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VIEW: Where is Australia? —Farish A Noor

What this sorry tale tells us is that governments are often forced to work within a historical continuum where the past is as relevant and important as the present, and that international relations cannot be bracketed away from history

The current debacle over the fate of the 70-plus boat people from Sri Lanka who have been sent to Indonesia at the behest of the Rudd government of Australia has brought to the surface long-harboured tensions and anxieties held on both sides of the Indonesian-Australian cultural and political divide, triggering emotional responses in some quarters. Indonesians in particular seem upset by the idea that the Sri Lankan boat people were passed on to Indonesian authorities in an attempt by the Rudd government to wash its hands of the problem, and indeed the very semantics of the issue is problematic; when refugees are summarily described as a ‘problem’ that has to be passed like the proverbial buck that has to stop somewhere.

During the course of my lectures in Melbourne recently, the students I met raised a number of related and interesting questions: how will this affect bilateral ties between Indonesia and Australia? How will this affect the image of Australia in Indonesia and ASEAN? And how can the Australian government repair any damage that has been done to the image of the country as a result of the affair?

Well before starting with our history lesson, let us look at the immediate facts on the ground (or at sea in this case): The Indonesians are particularly incensed by the idea that a country like Indonesia that is already burdened by economic challenges is being asked to deal with a ‘problem’ that can be better handled by a richer country like Australia. Furthermore Australia’s handling of the issue has been seen and cast as yet another instance of a richer and powerful country imposing its will on poorer Indonesia that is expected to accept cash handouts while brushing Australia’s moral responsibilities under the carpet.

Yet it is crucial for us to revisit the history of both countries and to see that Indonesian-Australian relations have not always been as sour as they are today.

For a start, it ought to be remembered that at least from the mid-1960s onwards, Indonesia — then under Suharto — sought to improve its ties with the rest of the world and counted Australia as an important strategic, economic and political ally. At times this partnership was not necessarily based on the most ethical of grounds, such as Indonesia’s close alliance with Australia during and after the annexation of East Timor, when it is well known that the military intervention by the former was tacitly approved of by the latter (as well as the United States, Western Europe and ASEAN, mind you).

For three decades at least, Australia was seen and cast as a positive model to emulate and thousands of Indonesian students were sent to Australia to learn the sciences and arts of governance and state-management. (Many others were sent to the USA as well.) Australia, like America, was deemed a friend and ally of Indonesia as it had none of the historical baggage of Holland or the other countries of Western Europe. Australia had never colonised Indonesia or any other Asian country, and was seen as being fully supportive of the Indonesian government then (even when the latter was involved in some of the worst human rights abuses).

Things began to change in the wake of the Bali bombings when Indonesia’s pain and suffering were, in a sense, appropriated by Australia. Australia’s claim that the Bali bombings were the ‘9/11’ of Australia was somewhat insensitive considering that it was Bali — and by extension Indonesia — that bore the brunt of the damage and suffered the fallout of a drastic drop in tourist revenue earnings. For years the economy of Bali was paralysed, though it seemed as if the international media was more concerned with the fate of Australians who had lost their tourist paradise. This was doubly painful for Indonesians who felt that the international media failed not only to recognise their pain as well, but worse still blamed Indonesia for all that was wrong in the region.

Compounding the matter was the somewhat belligerent approach of the John Howard administration that swaggered about the ASEAN region after it had been anointed by the Bush administration as its ‘sheriff in Asia’. Howard’s most damaging legacy has been to reinforce the impression that Canberra’s foreign policy was a photocopy of Washington’s; that Australia was the ‘white law enforcer’ in a brown Asian region; and that Australia knew better about how Asians should govern themselves.

Further aggravating the situation was the racist xenophobic rhetoric of the likes of Pauline Hanson, who further isolated Australia from its Asian neighbours and who sadly gave the impression of Australia being a white European country when it is in fact a multicultural complex society today.

These internal political shifts and changes in Australia may have been guided by an internal process of jockeying for power, but had an external impact in terms of bilateral relations between Australia and Indonesia and the rest of Asian. Once again, Australia’s status and standing in Asia was put into question, and a multiculural country that rests to the south of the Java Sea was re-configured and symbolically redefined as a white country to the west of Europe.

It is against this convoluted historical backdrop that the current impasse between Canberra and Jakarta, between Rudd and Yudhoyono, is being staged. Sadly, Australia’s leader Kevin Rudd has inherited the historical legacy of the Howard establishment and all its handicaps and burdens as well. What this sorry tale tells us is that governments are often forced to work within a historical continuum where the past is as relevant and important as the present, and that international relations cannot be bracketed away from history. It is unfortunate that Rudd’s advisors did not furnish him with a history course on recent Indonesian-Australian bilateral relations, but then again when have politicians ever listened to historians?

Dr Farish A Noor is a Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site

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