FEAR OF TRADING

 THE CLUMSY NATION CAN’T GET TRADE TRACTION

 

We claim to be traders but less than four per cent of our goods head to Southeast Asia - a market of more than 688 million. Trade suffers because we won’t relate to our neighbours, don’t know how and don’t care. 

 

Australian federal elections wrap with a ritual: After the niceties, the winner darts into a phone booth, rips off the soiled rags of domestic politics and dons the statesman’s cape of foreign affairs. First stop Jakarta.

 

All  leaders since Gough Whitlam have trumpeted hows vital it is to know the locals. Worthy aim, but a policy fail. Now comes yet another bash at the barriers.

 

It’s doomed through a double fault: The only road we know into the market is through a dodgy Cold War potholed track, and we’re too smug to learn some trade literacy.

 

In 1992, twenty-two Australian universities were teaching Indonesian language and culture. Now it’s down to a dozen. Indonesia dominates the region on every measure from economy to  people - the fourth most populous in the world, obviously important, yet we yawn.

 

 It’s 46 times larger than Singapore but our two-way trade with the tiny island is double that of Indonesia.  Despite all the urgings we invested only $3.1 billion in the archipelago.

 

China has put in four times more; this year it has pledged $104 billion. (All figures AUD).  If investment is married to influence the offspring of this union should thrive.

 

 Canberra’s response to these irksome realities  has been to ask investment banker Nicholas Moore to come up with fixes.

 

His 205-page attempted U-turn - Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 won’t get traction  because it follows the old road of seeing the people next door as buyers rather than partners, foreigners instead of mates.  Those folk are in the Anglosphere.

 

Positions perish and change is hurtling our way.  A new Indonesian president with a fresh ministry and new alliances will be elected next year. They’ll be revisiting policies on accepting foreign business ventures, maybe promoting, possibly rejecting, and most likely squeezing and confusing.

 

So far the coarsest attempt to try and  get pally with the neighbours is to nuzzle up to ASEAN, a policy inherited  by Foreign Minister Penny Wong from her predecessor, Marise Payne.  This is not through ideology but because there’s no alternative.

 

Some background: In 1967 during the Vietnam War Indonesia set up ASEAN with Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore to block the advance of Communism.

 

Ironically two latecomers are Red – Vietnam and Laos, with feudal Cambodia sticking close to China. Tiny Brunei joined in 1984, despotic Myanmar in 1997. Talk of Australia joining the Cold War relic are academic because decisions must be unanimous.

 

Apart from Singapore, ASEAN’s members are afflicted by what Indonesians openly call KKN Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme.  The Moore report ignores these critical impediments to investors.

 

Only Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines follow forms of ‘flawed democracy’ as assessed by the Economist Intelligence Unit.   That doesn’t mean they’re pure, just not so bad as the rest.

 

The US found AUD$ 142 million this year to support ‘the robust implementation of the ASEAN Outlook.’ FM Wong’s backing is curious because it’s long been a Coalition favourite pushed  by the right-wing  Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 

 

The title sounds benign , but former Foreign Minister Bob Carr reckons ASPI has a ‘one-sided, pro-American view of the world’. Much of its money comes from the weapons industry.

 

While we’re fumbling to get trade right, we know how to get close to Indonesia’s military, a force with a fearful record in human rights abuses.

 

No unpleasantness obvious in the Australian Defence Department’s jolly account of September’s joint exercises.  ’Big smiles and hugs’ followed a ‘rich series of training’.  Now Canberra is exploring a defence cooperation treaty as Michael West Media has reported.

 

The only twine stringing the ten disparate nations together isn’t language, culture, history, ideologies or economies. It’s geography.

 

 Darwin is only 830 kilometres from Kupang, the capital of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province, but physical proximity means next to nowt in zonal geopolitics. We have little in common with them and vice-versa. We claim we’re in the region. They think we are worlds apart.

 

That shouldn’t stop us from being friends, doing business and having good relationships, best achieved through the intermix of citizens.

 

ASEAN citizens can wander visa-free through Southeast Asia, Australia disallows easy access, particularly for Indonesians. Many obstacles mean no trust.

 

Last year we got just 91,000 Indonesian visitors - but sent them 610,000, mainly to Bali

 

Labor governments appear to take the issue of relationships with SE Asia more seriously.  That doesn’t mean more successfully. 

 

Eleven years ago then PM Julia Gillard released the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper ’nurturing deeper and broader relationships … by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Asian century.’

