Susilo test is in reform delivery

Susilo test is in reform delivery

In his potted account of plate tectonics, the pop historian
Bill Bryson refers to Australia's inexorable shift towards
Indonesia as the continental plates creep north several
centimeters a year. It seems diplomacy is finally catching up.

The unprecedented goodwill generated in the wake of the Boxing
Day tsunami brought five Indonesian cabinet ministers to Canberra
last week to discuss Australia's billion-dollar aid package.

Next week, the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, is due here; the most important Indonesian visitor
since a brief trip by the former president Soeharto 30 years ago.
This is real cause for optimism after decades of erratic
bilateral tensions.

As Indonesia's ambassador to Australia, Imron Cotan, pointed
out recently, Indonesia now offers Australia a "three-point
guarantee" against the oft-perceived threat from the north.
First, Indonesia is a democracy; second, it has no intention of
threatening Australia; and third, it lacks the means to do so,
anyway.

How swiftly the new neighborhood goodwill translates into
expanded links between the peoples of Australia and Indonesia,
however, depends on more than reforms at the top in Indonesia.
The election of Susilo last year ushered in the most
comprehensive political reform platform since the fall of the
authoritarian Soeharto regime in 1998.

Most immediately, Australia's aid package must be quarantined
from systemic corruption within the Indonesian bureaucracy.

The Australian government's standing warning to citizens to
defer non-essential travel to Indonesia is viewed by many
Indonesian officials as a public vote of no-confidence.
But Australians have been specifically targeted by terrorists as
recently as the bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta
last September.

Jakarta's best prospects for undermining the appeal of
extremism lies in economic recovery. Australia's aid package was
triggered by the devastation of the tsunami. But Canberra's
decision to permit up to half of the funds to be used for welfare
programs in other parts of the country recognizes the urgent need
to tackle poverty.

It's also important to acknowledge the potential returns for
Australia. Foreign aid usually generates benefits for donor
nations through the letting of contracts and the fostering of
commercial ties.

Bluescope Steel and Leighton Holdings, for example, have won
reconstruction contracts in Aceh. But the bigger point is this: a
democratic, stable Indonesia greatly enhances Australia's own
security -- and goes a long way to dispelling historic popular
fears of a threat from the north.
-- The Sydney Morning Herald.