25 February 2021
Selamat sore, Good Afternoon,
I’m Gary Quinlan
I’ve been Ambassador of Australia to Indonesia for the past three years and it’s great to be here this evening, although not in person, but virtually. We all do our engagements virtually these days and have for almost a year and I think it has been a revelation to all of us, certainly to me, of how effective that kind of virtual interaction can be and of course how essential it is.
I want to fact vice chancellor, Margaret Gardner of course, Monash, also Professor Sharyn Davies the new Director Herb Feith Centre, especially of course and pre-eminently Indonesia Consul-General Ibu Spica and also Professor Andrew Burn and Professor Sharon Pickering, and of course above all, thank you all for tuning in to us today.
Monash, of course as we all know is one of Australia’s great educational institution among the greatest and pre-eminently one invested very heavily in Indonesia and in the relationship between our two countries.
This is not only the centre under who’s auspices we are meeting today, but also the fact as you know, that Monash is on the verge of opening its university campus in Indonesia, the first foreign university in Indonesia. And that despite COVID, so the momentum is there and it has been a tremendous effort and we congratulate everybody at Monash and elsewhere in the Indonesian Government System associated with achieving that wonderful outcome.
Now, the subject of Australia-Indonesia relations 2021 and beyond. Now that is a pretty big subject so I want to limit myself obviously in the time available to sort of some headline points, which hopefully will help crystalize additional thinking by all of us who are so engage in relationship as we map out and chart and even a better future between the two countries.
First of all, I want to emphasize the fact that relations between our two countries are very resilient, sometimes people would’ve thought oh they’re a little bit fragile, but they’re not. History has shown how resilient they are, they should be resilient because we’re neighbours and you certainly hope they would be.
But time has told and it is a resilient relationship and COVID-19 and our aligned responses to what has been globally the most disruptive event for all of us since World War II, our aligned response between these two neighbours, us, has shown exactly how resilient the relationship is.
We’ve been at a turning point, and a start turning point between our two countries over the past few years. And the reason is, I think because the rest of the region and in fact the world has been at a turning point. And this predates COVID. COVID has made that turning point and what it means for all of us, that much clear that much starker.
But the trend is, that we are changing our world and the calculous that each of our government, each of our countries brings in to play when it thinks about our places in the world. Those trends were already there.
The historic shift to the Asia Pacific what is now broadly known as the ‘Indo-Pacific’, the historic shift of the political economic, strategic gravity to our part of the world, the massive technological change we’re all experiencing, fastest change in human history. And that of course makes everything more volatile more difficult to cope with and of course profound ecological change.
All of these things had led each of our countries, Indonesia and Australia to assess what is happening, what’s going on and what do those changes mean for each of us, and each of us actually make the same judgements. Our policy choices on how to deal with that dramatic change will inevitably vary a bit but in fact we make the same kind of assessments. And as a result of that, despite occasional differences over policy, but not important, we are fundamentally aligned with each other.
And above all, we are very-very actively focus on how we can both become more resilient countries ourselves, and with each other by shaping the region in which we live, by combining our respective convening power and operational power to leverage the kind of cooperation we need to shape our region.
Now, President Widodo visited Canberra, Australia, on a state visit a year ago, February last year. I had the good fortune to be present for that visit, and he addressed the Australian Parliament during that visit, only the second Indonesian President to do so after SBY in 2010. And during that address to parliament, President Widodo described Australia and I quote as “Indonesia’s closest friend”.
Now, leaders of course and diplomats always say that kind of thing, but the fact is, and particularly if you’re addressing the parliament, but the fact is: that it’s true. Politically, the two countries have never been closer.
During the visit, both leaders announced a Plan of Action to operationalize, to put into effect, implement the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership which was signed of and adopted by both leaders during Prime Minister Morrison’s first visit to Indonesia as Prime Minister, six days after he became Prime Minister in Australia in August 2018.
Now, there are five operational pillars and serious pillars in this detailed Plan of Action, five pillars under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, four of them are sort of bilateral economic cooperation, people to people cooperation, security and defence, maritime, and then there’s a fifth pillar, uniquely where both countries set out different areas where we can cooperate with each other to shape the region.
The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and both our countries have very few of these agreements. They are the top level diplomatic agreement that you can have with another country. And we only have a handful of these agreements each one of us Indonesia and Australia. They are important because they make our cooperation accountable, systematic, routine. The Australian cabinet will receive a report every six months on the implementation of that plan and that’s unique because it is so important to us. So that’s a game changer.
