Neighborly relations: Prioritizing people before politics and business

Max Lane, Visiting Fellow, Center for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

Australian Ambassador R.C. Smith in his reply to the essay by Jusuf Wanandi is wrong. As an Australian I must clearly state that Australia -- or more precisely -- the Australian government does not have a proud record on refugee re-settlement. It has a shameful record. It has used armed forces -- its naval ships -- to turn away unarmed civilians, often including children, travelling in unseaworthy ships. These people have been fleeing terrible circumstances and are only seeking somewhere safe to settle.

Australia is a wealthy and prosperous country, which is in a much better position to help these people than many other countries in the region. Its policy of paying small Pacific islands to accept the out-sourcing of refugee prisons is disgraceful. Only Australia still imprisons all its refugees. Indonesia does not.

The Australian government and Prime Minister John Howard did use racism and xenophobia to win the elections. This is not just the opinion of Wanandi but of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, former senior bureaucrat John Menadue, many former members of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, as well as most of the heads of the churches and other religious communities.

At least 10 percent of the population voted for parties associated with opposition to Howard's racism. Disgracefully, the Labor Party also supported Howard's position but tried to downplay it as an election issue. We cannot tell how many of the almost 40 percent of voters who chose the ALP also support Howard's racism.

If the Australian government did want to be a good neighbor it would volunteer to bring all the refugees currently in Indonesia and help settle them in Australia. Australia can afford it economically and has plenty of space. Indonesian society has many problems to deal with after the Soeharto dictatorship (which Wanandi mostly supported). The Australian government does not need to saddle Indonesian society with another one when it can help take it off Indonesia's hands.

One of the worst aspects of Australian government racism is the current policy on visas. The Indonesian government has a policy of automatic visas for many countries. This is how it should be. But the Australian government does not return this policy for Indonesians. An Australian with enough money for a ticket can get up and go to Indonesia any time he or she wants. An Indonesian must queue up on the footpath outside the Australian Embassy in Kuningan before 8 a.m. to join a queue that can take many hours. They must pay an application fee (which Australians going to Indonesia do not have to pay). Even then there is no guarantee of a visa.

If you are from a poor country and are travelling to Australia, you are guilty of being an illegal immigrant seeking residence and work until you can prove yourself innocent. This policy must be changed to allow equal access for Indonesians to Australia as Australians have to Indonesia.

Ambassador Smith also says the Australian government is genuine about "closer integration with Asia", including Indonesia. But the Australian government has never prioritized relations with the Indonesians in its "integration".

For 23 years all Australian governments gave full support to the Soeharto dictatorship. Australian leaders, including Howard, lied consistently to the Australian public about Indonesian politics. Prime Minister Howard, even in the late 1990s, was still calling president Soeharto a "caring and sensitive" leader.

If the Australian government had a genuine good neighbor policy towards the Indonesian people (and not just some Indonesian generals), then we would never have heard such gushing flattery for Gen. Soeharto.

Wanandi is also wrong in stating that Prime Minister Howard "should have been proud of assisting Indonesia in overcoming the debacle in East Timor in 1999". Howard, and all the Prime Minister's before him, helped create the debacle. From 1975 onwards they accepted, and repeatedly told the Australian public, that East Timor would never be independent and that it was irresponsible to encourage the East Timorese to think otherwise.

Australian governments were more concerned about getting East Timorese oil than they were about the suffering of the East Timor people or about the long term problems that would be created for Indonesian society itself. The Australian government aoppears to be repeating this mistake in relation to developments in West Papua and Aceh.

The Australian government is interested in "integration" in Asia. But it is an integration that too often puts the interests of its own business and political elite first. It is time for more people to speak out against all foreign policy decisions, by all governments, which prioritize the interests of the elite politik and elite bisnis over the interests of the people -- the rakyat -- of the region.