COMMENTARY: By Duncan Graham

Under-reported in the Australian and New Zealand media, Indonesia has been gripped by protests this year, some of them violent.

The protests have been over grievances ranging from cuts to the national budget and a proposed new law expanding the role of the military in political affairs, President Prabowo Subianto’s disastrous free school meals programme, and politicians receiving a $3000 housing allowance.

More recently, further anger against the President has been fuelled by his moves to make corrupt former dictator Soeharto (also Prabowo’s former father-in-law) a “national hero“.

Ignoring both his present travails, as well as his history of historical human rights abuses (that saw him exiled from Indonesia for years), Prabowo has been walking the 27,500-tonne HMAS Canberra, the fleet flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, along with PM Anthony Albanese.

The location was multipurpose: It showed off Australia’s naval hardware and reinforced the signing of a thin “upgraded security treaty” between unequals. Australia’s land mass is four times larger, but there are 11 Indonesians to every one Aussie.

Ignoring the past
Although Canberra’s flight deck was designed for helicopters, the crew found a desk for the leaders to lean on as they scribbled their names. The location also served to keep away disrespectful Australian journalists asking about Prabowo’s past, an issue their Jakarta colleagues rarely raise for fear of being banned.

Contrast this one-day dash with the relaxed three-day 2018 visit by Jokowi and his wife Iriana when Malcolm Turnbull was PM. The two men strolled through the Botanical Gardens and seemed to enjoy the ambience. The President was mobbed by Indonesian admirers.

This month, Prabowo and Albanese smiled for the few allowed cameras, but there was no feeling that this was “fair dinkum”. Indonesia said the trip was “also a form of reciprocation for Prime Minister Albanese’s trip to Jakarta last May,” another one-day come n’go chore.

Analysing the treaty needs some mental athleticism and linguistic skills because the Republic likes to call itself part of a “non-aligned movement”, meaning it doesn’t couple itself to any other world power.

The policy was developed in the 1940s after the new nation had freed itself from the colonial Netherlands and rejected US and Russian suitors.

It’s now a cliché — “sailing between two reefs” and “a friend of all and enemy of none”. Two years ago, former Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi explained:

“Indonesia refuses to see the Indo-Pacific fall victim to geopolitical confrontation. …This is where Indonesia’s independent and active foreign policy becomes relevant. For almost eight decades, these principles have been a compass for Indonesia in interacting with other nations.

“…(it’s) independent and active foreign policy is not a neutral policy; it is one that does not align with the superpowers nor does it bind the country to any military pact.”

Pact or treaty?
Is a “pact” a “treaty”? For most of us, the terms are synonyms; to the word-twisting pollies, they’re whatever the user wants them to mean.

We do not know the new “security treaty” details although the ABC speculated it meant there will be “leader and ministerial consultations on matters of common security, to develop cooperation, and to consult each other in the case of threats and consider individual or joint measures” and “share information on matters that would be important for Australia’s security, and vice-versa.”

Much of the  “analysis” came from Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s media statement, so no revelations here.

What does it really mean? Not much from a close read of  Albanese’s interpretation: ”If either or both countries’ security is threatened,

to consult and consider what measures may be taken either individually or jointly to deal with those threats.”

Careful readers will spot the elastic “consult and consider”. If this were on a highway sign warning of hazards ahead, few would ease up on the pedal.

Whence commeth the threat?  In the minds of the rigid right, that would be China — the nation that both Indonesia and Australia rely on for trade.

Indonesia’s militaristic president Prabowo Subianto is seizing books which undermine his political agenda. Duncan Graham #indonesia https://t.co/akvGdOqC9d

— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) October 19, 2025

Keating and Soeharto
The last “security treaty” to be signed was between PM Paul Keating and Soeharto in 1995. Penny Wong said the new document is “modelled closely” on the old deal.

The Keating document went into the shredder when paramilitary militia and Indonesian troops ravaged East Timor in 1999, and Australia took the side of the wee state and its independence fighters.

Would Australia do the same for the guerrillas in West Papua if we knew what was happening in the mountains and jungles next door? We do not because the province is closed to journos, and it seems both governments are at ease with the secrecy. The main protests come from NGOs, particularly those in New Zealand.

Foreign Minister Wong added that “the Treaty will reflect the close friendship, partnership and deep trust between Australia and Indonesia”.

Sorry, Senator, that’s fiction. Another awkward fact: Indonesians and Australians distrust each other, according to polls run by the Lowy Institute. “Over the course of 19 years . . . attitudes towards Indonesia have been — at best — lukewarm.

And at worst, they betray a lurking suspicion.

These feelings will remain until we get serious about telling our stories and listening to theirs, with both parties consistently striving to understand and respect the other. “Security treaties” involving weapons, destruction and killings are not the best foundations for friendship between neighbours.

