent, Mega paid him no respect as the leader of 270 million people, the world's third-largest democracy after India and the US.  

She considered him a ‘minor functionary’.  This year she handpicked the former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo as his successor, a man  reportedly more pliant to her demands.

To revenge the slights Jokowi dropped endorsement of his party colleague and instead blessed Prabowo Subianto his bitter rival in the last two contests. Jokowi's son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, then quit the PDI-P to join Prabowo as his vice president candidate.

It’s widely thought he’s there as Jokowi’s proxy, but the former mayor of Solo (Central Java) may yet turn out to be his own man.  If so the businessman who has never been subject to military discipline will need guts to disobey the fiery-tempered absolutist Prabowo.

In the last election (2019) the PDI-P scored just under 20 per cent of the vote and 128 seats in the DPR.  The Jokowi and Gibran defections will cut down these scores.

In colonial days bowing and scraping was the way to win favours; in a modern Republic. stuffed envelopes are more effective.

According to Transparency International, Indonesia ranked 110 among 180 countries measured for corruption. The score starts at 1 = most pure. Here’s where the Nordic nations and NZ cluster.

Autocrats hate critics, so Jokowi’s bloodless way to neuter opponents has been to invite minor parties to abandon their principles, join his coalition and get money-making ministries.  He’s done this so well his actions only get chastised by NGOs and unions.

Golkar (Functional Groups) was the plaything of the late Soeharto. It claims 840,000 members, but that appears to be a leftover from last century when all public servants had to belong.  

In 1997, the last election before he was ousted, the party had 325 of the 400 seats, now only 85.  A few minor parties were allowed to give the pretence of democracy but only Mega’s mob offered any opposition so was trashed by Soeharto’s thugs in 1996.

Five people died, 149 were injured and  23 remain missing. The party was reformed as centre-left nationalistic and added ‘struggle’ to its title.  For many years it was popular through its  underdog status , but that’s waned.

The hard-right Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) is the third-largest party with 78 seats.  It's the poodle of Prabowo, Indonesia’s version of Mussolini.

The cashiered former general and alleged human rights abuser started the party after returning from self-imposed exile in Jordan in 2008 and finding no welcome mat at Golkar.

Gerindra boasts half a million members, but that doesn’t imply they’re paid-up card holders.  The money comes from Prabowo’s dollar billionaire businessman brother  Hashim Djojohadikusumo.

The slightly left NasDem (Democratic Party) has 59 seats in the DPR; it’s steered by  Surya Paloh who owns the 24-hour news channel Metro TV.  Surya was a key figure in Golkar for 40 years before starting NasDem in 2011 and reportedly has 400,000 members.

The media tzar comes from Sumatra, a huge handicap in Java-dominated politics so has appointed other candidates, this time former Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan.

He's not doing well in the polls, probably because he used to be an academic and takes leadership seriously.  Better harken to coarse Prabowo who uses the Trump primer:  Rant, lie flat out like a thirsty lizard, blame unnamed foreigners for all evils, sow fear and promise to fix everything without explaining one policy detail.

That's because there aren't many - and those that surface soon evaporate.  Indonesian politics isn't driven by ideas gleaned in democratic party conferences where intellects clash, but by personalities created by social media, wrinkles smoothed by AI.

The Gerindra duo are being promoted as jolly cartoon characters as though running the world’s fourth largest nation with more Muslims than any other state is a pastime for a Blinky Bill lookalike.

As Tim Minchin sings in his Opera House tribute  Play It Safe: ‘You gotta keep it simple’. Economics and foreign relations?  Boor-r-r-ing. Just choose  someone like the late Soeharto (Prabowo is his former son-in-law) who kept prices low and fixed dissent with gunfire.  Those were the days.

In 1998 the students who helped bring in democracy reckoned they were activists, but the president said they were terrorists so good riddance.  It worked last century - so why not now?

The answer is that the electorate is better educated, knows more of the world through uncensored smartphones and maybe better able to research the history they didn’t get at school.  Whether their learning has reached the age of discretion will be known after 14 February.

 

 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 20 January 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/why-indonesia-is-more-monarchy-than-democracy/

OUR  LEADING LADY’S NOT LEADING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No acknowledgement.  Resend. Resend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAMPAIGN FATIGUE

 YAWNING DEMOCRACY IN INDONESIA

Is it possible to overdose on politics?  In Indonesia, yes. There’s a month left before the 14 February deciding date - and the road signs are showing wear and tear.

