08:33
Tieng Anh Vui
WHEN he made Jakarta his first foreign destination after he was elected as Australia’s prime minister in September, Tony Abbott promised a relationship with Indonesia “of no surprises, based on mutual trust”. Only two months later, Indonesia has decided to downgrade its relationship with Mr Abbott’s government. The country has been enraged by revelations by Guardian Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that in 2009 Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), an intelligence agency, tried to tap the phones of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s president, his wife and several in his innermost circle.
Australia has survived crises with its closest northern neighbour before, especially over their disagreements over East Timor (now Timor-Leste) and Indonesia’s policies in West Papua. This one may be more damaging than any. Indonesia’s leaders seem livid.
Mr Yudhoyono took to Twitter this week to lodge a “strong protest” at the “hurtful action” by Australia. (He had already ordered the return of Indonesia’s ambassador from Canberra.) He complained that the Australian prime minister had “belittled” the matter, making a statement on it that carried no remorse. An Indonesian minister has cancelled a planned trip to Australia.
Indonesia’s ambassador to America, Dino Patti Djalal, was a presidential spokesman in 2009 when his phone was one of those allegedly tapped. He says Indonesians are realistic enough to know that bugging is commonplace, “but we also believe that, between ‘strategic partners’, some things should be off-limits.” Mr Djalal warns Australia “not to underestimate the sense of anger felt by Indonesian leaders and common people”.
Mr Abbott, who during his election campaign had promised “More Jakarta, less Geneva”, has put Indonesia at the centre of his foreign policy in a way no other Australian leader has. “Stop the boats”, his other foreign-policy pledge, meant stemming the flow of asylum-seekers arriving in Australia, many of whom stop off in Indonesia and embark from there.
Indonesia has long been a target of Australia’s snooping as part of an intelligence-sharing club known as “Five Eyes”, whose other members are America, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. The revelations of Australia’s 2009 phone-bugging appear to have come from secret documents leaked by the former American National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. The documents listed “leadership targets” and their types of mobile phones. Experts believe it is a safe assumption that this was not the only month in which Australia’s intelligence agencies dabbled in Indonesian “leadership communications”.
Mr Abbott could argue that this bugging, at least, happened under Kevin Rudd’s former Labor government. But he chose not to, and Labor, now in opposition, rallied to his support. Mr Abbott’s response to the furore has hardly been conciliatory. He has offered “regret” for any embarrassment that Mr Yudhoyono suffered from the reports. But he insisted that “Australia should not be expected to apologise for the steps we take to protect our country now or in the past.”
That mirrors the language Mr Abbott used in his election campaign to promote his policy of turning back asylum-seekers’ boats to Indonesia. This policy in itself angered the Indonesian government, especially Mr Abbott’s plan for Australia to buy boats from fishermen believed likely to rent or sell them to people-smugglers. The main achievement of his recent visit to Jakarta was to secure Indonesia’s agreement to talk about this. It is one of the areas of co-operation Indonesia has now cancelled.
Mr Abbott sees Indonesia as the “most important single relationship that we have”. But his clumsiness may have put that at risk. Hugh White at the Australian National University reckons that the row will only strengthen the impression in Indonesia that when the prime minister offered “respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty” during his Jakarta visit, it was “not so much deft diplomacy as insincerity”.
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