Duncan Graham

The alphabet of election campaign hyperbole runs from Absurd through Fatuous and Stupid to Zero (as in logic).  Most statements are ephemeral for the nonsense spruikers know little is taken seriously once the losers are trampled by the triumphant.

But in Indonesia pledges by the former champion of the 1998 ‘People’s Power Revolution’ are causing deep disquiet.
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In early March The West Australian published an opinion piece by Professor Stephen Smith on selling to Indonesia;   (more…)

Imagine if almost six per cent of the Coalition reckoned they’d lose their seats at the next election so switch to Labor. 

Chances are they wouldn’t be piped aboard, as ship jumpers are not favoured in Australian politics, distrusted by the party they betrayed and the one where they seek to stowaway.   (more…)

On a recent edition of ABC TV’s free-for-all Summer Drum, participants sounded off about possible Democrat nominees for the 2020 US Presidential election.

Social commentator Jane Caro sprayed the screen with alternatives. The Australian columnist Greg Sheridan, who comes across as reasonable on the telly, and community advocate Aisha Novakovich tossed in their suggestions.

Host Adam Spencer assumed viewers knew all names and understood the American selection process, so didn’t intervene with descriptors. Nor did the talent interject: ‘Hey, this is asinine. We’ve got swags of homegrown issues to air.’

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Now here’s the weirdest thing about the way we handle policy with the neighbours:  

Canberra politicians are proven fumblers and bumblers when dealing with big Muslim-majority Indonesia. Yet at the Australian National University just a ten-minute bike ride across the lake are some of the world’s foremost experts, able to inform, advise and caution.

Instead we have policy on the run  when Scott Morrison edged the idea that our embassy in Israel might shift 70 kilometres inland from the Mediterranean. Unsurpisingly he was caught in the slips.

The PM’s office has instant access not only to government think-tanks, but also leading academics. They speak slang garnered in kampongs while doing doctorates. They’ve savoured durians, recited  dawn prayers, sweated through nights of wayang magic. In brief they can feel the nation’s pulse.

Last century Cornell in the US, and Leiden in the Netherlands, were the specialists on the archipelago to our north.  Now Melbourne University, Monash, the ANU and to a lesser extent Murdoch in Perth and Flinders in Adelaide have taken over.

Does no-one in Parliament House have scholars on speed dial?  ‘A quickie, mate … whaddya reckon? The boss might give Ambassador Chris Cannan a new pad in Jerusalem.  Good idea – or what?’

Had the calls been made the profs would have been of one voice: ‘Are you joking? Indonesians will go spare … they back Palestine all the way. You’ll blow the whole Free Trade Agreement.’   (more…)

Does the present government really understand Indonesia? Or want to? Ministers get detailed briefings from diplomats in Jakarta squirreling away in our biggest embassy, plus wisdoms from academics close to home. (more…)

Foreign affairs (the political version, not dalliances abroad) is seldom a synonym for fun.

 The standard photo has a line of suits trying – and failing – to look human.Their media statements, labelled ‘communique’ to maintain the mystique, are triumphs of euphemism, so bland they make laundry lists sound like Hamlet.

 Few would bother to read unless they got paid well for the pain. (more…)

In 2015 then PM Tony Abbott sought to save the lives of two convicted heroin traffickers.  He reminded Indonesians that Australians had given $1 billion in emergency aid and rehabilitation following the 2004 Aceh tsunami, so please show mercy.

 He should have been better advised: Indonesians reacted angrily and made gestures of raising funds to repay.  Instead of softening attitudes, Abbott’s clumsy comments hardened President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s stand against what he called ‘foreign interference’. (more…)

Unlike their southern neighbours, Indonesians know when they’ll go to the polls – 17 April 2019. That Wednesday will be a public holiday to encourage a big turn out.  Voting is not compulsory.

In the 2014 election 135 million electors punched a hole in a ballot paper to make their choice – around 70 per cent of those on the roll – in the world’s third largest democracy.  

Next year voters aged over 17 will get the chance to directly elect the president, 580 members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (known as the DPR) and 128 to the Regional Assembly, (DPD). 

Fifteen parties will bid for seats but there are only two rematch contestants for the top job – incumbent Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, 57, and former general Prabowo Subianto, 67, who lost his 2014 bid by just under seven per cent.

Though campaigning is not supposed to start till 13 October, jostling is well underway.  Now is the time for Australia to keep its head down; if we get dragged into the contest the collateral damage to relationships could be lasting. (more…)

Trying to do business in Java on a Friday is seldom a good idea.

 The chantings that Prime Minister Scott Morrison heard mid-morning last Friday were not part of the standard welcome to overseas VIPs, but calling the faithful to prayer. That included Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, much of his Cabinet and most senior bureaucrats.

 That Widodo took time to talk to his visitor on the Islamic holy day, when the Asian Games are concluding and campaigning about to start for next April’s presidential election, suggests he sees it’s important to maintain relationships with Australia, even if other politicians are indifferent or openly suspicious. (more…)

Five guards and an inmate died in a Jakarta prison riot last week, allegedly launched by Islamic State.  More than 150 terrorists are held at the overcrowded jail where turmoil erupted six months ago. 

Then early on Sunday church bombings in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, killed nine at the start of the Muslim fasting month.

In March police said they’d smashed an Internet jihad group known as the Muslim Cyber Army.  It was accused of spreading fake news to stir the gullible and destabilize upcoming elections.

Where do the radicals recruit? At universities, according to Indonesia’s Intelligence Chief Budi Gunawan.

He claimed almost 40 percent of students have been exposed to zealots ‘trying to mobilise new terrorists.’ 

There are close to 3,000 tertiary education institutions in the Republic.  Most are private and run by religions.  Some are resisting the fundamentalists. (more…)

In early April, NSW Governor David Hurley spoke about Indonesian-Australian relationships. Although largely ignored by the mainstream media his speech was not the usual white bread served by those elevated to positions supra-politics.

Hurley launched some awkward statistics:

* Thirteen percent of Australians see Indonesians as trustworthy. Switch that around and the figure is 53 percent .

* Nineteen per cent of Australians say they have a good knowledge of Indonesia. The reverse is 43 percent.

* Unfavourable perceptions of the people next door? Australians 47 percent, Indonesians just ten percent. (more…)

Later this week Indonesian leader Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo is expected in Sydney with other heads of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a ‘special summit’. The President recently told his ambassadors that while working overseas they should lift their nation’s status as a ‘great country’. Now Jokowi can do his bit. (more…)

This month Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spoke at the Menzies Research Centre in London on Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper published three months earlier.

Her theme circled around getting ‘rules-based order’ into Asia, just like Europe where she says nationalism has subsided.

Dr Euan Graham (no relation), Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, wrote in The Interpreter that the address was ‘probably Bishop’s most important foreign policy speech since her Fullerton lecture in Singapore (to the International Institute for Strategic Studies) last March.’

However, its inconsistencies whizzed past the media obsessed with the Barnaby Joyce affair, bewildering those trying to understand Australia’s political location and Facebook likes. (more…)