Literally, because the kerbside vinyl  banners featuring the faces of fist-shaking or praying candidates (it’s difficult to do both)  are getting flipped and ripped by the monsoon winds and rains now drenching Java.  

The campaigners’ teams aren’t mustering much energy to repair, suggesting  funds are as exhausted as enthusiasm.

Apart from social media, Indonesians get their voting info from the giant billboards polluting the streetscape - and TV.

The third of five scheduled debates between the three main contenders for the presidency was screened last Sunday - a blessing for insomniacs.

 US-educated former academic and Jakarta Governor Dr Anies Baswedan, one time Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo and cashiered general Prabowo Subianto tried to keep interest afloat.

But the show’s producers schooled in TV game shows thought this should be a flashy fun event, as though the winner would be waved away with a beribboned new motorbike rather than  the prize of running the world’s fourth largest country.

Apart from having more Muslims than any other nation while remaining constitutionally secular, Indonesia is also the third largest democracy - of a sort - though only this century.

For the 32 preceding years it was an autocracy-cum-kleptocracy known as Orde Baru (New Order) run by General Soeharto who ousted founding President Soekarno in an anti-Communist coup.

The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Indonesia a "flawed democracy" because of its limited accountability to voters, meaning parties stitch up deals without consulting members.

One expert has been blunter with the lable “a state of disorder” .  His reasoning is that President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has “partnered with corrupt politicians, military figures, bureaucrats and businesses, who then used their influence to repurpose democratic institutions for the interests of their survival.”

Like Trump’s villainy doesn’t seem to worry GOP supporters in the US, Widodo’s alleged flaws haven’t stopped him recording popularity ratings above 80 percent, largely because he used to look like an ordinary bloke - one of us.  No longer.

Some readers may recall he took then PM Malcolm Turnbull to a market in 2015 where the two men were swamped by fans.  

That blusukan (impromptu visit) style has faded with tightened security, but his successes have been substantial:  New toll roads, railway lines and airports - plus health  insurance that so far seems to be doing better than Medicare in getting the needy into surgeries.

The Constitution limits him to two five-year terms, so his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, has abandoned the PDI-P party of his father to couple as vice-president hopeful with Prabowo in a bid to create a dynasty.

To those raised in the political religion of the Westminster System  this arrangement is totally weird.  But it works in Indonesia because personalities are far more important than policies.

Gibran is young enough to be Prabowo’s grandson, so the image-makers have been erasing lines and creases on one man’s phiz - and adding to the other.

The TV producers thought it better to get acclaimed academics to put questions in sealed envelopes instead of asking seasoned journos to toss curlies.  This resulted in queries about geospatial technology, which your correspondent can guarantee is not foremost in the minds of hungry voters counting their rupiah.

This didn’t matter because the candidates ignored the questions and just said what they wanted, rarely bothering to explain how they’ll build the nation’s food security.  Once an exporter of rice Indonesia now relies on India and Vietnam to cope with more mouths.

Unrestrained building of homes and roads has seen once super-fertile lands covered by concrete and asphalt, an irreversible loss.

Polls in Indonesia are unreliable, so the indicators that Prabowo is the leading contender should get be treated with handfuls of salt.  But he seems to be outspending his opponents so getting more publicity.

His father-knows-best appeal is that he’ll return Indonesia to the state of low prices and little social disorder because the military will fix everything. In the mid 1980s a series of extra-judicial killings called petrus cleaned up real or imagined criminal gangs in big cities.

Prabowo’s opponents try to remind voters that the divorced son-in-law of Soeharto was banned from the US for many years because of alleged human rights abuses, including the 1998 kidnapping and disappearance of protesting students. He responds by saying that’s stuff from the past and it’s time to look ahead.

Like Trump, his wild assertions that Indonesia is being exploited by outsiders determined to break up the ‘unitary State’ and plunder its mineral wealth go largely unchallenged in the media.

Voting is not compulsory. The 2019 election saw a turnout of around 83 per cent when Jokowi trounced Prabowo by ten points.  The loser’s supporters then rioted with eight killed and around 300 injured in post-poll riots.   

Instead of being condemned, Prabowo was rewarded with the Defence Ministry - and that’s not a misprint.  With this platform he’s been able to convince some that he’s no longer a brutal authoritarian leftover from the Orde Baru, but a cuddly gramps.

If the Valentine’s Day vote isn’t a massacre but a run-off as no one contender scores more than 50 per cent of the vote, there’ll be a run-off on 26 June.  Then the electors will have to find the energy to do it all again.  

First published in Independent Australia 10 January 2024: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/indonesia-failing-to-inject-energy-into-upcoming-election,18227

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAN GIBRAN BE HIS OWN MAN?

 GOODISH GUY IN BAD COMPANY 

Gibran Rakabuming Raka is smarter than his stolid Dad Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, President of our huge neighbour since 2014.  As Vice President Gibran could be a positive change agent - but that demands missionary zeal and the guts to challenge his dangerous leader . Does he have The Right Stuff?

 

In the lead-up to the 14 February national poll, a TV debate between Gibran and his older and more accomplished rivals showed the 36-year-old Mayor of Solo in Central Java is no daddy's shadow - as shown in the street posters - but an individual, a VP candidate in his own right.  

However, he's burdened by the company he keeps and the dirty dealings done to give him a shot at the big game. These issues distress the educated middle classes concerned with the erosion of democracy under Jokowi's reign;  sadly most voters won't care a dish of cold rice because nepotism and corruption are accepted as the Indonesian way even though it repels the ethical international investors the economy needs.

That won't change till any new president becomes an Indonesian version of the late Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew (1959 - 1990) tough enough to burn bridges, stare down the threatening oligarchs and jail mates.  Chances of this happening are about the same as Trump turning to empathy.

After his everyman Dad beat elite opposition to head the world’s third largest democracy his team sought photo-ops with loving family. Gibran was a reluctant drag-in from his catering business.   He looked surly, a young man with better   things to do than play in a political pantomime.

Hot cakes must have done well because a few years later he revealed AUD 2.2 million in assets.  When Papa showed that politics pays better than kitchen toil  Gibran warmed to the addiction of  power.

Fo the sympathy vote Jokowi plays on his poor riverbank home history like Anthony Albanese uses his single-mum, council flat background. But unlike the PM’s story, the President’s oft-told tale sustains popularity ratings of around 80 per cent.  

So the tacticians got young Gibran to tag along with one of the old boys hoping Dad's lustre would rub off and add youth to the real candidate.

That should have been Ganjar Pranowo, the choice of the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).  It’s Jokowi’s party and endorsed him twice but as he constitutionally can’t stand again chose the Governor of Central Java as his replacement.

Gibran is also a member of PDI-P but its axe-grinding matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri (right) put hatred of Jokowi ahead of political sense and dubbed Mohammad Mahfud Mahmodin (Mahfud MD) as VP candidate.

A standard factory-made politician Mahfud was picked to draw Gen Z which covers around a third of the electors, with his supposed competence and experience.  He also hectors and his record repels.

In a separate forum, the 66-year old misogynist explained corruption this way:  “In many cases, husbands get involved in crimes because their wives are not good.” The coward’s defence: ‘She made me do it, ya honour’.

When the PDI-P door shut by Mega, Jokowi's ambitious offspring was seduced by Gerindra (Greater Indonesia), the party of cashiered general Prabowo Subianto.  He drives a jeep load of unresolved human rights allegations involving kidnappings and killings.  He's so ruthless he makes Peter Dutton look woke.

 Fabled Aesop wrote that “a man is known by the company he keeps”. Gibran has stained his nascent character.  To bypass regulations banning under 40s standing for high office there was an appeal to the Constitutional Court, conveniently chaired by his uncle  Anwar Usman.  Though the judge has since lost his job for a gross ethical breach, the decision stands.

Gibran has much to learn.  He prefers the teenage pout to the mature politicians’ ersatz smile. His rivals dub him anak ingusan (snotty child), but that’s not his TV image.  In the overlong over-managed debate he was calm, sharp, articulate, well-prepared and surprisingly confronting.

That breaks the Javanese code of respect for elders, suggesting he’s absorbed Western ways. That will annoy oldies but delight the young and restless.

He was educated in Singapore and Sydney (UTS) so should know about civil liberties -something his political partner fears.

So far he’s snubbed the foreign media.  After a stake-out ABC correspondent Bill Birtles only snagged a cursory "feeling confident" tossed out of a moving car’s window.

Though he follows all the rituals, Gibran is not known as a prisoner of religion. His other rival is Muhaimin “Cak Imin” Iskandar, chair of  the PKB (National Awakening) Islamic party.

His inclusion is supposed to magnetise the Muslim vote for Dr Anies Baswedan.  Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation so conventional wisdom has meant pandering to this block in return for ‘wet’ (lucrative) ministries.

