Jakarta’s silent support on boats

THE  Indonesian government will never publicly endorse the Abbott government’s boats turn-back policy, so that seems to put the kybosh on the idea from Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles that the ALP could embrace the policy if Jakarta acquiesces.

But these things, grasshopper, are not as simple as they seem.

A number of things in Jakarta are moving in favour of de facto, if not de jure, acceptance of Australia’s push-back policy.

First is the announcement of new President Joko Widodo’s new cabinet. This is a well balanced outfit that has some very good signs for Australia. In ­security and defence, it is dominated by former military figures. This is helpful to Australia because, of all the parts of the Indonesian elite, the military typically has the best Australian contacts and the most pragmatic outlook.

Second is the appointment of Retno Marsudi as Indonesia’s first female foreign minister. Marsudi served as an effective, friendly and popular press attache in Canberra in the early 1990s and was well known to journalists and diplomats in Australia at that time.

Of all the Asia-Pacific countries, Australia is the one where she has the greatest personal experience.

Thirdly, now the election is out of the way, Indonesia’s leading politicians have less temptation to prove their nationalist credentials by having a crack at Australia.

Indonesia is an immense beneficiary of the effectiveness of the Abbott government’s policies to stop the boats, and the most plugged-in senior Indonesians know this. A whole cohort of people went to Indonesia solely for the purpose of transiting to Australia illegally. They no longer go.

But in truth an Indonesian president’s problems are so ­numerous and so enormous that this is almost the last of his worries. What the administration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono came to appreciate very deeply was that once the boats stopped coming to Australia the political problem disappeared for the Indonesians as much as for the Australians.

Thus, one of SBY’s senior ­advisers told me that they were delighted with the way Tony ­Abbott’s anti-boats policy had worked, but could not say so publicly. Once the boats stopped coming to Australia, this issue was virtually never mentioned in Indonesia. It only came up when the Australian media, or Australian politicians, forced it back on to the agenda.

Naturally, any Indonesian president will object to any violation of Indonesia’s sovereign waters. The Australian navy did make a handful of inadvertent violations of Indonesia’s waters.

So Joko, when asked, although overwhelmingly positive about the Australian relationship, said he would object to the violation of Indonesia’s sovereign waters.

Even this episode was instructive, however. When Canberra first notified Jakarta of the inadvertent straying into Indonesian waters, caused by the complex way territorial waters are calculated in archipelagic nations, the Indonesians didn’t react publicly. When the issue became public, they made a fuss.

Several months ago I attended an Australian-organised conference in Jakarta on people-smuggling. That so many senior Indonesians attended was a sign of their graciousness and kindness towards Australia. While it became clear to me there was a great deal of pro-forma hostility towards Australian policy, there was also hardly any knowledge of it in the round, nor indeed any knowledge of Indonesia’s own past policies.

The last time Indonesia recalled its ambassador in protest, for example, before the episode earlier this year, it was because Australia would not turn back boats, specifically boats from Papua. So I put it to an Indonesian interlocutor: Australia should definitely turn back boats when Jakarta wants them turned back but definitely not turn them back when Jakarta doesn’t want them turned back?

Labor itself once supported boat turnbacks. Kevin Rudd as opposition leader promised a turn-back policy in the 2007 election. Later, when pushed on his failure to do this, he said it was because the navy said it was unsafe.

The Abbott government has proved beyond all question that it is safe. So now Labor says it can only do so if it has Indonesian agreement. That is nonsense.

But Marles isn’t the villain here. He is a sensible frontbencher trying to move his party back to reality.

The internal Labor reaction against him shows how its opinion poll lead is keeping Labor locked into disastrous policies. Abbott will surely be able to run the mother of all scare campaigns — and on the historical record a perfectly legitimate scare campaign — that a re-elected Labor would once more dismantle effective border protection policies and see the flow of boatpeople start up once again.

Once it starts again it will inevitably reach the rate of 50,000 a year, the rate it reached towards the end of Labor’s time in office, with all the attendant deaths at sea and unacceptable loss of control of its own immigration program.

Thoughts of Australia do not remotely dominate Indonesian life. But because we are on basically the same time zone, Australian political controversies and media hysteria that involve Indonesia will get a good run in the Indonesian media. It is very easy to stir up anti-Australian sentiment.

Thus Rudd’s comments during the last election campaign that Abbott’s policies would lead to military confrontation between Indonesia and Australia were the most irresponsible comments, at least since Gough Whitlam, that any Australian prime minister has made.

These comments were designed to make it impossible for Jakarta to accept Abbott’s policies and they almost worked.

In stopping the boats, the Abbott government has made the single biggest positive contribution to the Australia-Indonesia relationship since John Howard’s generous response to the tragic tsunami in Aceh. Just don’t expect the Indonesians to say this publicly.

Labor, however, ought to be able to work it out.