 

 

It was an advance on the earlier Keating doctrine that Asia is where our future substantially lies, but it  ‘famously disappeared from official websites following the election of Tony Abbott. It became the White Paper that dared not speak its name.’

 

However, you can read a copy here.

 

The proposals in Moore’s September report are floundering for attention against the Voice Referendum and its wash ups,  and now the Gaza War

 

But the question is too important to filed under ‘NOTED”: Why are we so far behind many other countries in doing deals with the neighbours?

 

The awkward truth is that we put our dollars and goodies into the US, the UK and Europe because we reckon they’re transparent and safe harbours while ASEAN is not.

 

Moore’s report notes: ‘Some Australian investors continue to view the region’s risk–return trade-off as unattractive.’ Better be blunt: We’re ignorant and fearful. 

 

His report wants us to ‘lift investment in Southeast Asia literacy at all levels, from stimulating demand and teaching languages and cultural awareness to school and university students to training government officials and senior executives and board directors on Southeast Asian commerce and business practices.’

 

Our Jakarta Embassy brags about the 63,000 Indonesians who’ve  studied in Australia since 2002.  This  balloon has been pricked by Newcastle University Professor Richard Heller’s noting that we have twice as many  students from Singapore than from Indonesia. 

 

Embarrassingly Canada is poaching in our paddock, ‘developing trusted relationships for investment, including having spent more time on the ground understanding markets, taking minority stakes in businesses, joining boards, and building experience in the region.’

 

Ottawa is 15,600 km from Jakarta;  Canberra a third of that distance.

  

Southeast Asian states don’t see us as our PR people would have you believe - the land of  cuddly-koalas and barbie hosts.  We’re a Western nation aligned with Northern Hemisphere powers, superior and racist - an image already hardened by the Voice result.

 

The locals want our wheat, meat, and investment dollars, but they don’t want us.

 

Time to cremate the absurd notion of joining ASEAN,  this feudal gang, toss the ashes in the Arafura Sea and focus on following Moore’s advice on learning and understanding - then deal with individual nations.

 

Indonesia’s presidential election will be on 14 February. Here’s a guarantee: The winner will not say his priority destination is Canberra. His first stop will be Mecca.

 

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First published in Michael West Media 5 November 2023: https://michaelwest.com.au/the-moore-report-on-south-east-asian-trade-unlikely-to-lead-to-more-trade/

STEP UP TO GREAT EVENTS - IF YOU CAN

 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD - AND IT WAS UWRF

UWRF founder and energiser Janet DeNeefe

 

Was this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers Festival worthwhile? My word - the people of the book had a literary communion.

 

Almost two hundred speakers (gleaned from a list four times longer) handled  challenging ideas mainly with aplomb. Not all was fiction - human rights were prominent throughout.

 

A lively analysis of the Gaza crisis by two articulate writers who knew their stuff -  Australian investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein and American ‘private diplomat’ Michael Vatikiotis - gave the audience a nuanced understanding of the tortured region’s complex history.

 

Goenawan Mohammad, Indonesia’s leading public intellectual  told of being ‘betrayed’ by the actions of Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo - a leader he’d once endorsed. 

 

No longer. Days earlier he’d written an ‘open letter’  condemning the president for   backing his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, as a contestant for the vice presidency alongside his former bitter opponent, the cashiered general Prabowo Subianto.

 

Also striking was Kurdish-Iranian refugee and writer Behrouz Boochani letting loose on his four years on the Australian-run Manus Island detention centre and two more years in Port Moresby. Denied entry to Australia he was eventually accepted in New Zealand where he’s now an academic.

 

For those from Down Under there was a chance to get close to personalities they only know from TV, like 2021 Australian of the Year, Grace Tame, AI expert Toby Walsh and ABC presenter Leigh Sales who asked why the public is turning away from news.

 

Maybe because we dish up too much that’s trite - a crime the Festival largely avoided.  

 

UWRF’s four days in October weren’t just back-to-back speakers. On the touchlines were masterclasses, book launches, art exhibitions, dances, films, craft classes and foodie shows - a speciality of the festival founder Janet DeNeefe.

 

Born in Melbourne she married Balinese Ketut Suardana and for the past three decades has lived on the island running restaurants. The first festival was staged two years after the 2002 bombings of a Kuta nightclub by Islamic terrorists.