The political plotters have now discovered that the young are getting better educated and more inclined to pick candidates on merit rather than supposed piety. They don’t come structured so immune to payoffs.

This shrieks problems for Prabowo who has no idea who these voters are and what they want.  As a way to their hearts his media advisers have urged him to endorse a cartoon blob, the type used to sell toilet chemicals.

To transform from villain to jolly fellow he does TikTok moves.  These simulate bayonet charges.  Artists' makeovers turn Gibran sage and Prabowo, who’s old enough to be his grandfather, into a sibling.  The ad agencies’ contempt for voters is limitless.

Indonesia’s VPs are called ‘spare tyres’, not there to help with the steering.  They must stay in the boot and follow the last century duduk diam (siddown and shuddup) rule,  alien to Gibran’s progressive generation.

There’ll be confrontations; Gibran has no military background so won’t accept orders shouted by an autocrat demanding obedience.  Should Prabowo make it into the Jakarta White House, the impatient VP won’t stand around waiting for Allah to send the villainous  P to his place in the abyss.

Prabowo (with Jokowi, right) should be worried.  Like Cassius,  Gibran thinks too much; such men are dangerous. His first major public performance proves he runs his own show.  Local commentators reckon he'll be jerked by the strings held offstage by his dahlang (puppet master) Dad and continue the policies of infrastructure and development.

That assumption is open to doubt. Kompas media group polls put the undecideds close to 30 per cent.  Does this mean the electorate is getting more discriminating, better able to see through the fog of lies and crass diversions?   Let it be so.

 

Duncan Graham has a MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.

 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 4 January 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/goodish-guy-in-bad-company/

ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN STUFF-UP RESOLVED BY TAXPAYERS

  BOAT BOY SHAME  MORE THAN A MINOR MATTER   

The Federal Court is set to endorse a Commonwealth payout to settle a 13-year scandal.

About 220 Indonesian men will share $27.5 million in compensation because  Australian authorities broke international laws designed to protect the weak.

This is the cost of hanging onto a political ideology in the face of escalating uncertainty about proving the age of Asians, coloured by an assumption they lie.

Kids were slammed into adult jails. That’s illegal. Under-18s must be held apart from perverts and brutes under the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Australia is a signatory.

The prime victims of the Stop The Boats panic that gripped Australians last decade are the terrified teens from remote villages on the archipelago next door wrongfully charged as people smugglers.

 The xenophobia was politically weaponised.   Huge sums have been paid to lawyers trying to hammer square dogma into round reality while insisting - as the Attorney General’s office does - that “the rule of law underpins the way Australian society is governed.”

The story started when Colin Singer (right) exercised his conscience.  Had he done so in the Year of Persecuting Whistleblowers he might have been banged up inside Perth’s Hakea Prison.  But in 2010 the JP was an ‘official visitor’ bailed up by medical director Dr Brian Walker.

“He told me there are kids in here,” Singer said later. “I thought this impossible. I had great faith in the Australian justice system and believed it to be fair.

“Then I saw them - they were  pre-pubescent frightened children, certainly not men.”

The striplings were former deckhands hired by people smugglers to help ferry asylum seekers fleeing conflict zones and who’d made it to Indonesia.

Singer spoke to Ali Yasmin (later to become the lead plaintiff and get a separate $40,000 award)  from tiny Lembata island more than 1,000 km east of Bali. "He was alone and clinging to a fence, clearly traumatized," Singer recalled.

Tough, said the Australian Federal Police, take it like a man because we have proof. A wrist X-ray that referenced a 1942 US bone atlas with a four-year plus-or-minus margin of error determined Ali was 19. 

He was 14, but couldn’t prove his age. Jobless lads hanging around harbours don’t carry  passports. He quit school at 12 to support his mother after his Dad died knowing little of the outside world.

A letter from Ali’s principal confirming his 1996 birth date and organised by TV journalist Hamish Macdonald was rejected because it wasn’t a sworn statement.  

There’s no evidence of Australian or Indonesian agencies visiting the school to get the paperwork right.

(Lawyers acting for Yasmin have told him not to talk to the media until the settlement is endorsed.  Requests for a compromise have been ignored.)

Meanwhile the adult smugglers did OK - and in a perverse way have lifted our image. Their actions were illegal but a civilised state’s must be legal - no bashings or, thrashings.

