FEATURE: SBY's speech forthright and touching

The visit to Australia by Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been billed as transformative; the moment when two very different nations, repudiated a sometimes rancorous past, and put the final touches to a deep friendship.

Frankness and emotion marked President Yudhoyono's historic speech to the Australian Parliament, while the Australian government says it's now possible for the two nations to discuss tough issues without jeopardising their relationship.

But there are still obstacles to a true bond between the nations' peoples.

Linda Mottram, Canberra

Last Updated: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +1100

In its 110 year history, the Australian Parliament has been addressed by just a handful of world leaders. That the President of Indonesia is now one of them is the big symbol of the visit by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 13 of his ministers, six regional governors and dozens more officials.

The president's speech was forthright and, at times, touching.

"Australia and Indonesia have a great future together. We are not just neighbours, we are not just friends. We are strategic partners. We are equal stake-holders in a common future, with much to gain if we get this relationship right, and much to lose if we get it wrong," President Yudhoyono said.

He was blunt about just how bad things had been when he named 1999 and Australian military intervention in East Timor as the all-time low in a relationship some had described through the 1980s as "love-hate".

Since then though, relations had been reinvented. The President listed the many ways in which Australia and Indonesia now co-operate, from formal security treaties, to climate change, in counter-terrorism and the gruesome task of tracking down the Bali bombers, as well as in more personal ways, such as through education.

"I have heard heart-warming stories from various Indonesians who studied and worked in this country, including from my son, Ibas, who spent five years at Curtin University (in Western Australia)," he said.

"So allow me to say on behalf of many proud Indonesian parents: Terima kasih, Australia. Thank you, Australia!"

Turning point

The speech was more moving still.

"I will always remember when Australian servicemen went all out to help us during the tsunami tragedy in Aceh and Nias.

"It was Indonesia's darkest tragedy ever, but I was so proud to see Australian soldiers and TNI troops working together to save lives and bring relief to the suffering," the President said, calling it a turning point in relations and adding that it mattered to Indonesia that it was able to help Australia during the 2009 Victorian bushfires, Australia's worst peacetime disaster.

The President addressed the headline issue for Australia of people smuggling. He promised Indonesia would legislate to make the practice illegal on pain of up to five years jail, though as veteran correspondent Geoff Kitney put it in the Australian Financial Review newspaper the next day: "It must be difficult to understand why such a relatively small problem so negatively dominates Australian popular attitudes to his country."

And it is in some popular attitudes that President Yudhoyono sees big risks. He spoke of age-old stereotypes and simplistic caricatures on both sides and called for them to be expunged if the relationship is to be made resilient. In a similar vein, many Indonesia-watchers in Australia lament the lack of genuine understanding between the two sets of peoples, despite geographic proximity and strategic need.

"Our capacity to navigate South East Asia depends on Indonesia," says Professor Tim Lindsey, director of the Asian Law Centre at Melbourne University.

"Indonesia is the superpower of ASEAN and it sees itself as playing a leadership role in ASEAN and it is the third fastest growing economy in Asia after China and India," he says.

And yet Bahasa language classes are declining in number in Australian schools. The Rudd government is seeking to redress this but it will take time and comes after many past promises to make Australians Asia-literate.

"We face the risk of being unable to speak the Indonesian language to Indonesians precisely at a moment when we are the two leading democracies of the South East Asian, Pacific region," Professor Lindsey says.

Travel warning

Indonesia also regularly expresses its dismay that Australia maintains a travel warning on the basis of the risk of terror attacks that matches that applied in the case of Pakistan, something the government says is a matter of independent risk assessment as part of its responsibility to inform and protect its citizens.

"We need to understand Indonesia, we need to be in Indonesia, and the travel warnings, politically understandable though they are, are having a catastrophic effect on our capacity to do so," Professor Lindsey says.

Still in it's down to earth assessment of past troubles and future potential, the President's speech to the Australian Parliament signalled that in the Indonesian view, the relationship is not in a rut, as the Lowy Institute for International Policy warned in a briefing paper prepared before the visit, though even the most optimistic are aware of the need to constantly nurture ties and build on achievements so far.

"The Australian people don't fully appreciate the modern Indonesia and the Indonesian people don't fully appreciate the modern Australia and that's where I think we do need to do some work," says Stephen Smith, Australia's Foreign minister.

"I think the only danger to the relationship where we have it now is either surprise where something occurs which surprises us and knocks us off our balance or, and I think this is much more likely, complacency," Mr Smith has told Radio Australia.

Upgrading ties

There is little sign of complacency at the official level. This visit has seen Australia and Indonesia put in place annual leaders retreats and annual meetings of defence and foreign ministers, echoing the practice Australia has with its other major allies the United States and Japan.

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it's an upgrade of the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, with other areas of co-operation also enhanced during this visit.

Mr Rudd has also paid tribute during this visit to President Yudhoyono personally for his stewardship in recent years of Indonesia's remarkable democratic transformation.

The Australian leader has also noted the important multilateral developments involving Indonesia, in particular it's role alongside Australia and the United States in the G-20's decision making processes regarding the global economy.

"We also have the potential to demonstrate to the world at large how two such vastly different nations - one an emerging economy, the other a developed economy; one Muslim, the other of Judeo-Christian origins; one a founding member of the non-aligned movement and the other, one of the oldest allies of the United States - can work comfortably, seamlessly and positively together and in partnership in the great councils of our region and the world," Mr Rudd told Parliament in introducing President Yudhoyono.

Still it will take some hard-headed pragmatism on the part of Australia to give what former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating called "ballast" to the relationship, to make business and trade by Australians with Indonesia a national habit and to put Indonesia in Australia's headlines for more reasons than just people smuggling.

"The business connection is still pretty weak," says Professor Hal Hill, Indonesian economy expert from the Australian National University.

"A lot of Australian businesses got burnt in the Asian financial crisis of '97/'98. Especially in the mining sector which was the largest area of Australian investment and they haven't really returned.

"So the business side is still fairly weak and the trade relationship is also not that strong," Professor Hill says, which may justify a comment by Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott that while multilateral diplomacy is important, there is no substitute for deep, bilateral engagement. And after he left Canberra for Sydney, President Yudhoyono and his 120-strong entourage were delivering the message at a business forum in Sydney that Indonesia is open for business.

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