 

The outrage turned thousands of foreigners away from Bali, emptying hotels and shredding supporting industries. Tens of thousands lost work.

 

The DeNeefes thought a literary festival might encourage returnees; they were right. Twenty years on their venture has grown into a non-profit drawing international names to Southeast Asia’s biggest literary festival, and a swag of sponsors.

 

Curiously the US ranks as a higher donor than the Australian  Embassy, though the festival is dominated by Aussies paying $495 for a four-day pass.  Locals got in for $125, students $50. 

 

The prime language was English and the cosmopolitan young Indonesian wannabe writers and established scribes easily exercised their views. But UWRF is for the well educated and inquisitive.

 

DeNeefe told this website that readership among Indonesians is far too low, as the education system doesn’t encourage text study. Her views are backed by a UNESCO survey claiming that although the population is almost 100 per cent literate, only one in 1,000 likes to read.

 

Despite UWRF’s obvious benefits to the economy and literacy, Jakarta threatened the 2015 event.  That was when it planned to cover the 50th anniversary of the 1965 genocide of half a million real or imagined Communists. 

 

About 100,000 were slaughtered in Bali.  The cascading green terraces ran red; the fear that dare not speak its name lingers still.

 

The military-organised killings followed a botched coup that installed the 32-year military rule of the despot General Soeharto.

 

Police threatened to shred the festival permit if discussions on the tragedy went ahead. DeNeefe argued the programme was designed to promote reconciliation, but scrapped the contentious sections to keep the Festival alive. 

 

The publicity made the government look fatuous and the festival famous.

 

This year’s troubles included Muhammad Quraish Shihab, 79, refusing to appear on the stage with the outspoken Andreas Harsono to discuss Islam. The Harvard-educated human rights activist didn’t make a fuss out of respect for his opponent's age; that’s another side of Indonesian culture.

 

The former Minister for Religious Affairs is best known outside Indonesia for declaring it’s OK for Muslims to wish Christians a ‘Happy Christmas’. Such profundities shape Indonesia’s religious debates. 

 

Goenawan Mohammad (right)  was publicly asked about his attack on Jokowi by a man clearly not a culture buff, most likely an Intel (intelligence services) operative.

 

Indonesia’s expanding dark side was hardly noticed by festival audiences enjoying esoteric debates on foreign affairs and thinking they’re in an open democracy.  But for all his blandness and domestic popularity Jokowi is no reformist liberal.

 

As Melbourne University law professor Tim Lindsey has written, Indonesia under Jokowi has suffered ‘increasing democratic regression … inaction on claims of human rights violations, and litigation to silence critics of the government.’ Last century the Republic was an autocracy. Now it’s a ‘flawed democracy’.

 

UWRF speakers get away with censure of authorities and policies, as does The Jakarta Post.  Co-founder Jusuf Wanandi told the festival few police can understand English so miss criticisms.

 

Although the venue was a delight overlooking tumbling forest it was a disaster for the physically challenged.

 

Stairs up, stairs down, holey rubble-strewn pavements and hazards everywhere. In much of the West public events must follow health and safety rules and include facilities for the disabled. In Indonesia such laws aren’t in place or don’t apply, though there was a medical team on site

 

The aged, overweight and those needing sticks and friends for support made up a goodly proportion of the 1,500-plus participants. Their cerebral pleasures were marred by physical discomfort. 

 

 Ubud’s narrow roads are thick with motorbikes, noise and fumes.  The fabled rice paddies are vanishing under concrete as the building boom goes on and on.  That should also be the future for the festival, but it needs pastures fresh.

 

Disclosure: The author was a guest of the Festival.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 1 November 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/in-the-beginning-was-the-word-and-the-word-was-uwrf-seeking/

 

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DON'T WAIT TO GO E-CAR; JUST WAIT FOR THE CHARGERS

 HOW TO CHOKE EV USE - CAR FIRST, SERVICES LATER

 

The High Court striking down Victoria’s electric vehicle levy shows policies around the technology are a dog’s breakfast, reports Duncan Graham* after a fossil fuel-free trip across the Nullarbor.

 

Governments across the nation claim they want to reduce pollution. On their list are electric cars. Consumers are encouraged with rebates, tax breaks and blarney, but discouraged by inaction on infrastructure.

 

Though the ocean is 200 km to the south, Norseman is a port. It’s the cast-off point into the Nullarbor, the great isolation that early explorers hoped might include an inland sea, They should have asked the traditional owners who knew it as Oondiri - ‘waterless’.

 

A 19th-century writer called the 200,000 square kilometre treeless plain ‘the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams’. 

 

Now the sealed Eyre Highway is run daily by fleets of monster trucks and cars dragging campers, Adventurers heading east leave Norseman with swags of anxiety. Will they get to the next harbour? No probs with a spare full jerrycan in the boot, impossible when the vehicle is electric.

 

Politicians have made such a fuss about their ‘initiatives’ that the casual consumer would assume the E-Age is upon us and all is ready.

 

Depending on the car’s capacity, it could take nine hours to fill up. Imagine doing that in a busy fuel station with a dribbling bowser.

Williams:  Who has the right plug?

 

The WA Government blows hard on its alleged commitment to driving away from fossil fuels. So it’s installed power points around well-populated tourist centres drawing oenophiles and surfers.

 

That’s not why travellers visit Norseman, a small gold-mining town named after a prospector’s lame horse. Few go to see the nag’s statue or the tailings dump, they go there to get away. 

 

Though there are no fast chargers there are four churches where spirits can be revived and thanks given to their deity for surviving the wilderness. Not for forty days - just five unless you hit a roo and rollover - but even if all goes well and the drivers don’t doze, it will still seem like an Old Testament trek. Don’t travel alone,

 

Planning is critical so the agency that’s supposed to be in charge was asked: What’s available now in Norseman? ‘Work will start next year.’ Question repeated. Three days later an update: A socket in a rusty box at the sports ground.

Norseman - looks grand but not connected

 

This is the thinking: When enough people have bought e-cars we’ll install chargers. Like - we’ll build a hotel when enough holiday makers we’ve invited  are sleeping in cars.

 

When long-distance driving an e-car pack patience and planning. That’s made a few volts easier with the free PlugShare app, full of maps, feedback about queues and gripes.

 

Travellers report broken contacts, unhelpful roadhouse staff and slimes who’ve grabbed the only outlet during the holiday season and then gone for a few beers. They report East Coast chargers aren’t too bad - but few compliments for WA.

 

There’s much work to be done by governments and car manufacturers before travellers can comfortably do more than drive from home to office. Some power points are BYO plugs. Standardisation is needed - best to carry four different cables.

 

A key selling point is the cost, with fuel around $2.50 and electricity often free - though at one Nullarbor stop it’s $2 a kilowatt-hour, close to the price of petrol.

 

In South Australia where fast chargers are being built by an automobile association, the cost is usually 60 cents a KwH, less off-peak. There are a few dinkum greenies, like a Whyalla vet who has put in a shaded point for public use. (right)

 

Some progressive shire councils have also done the right thing, though usually only slow systems.

 

Even where locals have e-servers they’re rarely under cover or close to shops. Handling 500-volt plugs in pouring rain isn’t a good idea. Likewise when 40+.   Public toilets are better signposted, 

 

Cut a car’s advertised range by a third because sellers use a last-century European system based on short trips. 

 

Range anxiety ranks up there with the ‘did I lock the front door?’ terror when two hours from home. Gas guzzlers may have conscience twinges about polluting the planet, but they rarely worry about running dry 500 km from the nearest breakdown truck.

 

Scott Morrison’s 2019 election campaign sneer that Labor’s support for e-cars would ‘end the weekend’ is oft repeated by sneering e-nthusiasts bragging about their marvels of electronics. 

 

Little need for knobs and switches - just speak and the system obeys in a soft female voice and neutral accent - even steer if the driver tires. She’ll warn when the battery is going flat, though useless if there’s no nearby charger,

 

Then terror strikes. Before hitting the Nullarbor don’t watch the creepy killer movie, Roadgames. 

 

For those good at juggling percentages, KwH, km, vehicle weight, wind speed and direction, and fiddle all to reach the safe sweet spot where maths and reason rules and worry retreats, then the e-xperience can be fun and e-ducational.

 

If not wait till the States get their act together and plug  pledges into infrastructure.

 

* Duncan Graham and son Andrew took a week and 20 stops to drive from Perth to Adelaide in a 2023 Chinese e-car. Total cost $250 for 3000 + km - around a quarter of a conventional trip expense.

 

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First published 25 October 2023 in Independent Australia: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/governments-choking-ev-use-by-putting-cars-first-services-later,18018

and here: https://johnmenadue.com/how-to-choke-ev-use-car-first-service-later/