Nurdin Tanal (left), now 47, admits his wrongdoing, pocketing $3,500 to captain a fully-provisioned boat organised by an Arab speaker in Jakarta whom he never met.  His wife Hajija Buja (also left)  used the money to build a new house in the village of Waipare on Flores - a largely Catholic island 1,200 km east of Bali.

But he didn't get to see it after being jailed in Brisbane for carrying 44 people from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan - including a breast-feeding mother.  When Nurdin realised they'd paid around $10,000 each for the three-day trip, he reckoned he'd been cheated.

  “I’d go back to Australia tomorrow if it was legal,” Nurdin told Michael West Media.  “I was suddenly released and told I was not guilty. I came home with almost $2,000, for working, given by Aussie friends, and the Indonesian Embassy.”

Wuring is a Muslim village.  Rayah, 62, (right)  is the go-to gossip. the snack seller at the port entrance.     Though she's never been Down Under, her info gleaned from locals makes her a splendid influencer:  "Australia good.  You look after people."

 Like shark-fin fisher Abdul Muthalib ( left), rescued off Darwin by the RAN.  He said in an Adelaide jail he was paid to clean mess rooms, treated well and never suffered discrimination.    

 In 2012 the Australian Human Rights Commission published An Age of Uncertainty.  The 331-page report found the wrist X-rays "an inherently flawed technique …unreliable and untrustworthy."

Like Robodebt the system hugged its wrongs when it should have been hugging the wronged.  As they were shuffled through the bewildering system, scores of officials, many of them parents,  must have been struck by the doubts that upset Dr Walker.

Also slow to mature was PM Anthony Albanese’s “Australian instinct for fairness, decency and care and respect for each other.”  His assessment was made before the Voice referendum results.

Singer said he found most prison staff compassionate: “My criticism is for the bureaucrats, politicians and lawyers who turned away from their responsibilities and ignored the rights of children.”

Like fallen trees blocking roads, the facts got too big to drive around. Ali and 14 others were released 'on licence' in 2012 and headed home.  The WA Court of Criminal Appeal quashed their  sentences, "satisfied that a miscarriage of justice has occurred."

I saw my first child 'people smuggler' in a Perth court in  2012 -    X Hadi,  standing with an adult X Riadi.   Many Indonesians have only one name – an actuality Australian bureaucracy can't handle.  The label X is usually reserved for witnesses who can't be identified.

The ‘Mr Big’ organisers of the vile trade were absent. Few accompany their customers on overseas trips.

Through an interpreter, the men pleaded not guilty to "unlawfully transporting aliens" - the fishermen call them “black goats”. Facing the accused was a jury of a dozen  Australian citizens and several confident Afghans keen to back the prosecutor's story of their voyage to freedom.

Hadi said he'd crewed a craft carrying coconuts that later collected 54 foreign men. A lawyer asked why he didn't sniff illegality, jump ship and report his suspicions.  The question made no sense culturally or practically.  Some police have allegedly  been involved in the rackets.

The boat was seized by an Australian naval patrol and tagged SIEV (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel) 86.

Australians arrested abroad arouse the tabloids and TV squawkers to demand rapid repatriation to escape dodgy foreign justice.  

The Indonesian government seemed unconcerned about their X-men.  Outside the court, an official explained prisoners "get good food, high quality medical care, and earn $30 a week doing kitchen chores."

Laws to calm public terrors of a tsunami of Asians tied the hands of the sentencing bench - five years mandatory. Judge Richard Keen said prison would "bring home the message that Australia treats people smuggling seriously."  

It didn’t; the Federal Court's message is that Australia stuffed up. Finding the beneficiaries will be tricky - those still fishing are often itinerants. Distribution of the compo has yet to be determined, but probably around $125,000 each.

The average time spent far from home was 950 days -  130 bucks per nightmare.  Had they sought a template - like parity with Federal politicians' away-from-home allowances - payouts would have doubled.   

Paradoxes abound.  While jailing kids was morally and legally wrong, the policy may have helped deter the smugglers.  While compensation is right it may encourage the exploiters to try again.  

Posters at Indonesian ports once warned of the dangers.  They’ve vanished, like the estimated 1.720 who tried to reach the promised land last decade. All the more reason for Canberra and Jakarta to talk seriously.

The PM reportedly claims  “remarkable progress” on agreements about defence.  How about human lives?

 

 

Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First published in Michael West Media, 23 December 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/indonesian-people-smugglers-wrongly-imprisoned-finally-compensated/