_The Australian Associated Press closure in June will shut Australians out of much domestic journalism. Courts, councils and commissions whose workings underpin democracy will often go unreported.

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Margaret Simons commented in The Guardian: We are lurching down a slippery slope. At its bottom will be a nation that doesnt know itself.

How about knowing the people next door? AAP closed its Jakarta bureau in 2017. The few remaining Australian newsrooms are shrinking and struggling, their bosses scratching to save.

One try is to rebadge Australian journos as Southeast Asia Correspondent which is how The Australians Amanda Hodge is titled. From a wee office in the regions largest city shes supposed to cover the doings of 655 million people spread across eleven disparate nations. Dont ask what she does in her spare time.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald Indonesia correspondent Jewel Topsfield was replaced in 2018 by James Massola. He now has SEAC on his lanyard tag.

The Australian Financial Review shuttered its Jakarta bureau in 2009 but reopened last year. This wasnt the result of Nine insiders discovering a need. That came from an outsider anxious about the dearth of Asian news.

Millionaire philanthropist Judith Neilsons Institute for Journalism and Ideas has given AFR the cash to do its duty_._ Although stationed in Jakarta Emma Connors is another SEAC.

Anne Barker is labeled the ABCs Indonesia Correspondent by-lined as SEAC when it suits, this year covering the Malaysian political crisis from Jakarta.

Meanwhile in Melbourne the ABC has an Asia Pacific Newsroom filing stories about Indonesia (and other states in the region) reportedly using more than 40 reporters and producers.

Some, like Erwin Renaldi a Muslim Indonesian (his words) and Melbourne Uni masters graduate, are native speakers. They read and watch from afar, pick up leads, make calls and file copy without having to leave Southbank Boulevard. There are substantial savings on translators and office rent overseas.

This media model is a bit like Rio Tintos Pilbara mine ops where driverless trucks are steered by mice palmed by screen jockeys in Perth 1,200 km to the south.

The other dollar-saver is Fly In Fly Out reporting, another pinch from the mining industry. FIFO is the marriage-fracturing system that avoids remote housing expenses by keeping partners apart.

FIFO, aka parachute journalism, means dropping a hack into a foreign spot to file and flee.

The latest example is The Australians foreign editor Greg Sheridan giving us his insights after a short stay in the Big Durian as part of a delegation of editors with the Australia Indonesia Institute.

This sounds like a benign NGO but its an Australian Government agency run through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Travelling under that rubric helped score several exchanges with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. The former Ambassador to the Netherlands is the source for much of the Australians commentary.

Apparently Marsudi is reliable, steady, personable, across everything. Unfortunately Indonesias first woman FM is also a dot-and-comma controller demanding questions in writing before any interview with local-based scribblers.

Were not told if her visitor had to labour under similar restrictions.

Its immaterial because the bland comments he captured are thick in her local press columns: We appreciate Australias support for ASEANs concept of the Indo-Pacific may comfort diplomats but leaves others unmoved.

Likewise: We see IA-CEPA (the Indonesia Australia Closer Economic Partnership Agreement ratified this year) as strategic co-operation.

We want it to build strategic trust between the two nations. We understand that we need each other. Australia realises that you are part of Asia.

That fine sentiment is sadly shattered by Lowy Institute surveys showing stratospheric levels of ignorance and distrust. This unnerving discovery seems to be moving Australian and Indonesian authorities not one meaningful whit.

Indonesians outnumber us ten to one, so staying friends is a practical necessity along with a moral responsibility. Fortunately advocates for a caliphate are currently hibernating.

Most locals see us as a rich, white European outpost, referencing kangaroos and bushfires above free trade deals. Strong nationalists and there are plenty - remember our role in the 1999 East Timorese referendum which damaged the UnitaryState.

Film festivals and cultural exchanges are fine and worthy, but weve built a Trump-style beautiful wall of visa restrictions unlikely to be bashed down despite personal pleas from President Joko Widodo.

Sheridans FIFO analysis has 12 mentions of strategic. They include his claim that the two countries co-operate on a host of issues, not least development in the South Pacific.

Independent analysts believe Indonesias wooing of nation states far outside the Republic is to neuter groups backing Melanesian demands for independence in West Papua.

The province remains closed to Western journalists keen to probe allegations of human rights abuses by the army, despite Widodo claiming all is open. (This writers application made a year ago still moulds in someones in-tray.)

Sheridans other confidante was a senior Indonesian. About 20 million over-65s fit that category including my mother-in-law. A fine lady, though I wouldnt pad my stories with her opinions.

There are some useful observations on Indonesias reliance on Chinese imports and Indonesias labour costs, but the Australians findings lack the substance keyboarded by his colleague Amanda Hodge.

However nothing comes within a bulls roar of veteran Kiwi journalist John McBeth. Formerly with the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review he now writes for the Asia Times, lives in Indonesia and doesnt need government guides to open gates. His commentaries are rich with insights denied others and deserve syndicating.

If FIFO analyses and remote reporting are the new way of telling Australians about the worlds third largest democracy then well stay clueless. The compensation is that were getting better informed about the US electoral system delivered effortlessly in English-language packages, warm, fresh and ready to swallow.

Sorry FM Marsudi, youre wrong. Were not part of Asia. We live in the Anglosphere.

Duncan Graham once worked for AAP in Perth. He now writes from inside Indonesia.