Sydney, Austrailia - AUSTRALIA needs to update the way it thinks about Indonesia. Almost 10 years to the day since the fall of Suharto, it is time to start thinking of Indonesia as a normal country, grappling with many of the same challenges as other large, stable, middle-income developing democracies such as India, Mexico or Brazil. And Canberra needs to adjust ways in which it engages with it.
To see Indonesia as a normal country is to take the suspicion, fear and mystery out of the picture. Too few Australians realise that Indonesia today is a stable, competitive democracy, playing a constructive role in world affairs. It is no longer in a state of profound flux and turmoil. Indonesians have embraced their democracy by voting in more free, fair and peaceful elections, and with higher voter turnout rates, than nearly any other democracy in the world in recent years. The internationally respected Freedom House survey now identifies Indonesia as the only fully free country in South-East Asia.
Indonesia's future is no longer a big mystery; Australians know roughly what it's going to look like over the next decade. In the absence of radical disjuncture — always a possibility, but not currently expected by observers inside or outside the country — Indonesia will be a middle-income developing country making slow headway in lifting living standards and consolidating democratic governance.
Seeing Indonesia as a normal country involves recognising just how much progress it has achieved since the fall of Suharto, while maintaining a clear-eyed realism about what's likely to be possible. For all the complaints from the Indonesian elite about the slow pace of reform under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and frequent calls from Australia and elsewhere for action by Jakarta on various international issues, it is very likely that this is "as good as it gets" for quite some time. This is a sobering prospect given the scale of poverty and other problems in Indonesia. Australia needs to be conscious of this as it seeks to refine its bilateral engagement.
Old insights matter too, and one of the most important for Australian policymakers to grasp is Indonesia's fundamental pluralism. Regimes, rulers and miscellaneous radicals have come and gone, but an underlying equilibrium continually reasserts itself as an openness to external ideas, people and products and an inescapable imperative to accept diversity. There have been some terrible and deadly exceptions, and even today the Government is mulling over a "ban" on the activities of the Ahmadiyah movement, a peaceable Islamic sect, although seen as blasphemous by some Indonesians, including a handful of officials. Despite this, pluralism still remains the bedrock fact of Indonesian society. Australians have lost sight of this in recent years, inclining instead to suspect Indonesians of militancy and zealotry. But in the new democratic world of "normal" Indonesia, its underlying social diversity will be the foundation of pluralistic politics.
What are the implications of the new Indonesia for Australia? At a general level, Australia will have to get used to a more outspoken and prickly Indonesia. Democracies, especially young democracies, tend to give off lots of noisy signals. Indonesia has long had to listen to the full spectrum of feelings and fears in Australian society; we're going to have to do the same. But with increasingly reliable survey data now available, Australia can also obtain an accurate sense of where the balance lies in Indonesian public opinion.
In an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report to be launched today by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, we also outline a range of specific recommendations for Australia. The highest priority for Australia is that Indonesia's economic progress and consolidation as a viable democracy should not lag. Indonesia's economy has recovered from the Asian financial crisis and is making reasonable, if unspectacular, headway. But poverty is a much deeper problem than it should be. And while Indonesia has made remarkable progress in fashioning a workable framework of democratic government, there is a long way to go with bureaucratic and local-level political reform. These have to be serious concerns for Australia. Appropriately crafted Australian development assistance investments can provide real help to Indonesia on this front.
Australia also needs to think about the geographic focus of its development assistance investments in Indonesia, which puts particular emphasis on Eastern Indonesia. This engenders suspicion in minds and misses the great bulk of the country's poor.
There is an opportunity to recalibrate our military engagement too. Australia rightly seeks to encourage the continued disengagement of the military from domestic politics. This is important, as backsliding may undermine the fundamental priority of democratic consolidation. But in doing this, we shouldn't also be complaining about Indonesia beginning to modernise its meagre conventional defence capabilities. A stable, democratic Indonesia needs a professional and outwardly oriented defence force. Australia may be able to help through the development of civilian defence planning capabilities. Australia is fortunate that Indonesia is emerging as a normal country. But its future cannot be taken for granted. Its democracy needs to work better in delivering services and advancing prosperity.