Pearls and Irritations

Dear Albo: Get to know the people next door.

On ABC TV’s The Insiders, the then opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he planned to visit Indonesia ‘as soon as possible’ – a statement rapidly drowned in the mainstream media’s trite election coverage. In 1994 when the then PM Paul Keating said ‘no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia’, the response was intense.

Why did journos think Albanese’s comments not newsworthy? One sad answer is that like much of the electorate they take little interest in the adjacent nation unless it’s jailing blasphemers, flogging adulterers or doing something that jars values the West thinks important.

It’s been pointed out – though as far as I can see only in the foreign media – that Albanese’s first overseas visit as Labor leader was to Indonesia in 2019, as was his first trip as a minister in 2007.

Indonesian politics are more about personalities than policies. President Joko Widodo first won office through his signature blusukan walkabouts. In 2015 he drove security details nuts when he took then PM Malcolm Turnbull on a meet-the-people market tour which set a friendly and casual tone, benefitting both nations.

That’s unlikely to be repeated when Albanese gets to the Big Durian as Widodo’s minders are now more cautious about unscripted tours. But the Australian would find his poverty- to- power story – which is similar to Widodo’s riverbank shack-to-presidential-palace upbringing – could have a wide impact if well told. It would certainly help erase the belief that Ozzies are privileged rich prone to belittle.

While Australia yawns or tut-tuts at mentions of matters in the world’s third largest democracy, it’s much the same t’other side of the Arafura Sea.  Last century youngsters were hungry to learn English and other cultures. Their appetite was met by enthusiastic teachers following a policy of raising a generation equipped to handle the world.

Instead, the energy has bogged down in ideologies and bureaucracy notwithstanding the intentions of forward-thinkers like Harvard-educated Education Minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim. He’s a 37-year old entrepreneur drafted by President Joko Widodo to shake up schooling, only to collide with the power of reactionaries seeing secularism behind reform.

Monash Uni has already opened a postgrad campus in Jakarta. If the new Federal Government can back other ventures, preferably at high school and undergrad level and away from the capital, people would get to discover we’re not all Kuta hoons.

Distrust of Western ways and Australian intentions is pervasive so all the more reason to try harder. That doesn’t seem to be on new Ambassador Penny Williams’ agenda. Despite knowing the language and past involvement in progressive causes (she’s a former Ambassador for Women and Girls) the lady has yet to make a splash. Since the start of this year she’s put out only ten press statements, mostly on trivial matters, and nothing on the election.

Apart from a tweet from Makassar, it appears she didn’t recognise Australia Day through any speeches or mainstream media. (Her office hasn’t responded to a request for details.) Here was a chance to tell how Australian unions helped the revolutionaries liberate Indonesia from the colonial Dutch. It’s a forgotten story for this century’s generation, so needs continuous retelling.

Here’s a job for Albanese if and when he reaches Jakarta and wants to remind the post 1945 Revolution generation that we were on their side.

If that’s currently considered too political for Canberra, Albanese should urge Williams to stress that her nation’s not a British franchise as many think because the Union Jack’s on our flag and the Queen’s image on our currency.

Nor are we the US ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region as former PM John Howard reportedly said. The offensive tag remains fresh because Australia supported the East Timor referendum in 1999. We can be proud of our initiatives and peacekeeping, and our billion-dollar aid when the 2004 tsunami ripped Aceh, but that doesn’t mean we’re loved.

For Indonesians, the Unitary State is sacrosanct so the loss of the Portuguese territory it invaded in 1976 has left a deep and weeping wound. That’s not the only irritant.

Some argue the AUKUS alliance and build-up of foreign troops and weaponry in Northern Australia are ‘too close for comfort’ and could trigger an arms race. These alarms have been addressed, though only lightly. Another task for Albanese.

Instead of explanation and education, we use trade to find ‘not just a respected partner but a valued one as well’. Former Agriculture Minister David Littleproud’s spiel was monetary: ‘Indonesia is Australia’s fourth-largest market for bulk primary produce … valued at $2.9 billion (last financial) year.’