The other big game changer for the next decade is we map out the future or try and map out the future is the Indonesia Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership (IA-CEPA) and that came into force last July during COVID. So that’s there.
Our response to COVID-19 has actually shown the response between us, and certainly on Australia’s part, how closely aligned we are.
Our two leaders have been in regular contact by telephone exchanging notes on what’s happening with COVID-19 in each country, regionally and globally and aligning policy to influence other countries in their response and to try and get some global leadership on COVID-19. There has been an absence of leadership on global on COVID-19, it’s just been obvious.
So, to middle countries like Australia, middle powers, have needed to cooperate more closely to bring the right kind of messaging to other countries about how serious the problems are and how quickly we needed to act.
So, leaders have been in contact. The Foreign Ministers constantly in regular contact. The Defence Ministers on the phone regularly every month and the Heads of our Defence Forces likewise. Our Treasurer and Ministers for Finance and some other Ministers in very specialised areas, IT, communications, those kind of issues, all been having a constant dialogue, to exchange notes and align our sources with each other.
We have put a tremendous effort into ensuring that all the regular meetings we have at Ministerial level every year and at officials level take place. So that we didn’t lose momentum and create a much bigger gap than we need and want despite the pressures of COVID and difficulties.
On counter terrorism, on cyber security, on maritime and border issues, on law and security issues, on education, all of those engagements have been happening. And I think that in fact the regularity of that engagement between Australia and Indonesia has been the most we have had Australia with any other single country and the most Indonesia has had despite the challenges of COVID.
We inaugurated a new Senior Economic officials meeting last August. That’ll be a very important part of our economic relationship on policy into the future.
We will soon be issuing a what we call a blueprint for business on how to take the opportunities that IA-CEPA offer and do something about them, this is what you can do. We try and give a bit of a guide as to how you can best utilise the opportunity of that agreement. We’ll soon be having an inaugural Senior Economic Ministers meeting, our trade, investment and economic Ministers.
We’ll be having our 2+2, that’s a Defence and Foreign Minister of both countries meeting soon, maybe virtually but maybe if we can manage it in person, we are working on that. And also our annual Defence Minister’s meeting.
And another very interesting meeting, the first Trilateral Foreign Ministers meeting between Australia, Indonesia, India. This is a new trilateral relationship in the region focussed on how we can help each other build resilience in the Indo Pacific. And of course later this year we will have our annual Leaders Meeting.
Also in our COVID response, our Development program and partnership with Indonesia we pivoted that to the COVID-19 response and Indonesia’s own priorities for that response as soon as it was evident that COVID-19 was going to be so disastrous for everybody. We pivoted that program for focus on technical and economic and governance advise, public health advise, social protection, these key areas have priorities in Indonesia’s own response.
We extended late last year a loan for 1.5 billion dollars for budget support, direct budget support to Indonesia’s COVID response and we will continue to keep looking closely whether additional fiscal support in the future might be useful.
Now of course we are also working on vaccines. And we have a 100 million dollar program, 100.9 million dollar program announced recently focussed on Indonesia as part of a broader half a billion dollar program on vaccines for the region. And of course we’ll continue to work on vaccines because they are the light at the end of the tunnel, they are so essential.
Now of course we know that we can’t just looking at the future revert to the 2020 settings or the pre-COVID settings. COVID has changed everything, we know that.
Indonesia’s own economy of course went backwards, contracted in 2020 for the first time since the Asian financial crises in 1998, poverty rate, unemployment have increased, a large number of small businesses have had to close.
Education - and I want to emphasise that, has been particularly affected with schools basically closed for almost a year with a bad impact and big impact on the younger generation. And youth and education always the key to the future. But the key to the future between our two countries, youth and education, these are the key and the areas we need to really focus our continued programs and cooperation on.
The difficulties of the public health system become very obvious and the need for really well targeted effective social protection systems and also money. Because business contracted went backwards. The amount of money available through tax to the Indonesian government has fallen substantially.
And so at the time when there is a bigger and bigger demand for expenditure on education, social protection, assistance to industry to rebuild, that very time money available to do that has declined so the need for revenue boosting through tax reform has become so much obvious.
Now we expect that President Widodo will make every effort to continue to keep the economy open so it can grow. And we expect that will continue, despite the fact that COVID-19 is going to remain, obviously, a serious problem at least for another year.
And of course the government’s vaccination program, in a country which is so vast, the fourth largest country in the world, massive archipelago, that vaccination program will need to continue to have wide effectiveness at least until the second quarter of next year.
