By Duncan Graham Jul 24, 2024
Guarantee: This report is free of US political toxins. The contents are purely local.
The title question deserves a cynic’s response: Only when the country next door becomes a military dictatorship and mates with China. Then we might wake up.
Indonesia is seventy times bigger than Bali where most Australians get their experience of beach-and-Bintangs, probably imagining the other 37 provinces are much the same. They’re not.
If the political scientists’ ‘arc of instability’ ever spanned the region, Indonesia isn’t there now.
The world’s fourth largest nation with an impressive 5.3 per cent growth rate, has become an aid donor and is dashing towards superpower status. It’s not within coo-ee of struggling Pacific Island states crying for aid and getting attention in spades by playing footsie with the PRC.
Here’s proof we’re not serious: A decade ago the then Coalition Government paraded its New Colombo Plan – a “signature initiative” whatever that means.
The idea was to “lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific …by supporting Australian undergraduates to undertake study, language training and internships in the region.” Applause all round.
The name has a history: In 1951 a multi-state meeting in the Sri Lankan capital set up the show to help “developing countries”. We offered scholarships for Southeast Asians to study in Australia. More claps.
Some of Indonesia’s future leaders got to know Down Under and build lasting mateships. That generation has largely passed. The CP is now involved in drug use reduction, gender affairs and climate change.
The NCP reverses the original intent and looks fine till the data is analysed. Students can go to any one of the 40 countries in the scheme. So far 12,000 Aussies have visited Indonesia across three decades, mostly for short courses.
But how to find a uni, a visa and help when all turns turtle? Students can go it alone, but it’s easier using ACICIS, the Australian Consortium for In-Country Studies. It was an idea of now-retired Professor David Hill of Perth’s Murdoch University.
This year the agency celebrates its 30th birthday and reports some achievements.
More than 4,000 alumni are working in key areas of government, here and overseas. In 2012 the now largely forgotten Australia in the Asian Century White Paper described the consortium as a “successful model for in-country learning”.
Last year Hill was given an Indonesian award for “promoting collaboration … and the Indonesian language.”
Despite the persistence of Hill and others, Canberra prefers to focus on the Pacific, particularly islands where Beijing has been poking around for niches to embed.
We wear our monolingualism with pride. That’s gross; the Jakarta Post has told its readers what sort of neighbours they’re lumbered with by reporting: “Australian students participating in Indonesian-language programs has hit a historic low …this trend could have an adverse effect on the broader bilateral ties.”
Ten Indonesian unis are involved with ACICIS. Students keen to better understand our regional mates – as all governments urge but rarely facilitate – have access to 25 courses. They span from law to farming – plus the essentials – language and culture.
Every student backpacker is a de-facto diplomat showing through their involvement and enthusiasm that Aussies aren’t all Kuta hoons – or in the posse of America’s Deputy Sheriff, as John Howard once reportedly positioned his nation.
But here’s the issue: The ACICIS report reveals that last year it “assisted 436 Australian and international students to undertake study in Indonesia.”
Good on ya – except that Indonesian Government figures show the Republic has more than 4,000 “institutes of higher learning”. Though only 184 are public they cater for 3.38 million students.
Many private unis are small and run by religious organisations and corporates. Quality is mixed and offerings are limited. They have around 4.5 million enrollees.
The top campus is the public Universitas Indonesia. Internationally it ranks badly at 206, even lower on some assessment sites.
Overseas study enthusiasts prefer China; Indonesia is seventh on the choice scale, just ahead of South Korea – although in second place (after Japan) in the Indo-Pacific.
A Lowy Institute report claimed “Indonesia’s education system has been a high-volume, low-quality enterprise that has fallen well short of the country’s ambitions for an ‘internationally competitive’ system.”
That was written in 2018. There’s been some movement though little evidence of major reform in the past six years. Jakarta also has to stir the possum if it wants its unis to draw foreigners.
As Indonesia has eleven citizens for every Aussie we need at least 4,500 students exploring the archipelago every year, not for quickies but long term. Even then we’d only be a spit on the surface.
However the number sent through ACICIS is roughly the same as in 2018.
Juggling figures like this is a clumsy exercise taking no account of dropouts, course changes, policy shifts, definitions and other factors like Covid – but it hammers the nail that we’re just not dinkum about the nation next door.
Next year a semester in Indonesia is likely to cost a student in fees, fares, insurance and living costs up to $16,000, though this can be offset by NCP support.
Adaptive frugals can get by on less (and learn more) if they live like locals.
ACICIS gets 2.53 per cent of the NCP’s mobility funding (mainly short courses) and is paying scholarships for long-term students. There are 120 competitive NCP scholarships for top students nominated by their campus.
That’s for any one of 40 countries.
ACICIS director Liam Prince said “the key blockages are in the lack of clear, curriculum-embedded pathways to a semester in the Indo-Pacific by the Australian universities.
“Through size, proximity and geopolitical significance, Australia must have a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship.
“Australia’s side is in trying to see the world from an Indonesian perspective; it’s one of the necessary conditions for fulfilling the potential of the bilateral relationship.”
Former PM Paul Keating said: “We find our security in Asia, we find it by being useful in the Asian community, we find it by building coalitions and this is an imperative.”
It’s an idea still to be bought by the electorate. Otherwise it would demand the federal government gets earnest about urging unis to prioritise Asian skills.
Not everyone wants to do a PhD in Old Javanese but at all levels the curious and talented will want a taste of the New Indonesia. They need encouragement – for all our sakes now and in the years ahead.
Duncan Graham
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia.
Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
-First Published in John Mendaue’s Pearls and Irritants ————————————
Australia West Papua Association Adelaide 