Discipline vital to nurturing ties with Indonesia

THE Coalition must work fast before Jakarta goes to the polls next year.

COULD we be on the cusp of another spiralling down of Australia's relationship with Indonesia - even before the Tony Abbott government has been sworn in, and despite its making this relationship its top international priority?

Naturally enough, Abbott's political opponents and those who are hostile to both major parties on asylum-seekers, are jumping in to welcome Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa's critical comments to the parliamentary foreign affairs commission in Jakarta. Natalegawa said: "We will reject (Abbott's) policy on asylum-seekers and any other policy that harms the spirit of partnership."

The policy includes buying fishing boats that are likely to be sold to people-smugglers, and helping fund intelligence gathering. Natalegawa, a highly polished performer who may well keep his position under any new president next year, wasn't speaking in a vacuum.

He was speaking in an especially combative and nationalistic arena in Indonesia - the parliament, of which he is not a member but to which he regularly reports and whose MPs are becoming ever more strongly spoken - to grab attention as an election approaches next year for a new president and a new parliament.

Natalegawa, who acquired a doctorate from the Australian National University, said a couple of months ago about Australia: "We find a way of dealing with common issues." And so it has proven, especially following the Bali bombings.

Australia's assistance via the federal police has proven especially significant since then in helping Indonesia counter Islamic extremism, in which it has led the world. And immediately before criticising the Coalition's asylum-seeker policy, Natalegawa pointed out that there would be time to talk: "We will have a discussion with Abbott prior to the APEC summit in October" in Bali.

The relationship requires careful nurturing, having started to flourish - at the senior, government-to-government level - since reaching its nadir over East Timor.

Foreign minister-to-be Julie Bishop appropriately declined to give the debate any more oxygen, saying further talks would be done face to face.

It's obviously important the governments reach a common understanding on people-smuggling, since Indonesia is the crucial entrepot for the industry, and hence also a victim.

But it's equally vital that Abbott makes clear to Jakarta that he views the relationship in a far broader and deeper way than that - just as he needs to do with Papua New Guinea. Placing vital regional relations within such a domestically dominant context risks fuelling nationalist, anti-Australian elements, and undermining our good friends in those governments.

Australia can hope for no better disposed president in Indonesia than Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ever since his inspiring and empathetic speech in Bali after the bombing, he has been a great partner for Canberra.

Abbott and Bishop will need to work fast to build a base with the SBY administration before Jakarta dissolves into election mode next year, when almost every likely alternative appears at this stage less friendly.

The interjection of Barnaby Joyce has thus been exquisitely timed to undermine his own government's legitimate ambitions for this most important relationship.

Buoyed by entering the lower house and by winning the deputy leadership of the Nationals, he leapt on early vestiges of a very vague suggestion that Jakarta might consider buying a million hectares of grazing land in Australia to breed cattle and bring them to Indonesia.

This might be viewed as an understandable response by Indonesia to the market uncertainty resulting from the Labor government's sudden banning of live cattle exports due to an ABC Four Corners report.

But it's not even a proposition yet. However, Joyce couldn't help himself, jumping in to say it shouldn't be allowed to happen. "Naturally enough," he added, "people will say 'Well that's partisan, that's parochial, that's xenophobic'."

Indeed. They might, as he pointed out, be hypocritical in this, but attacking our neighbours for being hypocrites at the same time as locking them out of investing here isn't likely to make them feel any better disposed - or to place our exporters or farmers in a stronger trading position.

This is the weakest spot in the Abbott government's legitimate ambitions to make economic diplomacy a top priority. It needs to be sorted out swiftly, or it will continue to undermine the government in the years to come.

The other area where there's some urgency in relating with Indonesia is the need to invest far more in building people-to-people links. When the relationship hinges almost wholly on the attentiveness of a handful of top leaders on both sides, it's highly vulnerable to changes of personnel and to swings of political fortunes or to regional events.

Lawyer Tim Lindsey, the chairman of the Australia Indonesia Institute and probably Australia's top expert on our neighbour, was already urging 15 months ago that "we need to be investing in a post-SBY future", and warning that "our literacy about Asia is in free fall".

Shockingly, the most recent Lowy Institute poll showed that only a third of Australians are aware that Indonesia is a democracy.

The Abbott government has its foreign priorities about right, but it's got a big challenge ahead, including instilling some discipline in its own ranks.