The new PM’s message should be: We don’t just want to feed you, we want to know you. We’ll listen, not tell. We’ll talk with you, not at you. Albanese seems to understand this if his quotes are sincere. Before 21 May he said it was important to grow the relationship with a ‘future superpower’.

Despite Covid killing close to 157,000 and infecting six million (Reuters’ figures from official sources and widely considered too low) the Indonesian economy is going gangbusters.

The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects forecasts growth this year will hit 5.2 per cent, but there’ll be minimal trickle-down. Oxfam research shows the four richest men in Indonesia own as much wealth as the country’s poorest 100 million citizens.

Attitudes on both sides need renovating. Just as Australians can be racists, Indonesians aren’t always the pliant friendly folk of tourist brochures. In 1965 a bloody coup in Jakarta was followed by the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 real or imagined Communists and fellow travellers by civilian militias weaponised by the army.

We know of the Holocaust in Europe though not the genocide close by.

There have been other outbursts of violence, often focussing on minorities. Ethnic Chinese are usually the targets along with so-called deviant Islamic sects.

Another eruption of hate could send a wave of asylum seekers heading our way as they did after the 1998 riots when President Soeharto quit, though they’d most likely come by plane, have full wallets and follow faiths other than Islam.

To ensure a benign view of the people next door, this distressing history is blacked out in Australia by the ‘moderate Muslim’ label. Likewise, the termites of corruption gnaw away in almost every departmental nook and immune to pest controllers.

The first stage in fixing problems is to accept their presence and examine the reasons. To date neither Indonesia nor Australia has been inclined to confront ignorance, misunderstanding and distrust which threaten the connections. If Albanese really is a skilled negotiator he needs to be well briefed by experts outside the ultra-cautious DFAT club, offer friendship but be frank.

They’ll be a wake up when there’s an explosion of fury for some seemingly mild political stumble, like Scott Morrison’s 2019 proposal to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Mobs protested in Indonesia, forcing the closure of two consulates.

Friction points include the low-level insurgency between West Papuan separatists and the Indonesian military, hidden from world view by Jakarta censorship equal to the Chinese cover-up of its alleged anti-Uyghur campaign.

The late Australian Professor Jamie Mackie wrote: ‘The first and most dangerous of the problems ahead — and possibly the most likely — are issues relating to separatist movements in Papua and the support they garner within Australia.

‘This tends to arouse suspicions in Indonesia that Australians have a hidden agenda to bring about the dismemberment of Indonesia as a unitary state. Because of the complex, emotionally charged political dynamics within each country associated with this, it could easily get out of hand and prove difficult for both governments to resolve through calm negotiations.

Better to use the spruce up the relationship now than wait till what remains collapses into misunderstandings and ill will. The next Presidential direct election will be on 14 February 2024 and there’s a chance former General Prabowo Subianto, who’ll then be 72, will have his third crack at the top job.

Prabowo is Indonesia’s Trump lite who’d ignite the wrath of human rights activists worldwide if elected. After his 2019 loss supporters rioted in Jakarta. Eight died and more than 700 were injured. Few think the violence was spontaneous. Prabowo is now Minister of Defence, drawn into the inner circle by Widodo who followed US President Lyndon Johnson’s advice on handling FBI Director J Edgar Hoover: ‘It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in’.

Australian academics have been quick to offer advice. Some has been sound like this offering from Professor Rebecca Strating of La Trobe Uni warning that ‘the new government also needs to listen to Southeast Asian perspectives. States like Indonesia don’t want to be forced to make a choice between US and China.

‘Engaging with Indonesia requires creative, nuanced and modulated diplomacy. Sensitivity around sovereignty, autonomy and regional security is key.’

All fine and dandy, but these are elite issues which make little impact on the poor and struggling in a nation of more than 273 million. A decade ago Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranked Indonesia 96 among 179 nations. Its position now is 102. This frightens the Western investors Widodo says he wants to attract.

All the more reason to get to know the neighbours at all levels. Mackie offered scores of suggestions in his 155-page Lowy essay – a useful guide for PM Albanese and FM Penny Wong,

Indonesia-based Australian journalist and author Duncan Graham blogs as Notes from Next Door: https://indonesianow.blogspot.com/

Published with permission from The Conversation.