While Indonesians worry about President Prabowo’s undemocratic moves, the failures of his flagship ‘breakfast’ policy, and a faltering economy, Australia enters into another ‘treaty’ of little import. Duncan Graham reports.
Under-reported in the Australian media, Indonesia has been gripped by protests this year, some of them violent. protests with grievances ranging from cuts to the national budget and a proposed new law expanding the role of the military in political affairs, President Prabowo’s disastrous free school meals program, and politicians receiving a $3,000 housing allowance.
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More recently, further anger against the president has been fuelled by his moves to make corrupt former dictator Soeharto (also Prabovo’s former father-in-law) a national hero.
Ignoring both his present travails, as well as his history of historical human rights abuses (that saw him exiled from Indonesia for years), Prabowo has been walking the 27,500-tonne HMAS Canberra, the fleet flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, along with PM Anthony Albanese.
The location was multipurpose: It showed off our naval hardware and reinforced the signing of a thin ‘upgraded security treaty’ between unequals. Australia’s land mass is four times larger, but there are eleven Indonesians to every one Aussie.
Ignoring the past
Although Canberra’s flight deck was designed for helicopters, the crew found a desk for the leaders to lean on as they scribbled their names. The location also served to keep away disrespectful Australian journalists asking about Prabowo’s past, an issue their Jakarta colleagues rarely raise for fear of being banned.
Contrast this one-day dash with the relaxed three-day 2018 visit by Jokowi and his wife Iriana when Malcolm Turnbull was PM. The two men strolled through the Botanical Gardens and seemed to enjoy the ambience. The President was mobbed by Indonesian admirers.
This month, Prabowo and Albanese smiled for the few allowed cameras, but there was no feeling that this was fair dinkum. Indonesia said the trip was “also a form of reciprocation for Prime Minister Albanese’s trip to Jakarta last May,” another one-day come n’go chore.
Analysing the treaty needs some mental athleticism and linguistic skills because the Republic likes to call itself part of a ‘non-aligned movement’, meaning it doesn’t couple itself to any other world power.
The policy was developed in the 1940s after the new nation had freed itself from the colonial Netherlands and rejected US and Russian suitors.
It’s now a cliché – ‘sailing between two reefs’ and ‘a friend of all and enemy of none’. Two years ago, former Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi explained:
“Indonesia refuses to see the Indo-Pacific fall victim to geopolitical confrontation. …This is where Indonesia’s independent and active foreign policy becomes relevant. For almost eight decades, these principles have been a compass for Indonesia in interacting with other nations.
“…(it’s) independent and active foreign policy is not a neutral policy; it is one that does not align with the superpowers nor does it bind the country to any military pact.”
When is a treaty not a treaty? The Marles and Prabowo Canberra love-in.
Pact or treaty?
Is a ‘pact’ a ‘treaty’? For most of us, the terms are synonyms; to the word-twisting pollies, they’re whatever the user wants them to mean.
We don’t know the new ‘security treaty’ details though the ABC speculated it meant there will be “leader and ministerial consultations on matters of common security, to develop cooperation, and to consult each other in the case of threats and consider individual or joint measures” and “share information on matters that would be important for Australia’s security, and vice-versa.”
Much of the ‘analysis’ came from Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s media statement, so no revelations here.
What does it really mean? Not much from a close read of Albanese’s interpretation:” If either or both countries’ security is threatened,
to consult and consider what measures may be taken either individually or jointly to deal with those threats.
Careful readers will spot the elastic “consult and consider”. If this were on a highway sign warning of hazards ahead, few would ease up on the pedal.
Whence commeth the threat? In the minds of the rigid right, that would be China – the nation that both Indonesia and Australia rely on for trade.
The last ‘security treaty’ to be signed was between PM Paul Keating and Soeharto in 1995. Penny Wong said the new document is “modelled closely” on the old deal.
The Keating doc went into the shredder when Indonesian troops invaded East Timor in 1998, and Australia took the side of the wee state and its independence fighters.
Would we do the same for the guerrillas in West Papua if we knew what was happening in the mountains and jungles next door? We don’t because the province is closed to journos, and it seems both governments are at ease with the secrecy. The main protests come from NGOs, particularly those in NZ.
FM Wong added that “the Treaty will reflect the close friendship, partnership and deep trust between Australia and Indonesia.”
Sorry, Senator, that’s fiction. Another awkward fact: Indonesians and Australians distrust each other, according to polls run by the Lowy Institute. “Over the course of 19 years …attitudes towards Indonesia have been – at best – lukewarm.
And at worst, they betray a lurking suspicion.
These feelings will remain until we get serious about telling our stories and listening to theirs, with both parties consistently striving to understand and respect the other. ‘Security treaties’ involving weapons, destruction and killings are not the best foundations for friendship between neighbours.
Future docs should be signed in The Domain.
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Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia.