By Mark Kenny
- 'Cruel': ambassador withdrawn by government
- Comment: Why we must reach for hope
- Law would jail police for death penalty tip-offs
- Families hysterical after hearing fatal shots
- Authorities took 27 minutes to confirm deaths
When Tony Abbott took over as Australian Prime Minister, he flagged a new regionalism in our foreign policy focus - Canberra's allegiances and affections would henceforth become "more Jakarta, less Geneva".
Twenty months on, many Australians will be questioning what that neat piece of diplomatic flirtation was worth.
If it strained credulity then, it seems blatantly absurd now.
Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the brutal state-sanctioned killing of two Australian citizens, the shallowness of any trust between Jakarta and Canberra - between Australians and Indonesians - has been fully exposed.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Tony Abbott address the media after the executions.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The expected recall of both ambassadors - theirs in direct retaliation to the unprecedented withdrawal of ours already announced - is as inevitable as it is regrettably, largely pointless. Ditto for other gestures of Australian unhappiness in the diplomatic sphere.
Now that the executions have taken place, any after-the-fact pressure aimed at forcing a change in Jakarta's treatment of Australian citizens, or at invoking a new sensitivity to Australian values on capital punishment, is as unlikely as it would be too late.
It will probably even be counter-productive, entrenching differences in the core values of the two nations, and making progress toward greater cooperation more problematic.
The Abbott government's activity on behalf of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran had started off cautiously but eventually took the form of the most energetic diplomatic campaign possible.
Yet it amounted to nothing. Worse than nothing. Abbott's personal representations to President Joko Widodo were rebuffed and even ignored, as were numerous formal pleas by Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop. The Anzac Day announcement of the final execution date was also needlessly provocative.
Abbott had begun that campaign by saying the government would seek clemency for the pair but would not allow the bilateral relationship to be put at risk. Then, as frustration grew, he back-tracked, referring to Australia's $1 billion-plus aid following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. For better or worse, the relationship is now squarely on the table - put there by Abbott.
The febrile public reaction within Indonesia to his admittedly cumbersome aid reference should have rung more alarm bells than it did. After all, this is the same public opinion to which a politically weakened and dangerously populist Jokowi appears entirely beholden.
What was under-appreciated here was the depth of main-street Indonesian resentment toward Australia, no doubt added to in recent years by the turn-back policy, hamfisted territorial incursions by our defence forces, and the revelation of extensive telephone tapping of its government leaders.
The unhappy trajectory of these events has shown the limitation of the relationship but also the limitations of any one country in respect of the laws of another
It now appears relations between the two countries will remain cold for a period and may take years to recover. The unhappy trajectory of these events has shown the limitation of the relationship but also the limitations of any one country in respect of the laws of another. Perhaps that realisation - rather than diplomatic tub-thumping - might prompt the most important instrumental change: that is, the recognition of the Australian Federal Police's culpability in delivering Australians to another country's justice system and one in which the death penalty applies. That fact more than any other, erodes Australia's claim to have done what was possible to avoid these uncivilised and wholly unnecessary deaths.