Ed Wray | Getty Images Long before Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, paid his first bilateral visit to Jakarta, Indonesia’s confidence in Australia had slipped. According to the first Lowy Institute poll for Indonesia in a decade, Indonesians’ confidence in Australia fell by 20 points in 10 years – from 75% in 2011 to 55% last year. Indonesians are also distrustful of most major powers, including the United States and China, according to an Australian think tank survey of 3,000 Indonesians late last year. “The majority of Indonesians trust the United States and Australia to act responsibly, but that number has dropped dramatically since 2011,” the survey found. Indonesia’s distrust of Australia deepened after Canberra signed the trilateral nuclear submarine and safety agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom last year, former Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told CNBC last week. Australia’s new leaders have now cut their diplomatic work, he added. “It would be important for Indonesia to decipher the intentions – what are the goals of the new Australian Government [Asia-Pacific] “, the minister said during an exclusive interview with” Street Signs Asia “.
The AUKUS deal has shaken some wings in Asia-Pacific – and both Indonesia and Malaysia have expressed concern since its announcement. Indonesia has said it does not want to see an “ongoing arms race and power outage in the region” and urged Australia to meet its non-proliferation obligations.

Australia-Indonesia broken ties

Questions remain as to whether Australia and Indonesia can move their relationship to a deeper level under Albanese leadership. Indonesia sees AUKUS as a threat, said Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Jakarta has long viewed Canberra as ambiguous and unreliable – and the AUKUS pact and Quad membership have made matters worse, as it could provoke China and destabilize the region, Supriatma said. The story did not help. “Indonesia’s military elites have not forgotten Australia’s ‘intervention’ in East Timor in 1999,” he said, referring to Indonesia’s attacks on East Timor following its independence election. “The Indonesian military has not been able to dispel the perception that the Australian military has intervened on Indonesian soil” and forced the Indonesian armed forces to retreat, he added. For the Indonesians, it did not matter that Australia had acted on US orders Following the AUKUS announcement, political observers, including former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, expressed concern that the Australia-Indonesia relationship had fallen by the wayside as the security pact focused more on managing Pecky Canberra’s strained relationship with Canberra. Australia chose to make Indonesia the first ministerial pitstop after the election, but many in Indonesia would not believe that Australia deserved the same attention, with Tim Lindsey and Tim Mann of the Center for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at his University Melbourne said in an opinion article in Conversation. “They see [Australia] “as a low-level trading and investment partner focused more on the United States and the United Kingdom than on Southeast Asia.”

The new Australian Government has made every effort to restore relations. This includes strengthening its promise of a $ 140 million (A $ 200 million) climate and infrastructure partnership with Indonesia, committing an additional $ 327 million to overseas development in Southeast Asia and designating a dedicated regional region. high level. “We want to strengthen the relationship with Indonesia, but also with Southeast Asia. We see this as ASEAN is central to the region,” Albanese said during a visit last week. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media on June 5, 2022. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Indonesia on Monday to meet with President Joko Widodo and strengthen ties between the two neighbors, in his first bilateral visit since of last month. Matt Jelonek | Getty Images News Getty Images To keep relations between the two countries warm, Lindsey and Mann supported increased aid to Indonesia, making it easier for Indonesians to enter Australia, as well as more funding for Indonesian studies in Australia.
“Australians can obtain visas upon arrival in Indonesia, but even Indonesians who want to visit Australia on a tourist visa face a costly, complicated and humiliating application process,” they said. The Indonesia-Australia CEPA agreement could be implemented here, said Krisna Gupta and Donny Pasaribu, analysts at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. The Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) was signed three years ago. The goal was to liberalize trade between the two countries “extending beyond tariff reductions to non-tariff measures, trade in services and investment,” Gupta and Pasaribu said. However, there were many reservations and exceptions to non-tariff measures. “The economic importance of IA-CEPA remains to be seen, at least from Indonesia. Not only are there many reservations, but the implementation of IA-CEPA would also require many changes to Indonesia’s regulations at ministerial and local level, which has “It has become very provocative in the past,” the two analysts said. But there are other benefits, such as people-to-people exchanges, that could open the door to trade between Australia and Indonesia. Unfortunately, Indonesia simply does not seem to be improving its construction advantage, at least compared to Vietnam and Thailand, let alone China. Krisna Gupta and Donny Pasaribu Crawford School of Public Policy “While the trade in goods may be a little more difficult to work in, the trade in services may be the best way. In addition, Australia can help improve the movement of people on work visas,” they said. Increasing the enrollment of Indonesian foreign students or making more student exchanges at all school and educational levels could also boost trade between the two nations, they say.

Partners or opponents

But do not expect Indonesia’s trade with Australia to come close to China’s trade with Australia, they said. Bilateral trade between China and Australia amounted to A $ 250 billion ($ 176 billion) in 2020. By comparison, trade between Indonesia and Australia was worth only A $ 17 billion over the same period, mainly in sales of cattle and beef and coal. However, China was easier to trade with China as the so-called factory and supply chain hub in the world, ANU economists pointed out. In fact, Indonesia and Australia are not complementary trading partners but rivals, they said. Both countries are exporters of goods, while China is a major buyer of raw materials in the region. “Unfortunately, Indonesia simply does not seem to be improving its construction advantage, at least compared to Vietnam and Thailand, let alone China,” ANU analysts said. Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Sydney University of Technology, agreed that “Indonesia continues to decline as Australia’s economic partner”. But he sees progress. In addition to services and human trafficking, Harcourt said the Australian Government is focusing on more non-traditional trade partnerships with Indonesia in science, games and software. Things are different this time, Harcourt added. “The fact that Albanese received a large delegation of ministers and business leaders shows that it was more than just talk,” the economist said. “I thought that the fact that he brought in the Minister of Science and Industry as well as the Minister of Trade shows that the Labor government wants to develop research and development with Indonesian institutions.”