The Indonesian governments’ own budget estimate is the economy of Indonesia will have contracted going backward for about seven percent, will be seven percent smaller than it was pre-COVID. I mention of this to indicate the ecosystem with which our two countries are dealing.
Australia has, and it has and is coming out of the pandemic, better than a lot of other countries. But not without challenges.
But in terms of the cooperation needed between our two countries in this scene, clearly we in Australia need to be very alert very sensitive conscious of the really difficult ecosystem that our biggest neighbour and friend is facing.
I shouldn’t talk for too much longer, looking to the future, I think first of all let me make one or two comments on the economic side.
I’ve mentioned IA-CEPA, and this will establish a new platform for economic integration over the next decade. Once we start to rebuild and get out of the immediate bad impacts of COVID-19.
Here it is, where we’re going to particularly focus apart from trade of course, and the trade between the two countries has not been affected as badly as we feared. In fact it’s going down a little bit, but in some areas it’s gone up. And has favoured Indonesia in some areas, so we want to see more of that, frankly.
But we want to focus also very much on services and investment. Getting Australian investment into Indonesia and getting more Indonesian investment into Australia is a good thing.
Areas in particular that IA-CEPA I think opens up for business is private health-care, tourism infrastructure, anything to do with digital start-ups and digital economy, education particularly vocational education and training, and renewable energy. And this is going to be a big focus of the future.
We are also about to sign fairly soon a new Memorandum of Understanding of cooperation on agribusiness between the two countries. And developing a new way in which we can get better integrated supply chains to work with Indonesian business for Indonesia’s food security. And that’s quite vital.
I should mention our development cooperation partnership will obviously continue. And it will continue over the next couple of years to give a big focus to, the economic recovery from COVID, the public health needs, to technical and economic advice broadly, to social protection, and traditionally our focus also on disaster management.
So they’ll be the foci if you like of where we’re going with IA-CEPA in the development program in the future.
Another area I’ll mention counter-terrorism because it’s always of interest to people. Indonesia has some of the best counter-terrorism people anywhere in the world, in any country which faces a level of terrorism of any threat. Australia and Indonesia remain the closest partners in our region on counter-terrorism. Our two police forces have the closest relationship of any two police forces anywhere in the world to resist counter-terrorism. But it’s there. It’ll always be there probably. But it’s an area where we do a tremendous amount very positively with each other.
I’ll mention cyber and cyber security issues because the threat of cyber intrusions to our critical infrastructure to our national security and to our digital economy has become so much starker and so much more obvious to each of our countries over the last few years. And the threat from disinformation, the miss-use of cyber opportunity, we will be working much much more closely on those threats jointly over the coming decade.
Defence, we do actually have very good defence relations, and always have an occasional hiccup in relations up and down we haven’t have that for a long time, we don’t expect to. Defence cooperation is actually quite strong particularly with training and that’s going to increase. And new areas of procurement, of buying equipment, we are both developing our own defence industry. So there’s more opportunity over the forth-coming decade and all of that.
And more and more joint operations. One thing I want to mention because it’s historically symbolic but really potent, is that we are working on finalising arrangements for an Australian and Indonesian co-deployment on UN Peace Keeping. This was announced by our Defence and Foreign Ministers a year ago and we are working on it now.
That, if you think about it is an historic development as I said. Our two countries contributing peace-keepers together under a joint mandate of the UN Security Council to look after peace and security in a part that hasn’t been announced which country yet or which peace keeping mission in our own region, historic. That kind of cooperation I think will just continue routinely into the future. And also we’ll be doing a lot more work on joint deployments on humanitarian and security relief.
Maritime, anything our two countries do in maritime is by definition vital and important to both of us. We’re both maritime countries, Indonesia the greatest archipelago in the world, huge number of islands, vast space of ocean - much of which you share with us. And we are a continent but a small country in population size but a massive country in terms of geography.
And then we have India as the other great maritime country in our immediate region. So you’ve got the three countries, which is why trilateral cooperation in maritime is going to be so much more important. Because we share the same maritime ecosystem and challenges, and the same maritime strategic geography. We’ll be doing a lot more cooperation in the Indian Ocean.
We’ll be focusing more on plastic waste. What we can do together. CSIRO in Australia is doing some work with others, Indonesian counterparts, on what we can do there. And more and more effort to combat illegal fishing.
Internationally, we are both great proponents of an Indo-Pacific vision for our region, and of course ASEAN.
