What happened?

Why is Australia less interested in Indonesia than it was back when Paul Keating was Prime Minister of Australia and Suharto was president of Indonesia? When I made my first visit to Indonesia in 1993, I could hardly understand a word the taxi driver spoke during the drive from Soekarno-Hatta Airport into the centre of Jakarta. After nearly 20 years of engagement with Indonesia now my language skills are a bit better and conversations with taxi drivers are a lot easier.  Plenty of other things have changed since 1993 too.

The year before I first visited Indonesia, I enrolled in the beginners’ Indonesian class at Melbourne University, along with 50 or so others. Another 120 or so students were enrolled in the first year course for those who had already studied Indonesian at high school. This year (2011), there were about 20 absolute beginners enrolled in Indonesian language and around 50 in the class for people who already had a background in the language. And 2011 was the biggest enrolment for a number of years. There are a lot less Australian students interested in learning Indonesian these days than there were twenty years ago.

In 1993, President Suharto ruled the archipelago with an iron fist, no dissent was tolerated and Indonesia had just broken the 152 trillion US Dollar GDP mark.

In the early 1990’s, the Australian government was paying a lot of attention to Indonesia. In 1992, the new Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating had made his first international visit as Prime Minister to Indonesia and was telling the nation that there was no other country on earth with more importance to Australia than Indonesia. Today, Indonesia has become the most democratic country in Southeast Asia. GDP is exploding, having  topped 750 trillion dollars in 2010 and real (inflation adjusted) GDP per capita has doubled since the early 1990’s. In spite of all this, Australians just aren’t paying much attention any more.

So what happened? Why is Australia less engaged with Indonesia than at any other time in its recent history?Indonesian language teachers tell me that students started to turn away from Indonesian classes after the post-referendum destruction in East Timor. More students abandoned Indonesian language after the Bali bombings. Australian politicians are more focused on China these days as its massive economic development has led to a huge mining boom in Australia.

When Kevin Rudd became Australia’s prime minister in 2007, he made his symbolic first visit to China. When Julia Gillard became Prime Minister in 2010, she declared on the prestigious 7.30 report program on ABC television that she wasn’t very interested in questions of foreign relations; she had always been more interested in domestic issues. And Indonesia just seems to have disappeared from view for most people in Australia.

As an Aussie who’s now had quite a long-term relationship with Indonesia, I find it very sad that my country of birth has turned its back to such an extent on the country I have developed such a passion for. It would be nice if more Australians understood that in spite of all its problems, Indonesia has infinite potential for Australian business, the same as it’s always had. The real difference nowadays is that Indonesia is booming economically, there’s a huge and growing middle class and the changes towards more openness and democracy are extremely encouraging even if some problems remain.

There is still a lot of corruption, there are some very dodgy fundamentalists who have too much influence over politicians and police. But Australia has to deal with these sorts of problems in other countries too, and we can deal with them in Indonesia. A few Aussie companies get the idea. Some of the banks have a growing visibility. Australian mining companies have always had a strong presence. (One of the things that both Indonesia and Australia share in common is the fact of booming commodities markets that are putting stress on other sectors of the economy.) Middle class Indonesians are still interested in sending their kids to Australia for an education even if current exchange rates are making that more difficult than it used to be.  On the other hand, there are a lot more middle class Indonesians than there used to be. But it would be nice if a few more Australian students started learning the language again. And it would be really great if leading Australian politicians learned from Paul Keating that in the long run there is possibly no other country more important to Australia than Indonesia.