Indonesia, a reluctant good neighbour to Australia

To us, Australia is a nation that has little respect for Indonesia, while we do not believe that we deserve such treatment. We would like Australians to learn more about Indonesia because of its pivotal role in the global community.

At the same time, we often ignore the principle “to know thy neighbour”. We are apparently reluctant to learn more about our neighbours and instead focus on forcing them to deepen their knowledge about us.

A poll conducted this year by the Lowy Institute found that 84 per cent of Australians believe that their country “acts as a good neighbour to Indonesia”, while only 54 per cent agree that Indonesia acts as a good neighbour to Australia and only 30 per cent of them believe that “Indonesia helps Australia combat people smuggling”.

Who among Indonesians would not feel angry at the perception that a majority (54 per cent) agree that “Australia is right to worry about Indonesia as a military threat” and that “Indonesia is a dangerous source of Islamic terrorism”?

One thing we need to remember is that perception does not always reflect reality. Perhaps most of us will never forgive the continent state for “masterminding” the independence of East Timor (now Timor Leste), although we often forget that it was then president BJ Habibie who initiated an independence referendum for the former Indonesian colony.

It is also no exaggeration to say that most of us are strongly suspicious that Australia will, again, be the main supporter of the Papuan people in establishing their own state – despite repeated denials from Australian government officials, including Foreign Minister Bob Carr during a meeting with a group of visiting Indonesian journalists – because Australia was among the first countries that endorsed Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor in the 1970s.

The presence of a strong US military presence in Darwin only strengthens the suspicion that Papua’s independence is high on the neighbour’s agenda.

During the Suharto era, the then president was outraged when an Australian newspaper reported the corrupt practices of his children, although we found later that the reports were not totally wrong (if not totally right).

Yesterday Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd arrived in Jakarta to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Indonesia will opt to remain neutral regarding the September general election in Australia, no matter who emerges as the winner, although Yudhoyono probably has a personal preference for Rudd. Rudd’s visit itself is not at his own initiative because it was his predecessor, Julia Gillard, who tabled it.

I visited the Australian parliament in Canberra last month. Rudd was sitting in the back row when Gillard responded sternly to a statement by an opposition legislator who teased her about an economic issue.

Rudd received little attention from the media or even his colleagues because most of the Australian media was confident that Rudd would not get enough of the vote to exact revenge against Gillard to secure the Labour Party’s helm. Gillard had called for an early general election in September, while the opposition party was leading in several opinion polls.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott, who promised to take a much tougher stance against boat people, including the possible deployment of naval ships to chase away the boats carrying them, was outraged at Gillard’s announcement that she would meet with Yudhoyono in Jakarta in August.

Gillard clearly wanted to get a major concession from the Indonesian government concerning boat people. I personally met with Gillard along with other Indonesian journalists as a part of an Australian Foreign Ministry programme to organise a dialogue with Australian counterparts.

For Indonesia, Labour’s approach is more sensible because the burden is shared. Indonesia cannot control the flow of boat people because of the vastness of the archipelago, and because of corrupt Indonesian officials who have direct contact with the migrants. The root of the problem lies not only with Indonesia but more with the countries of origin. Rudd’s visit would be more meaningful were he to visit again after winning the September election, and if it were more of a courtesy visit.

In every way Indonesia is a major state and it is only right that it holds an honourable position in the international community. But we also need to behave as a great nation, one for which its people have high respect. There are reasons to criticise Australia, but we must also be ready when the same reasons are applied to us.