We, Australia, see ASEAN as absolutely vital and central to the regional strategic calculus. The calculus which needs to be secure, but also to deliver prosperity for each of us. And we’ll continue to work closely on that. We are at the moment very-very pleased to see the leadership being shown by Foreign Minister Retno within ASEAN and the region on Myanmar, and what we do about that. We’re your strongest supporters, always, in ASEAN, Australia, we have been your first dialogue partner since 1974. And everybody in this country, from the Prime Minister down, when they speak of foreign policy, always say one of the two or three key operating principles is the importance of ASEAN.
We’re both members of the G20, we sometimes forget that. Indonesia, are both G20 economies. Indonesia will be chairman of the G20 next year. And we’re already tightly engaged in talking to each other, how we can work together on the agenda and how do you get results out of a G20 dialogue, and also is there way with the expertise that we can exchange to develop the capacity for the G20.
We’re both working very closely together on reform of the World Trade Organisation, where Indonesia has taken the leadership role, and Australia as well. And also WHO, the World Health Organisation reform. We’ll be working ever more closely on that.
I’ll conclude by mentioning people-to-people links.
Now these are always the hardest, in a sense to assess and characterize. Because they depend ultimately on not just what we know about each other, but also what we feel about each other. So it’s very difficult to sort of assess how successful people-to-people relations are going.
Obviously youth are the key. And given the fact that Indonesia is one of the greatest young countries in the world, will always continue to be key as we map out the next decade.
Education, we were really making great progress. More and more connection.
The New Colombo Plan from Australia, Indonesia as the preferred country of choice. And in the first five years of the New Colombo Plan, ten thousand Australian students spent time in Indonesia. We’ve lost some of that momentum, because of COVID-19. We’ve engaged the program virtually, the mobility programs. We’re going to have to work extra hard to rebuild that, and the university framework in Australia to help support ACICIS, the New Colombo Plan.
We do need to put a lot more effort into study and research collaborations between our best institutes and our best universities. And what Monash of course is doing in Indonesia, and plans to do in the future, is a very exciting pointer to the future in that.
Tourism will take a while to rebuild. Indonesia is the second most preferred country in the world, destinations for Australians to be tourists. The other one is New Zealand. And we need to rebuild that.
Of course we’re hostage to when the borders can reopen. But once they can, safely, there are a lot of Australians already making plans to see how they can reengage with their favourite place in the world, for obvious reasons, Bali. We need to get more Australians out of just Bali, by the way, and get them to visit other great parts of Indonesia, and it’s something we need to do some more work on.
Culturally, COVID-19 has had a big big impact on the cultural communities in both countries. And we’ve lost some of the momentum and the exchanges in some of the cultural area. We’ve done our best to keep things going.
I’ve opened four or five different art exhibitions over the last six-seven months, and other cultural events in particular. So we didn’t lose momentum, I’ve done all of that virtually with other people to try and maintain that effort. But we’re going to have to double down and do more to rebuild some of that.
And I’ll conclude by mentioning interfaith connections.
Both Prime Minister Morrison and President Widodo, and former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made this a priority of our engagement, with a direct personal commitment that each of our leaders have brought to that. We began an interfaith dialogue formally, two years ago in Bandung. And we want to resume that as soon as we can, even if we have to do it virtually.
I had a conversation the other day with Indonesia’s new Minister for Religious Affairs, and we’re going to work on this as a commitment over the next few months. This is an area where obviously we in Australia have a lot to learn from Indonesia’s experience of Islam. And we want to understand Islam. As a country with a relatively small Muslim population, we want to understand Islam, so Indonesian eyes, you have a lot to teach us in Indonesia about this, and we have a healthy appetite to learn more in that area.
Now there’s no doubt, we need to redouble our efforts, particularly on the people-to-people front. And that’s where you, who’ve tuned in this afternoon, are so important as well. Because I hope you can continue to be, not just interested observers in discussions about our two countries and where we’re going, and planning for a better future together. But that you can be really active Ambassadors in widening the catchment of people who we need to get engaged in what we’re doing between the two countries.
Because Indonesia’s success is Australia’s success, I’m quoting our Prime Minister to that effect. It’s absolutely true, and we are linked historically since independence. Your strongest supporter in Indonesia for Indonesia’s independence. And we always will be.
So, I look forward to continuing to work, for a short time this year before I conclude my posting later in the year. My three-year assignment. But I look forward to try to pull together some more threads, in working with Monash in particular, and the centre, which I’m really pleased to engage with this way again as we map out that future.
So thank you, and I hope you have some good discussions today with some of those questions.
Terima kasih.