Future documents should be signed in Sydney’s The Domain.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new Pacific aid mapping tool developed by the Lowy Institute think tank is set to immeasurably improve transparency in aid in the region.

In an Auckland first, the aid mapping tool was put on show last night by the NZ Institute for Pacific Research as a curtainraiser to the two-day inaugural Oceans and Islands conference which opened at Auckland University’s Fale Pasifika today.

The guest demonstrator and speaker at Auckland University’s Owen Glenn Business School last night was Jonathan Pryke, director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Programme.

READ MORE: The Oceans and Islands conference

He was introduced by senior lecturer in Pacific Studies at Auckland University Dr Lisa Uperesa.

“This is a part of the seminar series that has been part of the mandate for the NZIPR which is about growing capacity and disseminating research,” Dr Uperesa said.

Jonathan Pryke, director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Programme, introducing the Pacific Aid Map at Auckland University last night. Image: Sri Krishnamurthi/PMC

Jonathan Pryke traced the beginnings of the mapping tool to Dr Penelope Brant and her PhD project which was charting every aid project that Papua New Guinea was engaged in, in the Pacific, subsequently the project turned into the Chinese aid in the Pacific map that the Lowy Institute released in 2015.

“This map made quite a splash, first because it was in interactive form that they haven’t seen before in the Pacific, Pryke said.

China’s spread
“It also made a splash because people hadn’t fully come to grips with just how far China had spread into the Asia-Pacific Island countries that support the one-China policy.”

“We had two major pieces of feedback from this tool. The first was from the Chinese government saying, ‘thanks guys, we had no idea how much we were doing’ and second piece of feedback was this is fantastic but why don’t we do this for every donor because it is very hard to find out what Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all these guys are doing?”

Transparency leads to good governance and that was needed around the world, he said.

“There is one good reason to enhance transparency around aid, not just in the Pacific but globally, there is global mandate to improve transparency which was agreed upon by all traditional donors in 2005 in the Paris accord,” said Pryke.

“It revolves around three main reasons why transparency in aid is important.

“In theory the first is, it should improve and make it easier for donors to co-ordinate with one another in the aid space,” he outlined.

“In the Pacific Island region there is more than 62 donors operating, that is countries or multinational agencies operating in the Pacific at any given time.

“So it’s really critical in all contexts that donors are able to co-ordinate with one another to prevent overlap, to reduce the drag on recipient governments and just to be more efficient,” he said.

‘Enhancing transparency’
“The second reason for enhancing transparency is to help align what donors are doing with receiving government priorities,” Pryke said.

Toeolesulusulu Associate Professor Damon Salesa speaking at the opening of the NZIPR Islands and Oceans conference at the Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland today. Image: David Robie/PMC

“We spent a lot of time on this project talking to Pacific Island governments about how they go about keeping track what donors are doing in the Pacific and pretty much all of them told us they couldn’t help us because they didn’t have sophisticated data telling them what the donors were doing

“It is a very messy thing to get hold of, and so having a tool like this just helps them to see what is happening in their own countries.

“So, they can better steer what donors are doing with their own development priorities.

“Having more information, and easier access to it should help Pacific countries better align aid to the priorities,” Pryke said.

The third reason for enhanced transparency was that it improves accountability of aid in the region for the media, civil society for academics, he pointed out.

“There is a lot of money going into the Pacific every year with very little oversight on how it is done outside of those giving it and those receiving it and so it is pretty more out there in the public domain.

‘Improving accountability’
“It should improve accountability and put the pressure on both sides of the equation, sender and receiver to improve the way that aid is delivered,” he summed up the third reason.

“We really were keen to do this project and so we started conversations with the Australian government to fund it.

“How we did it, from 2011 until today we requested data on 13,000 aid projects from 62 donors. We have a data from most donors be it an NGO or private sector contractor so there is a huge wealth of information.

“We had to take this huge database and put into a user-friendly, publicly available, interactive, visually-appealing interface that anyone that anyone in the world can access and actually make sense of, and so we put together this tool,” he said.

The Oceans and Islands conference was opened this morning by the Minister for Social Development and Disabilities Carmel Sepuloni and founding NZIPR director Associate-Professor Damon Salesa, who is now pro vice-chancellor (Pacific) of Auckland University.

Keynote speakers today were Dr David Welchman Gegeo of the Solomon Islands and  Professor Kapua Sproat of Hawai’i.

Emeritus Professor Richard Bedford, acting director of NZIPR, will close the conference tomorrow afternoon. About 120 people are taking part in the showcase of Pacific research.

Sri Krishnamurthi and Blessen Tom of the Pacific Media Centre are working as part of a PMC partnership with the NZ Institute for Pacific Research.

The Pacific Media Centre’s team at the NZ Institute for Pacific Research conference … Sri Krishnamurthi (left) and Blessen Tom. Image: David Robie/PMC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz