'Radio Australia' still heard 60 years on

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne

For Indonesians who were around in the 1950s and 1960s, their first memory of Australia would have to be Radio Australia. Some even learned their first utterances in English from the famous English for You from Radio Australia program.

In August this year Radio Australia, the international face of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has been reaching out to Indonesia, broadcasting in the Indonesian language, for 60 years. And throughout those years, it has had its journalists travel and cover various political events in many parts of Indonesia, the most recent high-profile event, for instance, being in East Timor during the time leading up to the new country's referendum in 1999.

While the history of Radio Australia is a highly colorful one, it is interesting to look closely at the development in the last seven years, because it became clear that among the political decision-makers, Indonesia still rates highly.

When government funding for ABC was drastically cut in the mid-1990s, belt-tightening became inevitable. The government- commissioned Mansfield Report was published in 1997, recommending cessation of Radio Australia service.

After a great deal of lobbying by those who believed that dispensing of Radio Australia would have seriously negative effects on Australia's standing in the region, a compromise was subsequently reached. Radio Australia would retain its English language service, with the closures instead of several foreign language broadcasts and downsizing the existing ones.

Among those sacrificed were French, Thai, Japanese and Cantonese broadcasts, while Indonesian, along with Mandarin, Vietnamese, Khmer and Papua New Guinean, were retained, though looking somewhat anemic with a staff of eight, down from the 1970s halcyon days of a staff of 28.

At the 60th anniversary celebration in its Melbourne ABC Center, Sue Howard, director of ABC Radio, nonetheless singled out Indonesia as the most vibrant and most challenging target audience country.

Donald McDonald, the chairman of the ABC, does not believe that this downsizing reflected a view on the part of the government that Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region in general were no longer important to Australia.

"It was more of a somewhat misguided opinion that short-wave transmission belonged to a dying technology, increasingly superseded by the new information technology," McDonald explained, "forgetting that there were places in Indonesia where people could only access short-wave radio. And these were long- time and loyal Radio Australia listeners."

Then what McDonald confided to The Jakarta Post may reflect a high degree of determination on his part as well as a strong belief among some political leaders that Radio Australia was serving the nation well, and that Indonesian listeners are too important to be disregarded.

When funds from the Department of Communication and the Arts were drying up, MacDonald went to the Department of Immigration and Trade. There he found a sympathetic ear, and came away with A$1.5 million from Alexander Downer, the minister of foreign affairs, and Tim Fisher, the then minister of trade. That encouraged him to seek more funds, and Indonesian broadcast of Radio Australia was retained.

"That was unusual, because ABC is actually the responsibility of the Department of Communication and the Arts," McDonald added.

And now, the Indonesian broadcast can boast of maintaining second place between BBC World Service and Voice of America in terms of the number of listeners in Indonesia.

"The latest audience survey results from Indonesia are particularly promising as they come at a time of intense competition, not only from other international radio networks, but also from the proliferation of domestic stations and other forms of media that are springing up across the archipelago," said Jean-Gabriel Manguy, head of Radio Australia.

The credit for the success must also be shared with Nuim Khaiyath, the executive producer of the Indonesian broadcast, and his eight program officers who day-in, day-out produce four and a half hours of news, current affairs and magazine programs.

Another of the team's achievements worth mentioning is the partnerships the Indonesian broadcast has set up with 24 local radio stations in Indonesia, which relay Radio Australia's news and current affairs immediately, and the rest of the programs in their own time.

It is an arrangement which benefits both parties, with no money changing hands. Radio Australia can be assured that its voice is still reaching a substantial number of local listeners, penetrating areas where very few newspapers are seen in the average household, while the partner local radio stations know they are getting quality products.

Radio Australia is only one example of Australia's continuing overtures to Indonesia, low-profile and sans fanfare though it is.