Max Lane responds
When I saw a letter by Geoffrey Gold, a well-known advisor to Australian business and mining interests, in The Jakarta Post on Nov. 5 responding to my articles on Australia-Indonesia relations, I was quite excited. However, I was disappointed that none of the issues being raised were discussed. Instead, there was a series of data, not always correct in detail but generally flattering, about my own political and human rights activities. Gold certainly seems to pay a lot of attention to the activities of dissidents and human rights activists, in both Indonesia and Australia. But then his firm is a consultant providing analysis to business interests.
Does he oppose the cancellation of Indonesia's foreign debt? Does he disagree that the West owes the exploited countries for centuries of exploitation? Does he support the fire sale of Indonesian productive assets to foreign companies? Does he support the IMF policies ending price subsidies on basic goods for the common people? Does he agree that Australia, in the IMF, should stop supporting the lowering of import tariffs and the ending of import regulations on rice and sugar, threatening livelihoods in these sectors? Does he join the Australian government in standing opposite almost all Indonesian human rights groups which oppose the introduction of repressive antiterror laws in Indonesia, mirroring the repressive laws in Australia used to justify armed ASIO raids on peoples' homes without any public accountability?
These are some of the real issues that relate to the exploitative character of Australia's relations with Indonesia.
All Australian businesses that operated during the Soeharto- Golkar dictatorship benefited from the absence of trade unions and environmental laws. The real issue is to end the conditions which operate against ordinary people: to build strong trade unions, environmental laws and protective legislation.
Indonesians will need the maximum unity in facing the predatory West today just as they needed unity from "Sabang to Merauke" to fight the predatory colonialism of the Dutch. The strongest form of unity will be that resulting from voluntary agreement on both principle and form. Coercion and violence is the enemy of unity. This is the lesson of Aceh and Papua. Unity among the 250 million people of the Indonesian archipelago, including in Aceh and West Papua, will be best achieved by respecting everybody's rights to self-determination. Where does Gold stand?
MAX LANE, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Asia Pacific, Social Transformation, Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong, Australia