by John Howard
Uniquely, Australia is a product of Western civilisation, closely allied to the United States, but located cheek by jowl with the nations of Asia. Both history and geography have given us a rare opportunity; why should we be so foolish as to think that we must choose between the two?
Whether Australia should become a republic or change the design of our flag are exclusively domestic matters, irrelevant to the rest of the world. Although both Paul Keating and I said this, I believed it. By contrast, he did not. In an interview on the Sunday program on 26 March 1992, John Dawkins, the Labor Treasurer, cited the presence of the Union Jack in the corner of Australia’s flag as important to whether Australia related to Asia as an independent country. In that interview he said, ‘The point about Australia is that we’ve never gone through the catharsis of breaking those links and therefore being able to establish new and permanent and firmer links in the region in which we live.’1 This was the Treasurer saying directly that in order to get on in Asia we had to break links with Britain. He argued that we had to choose.
It was juvenile stuff. Ten years later when involved in the negotiations for the huge natural gas deal with the Chinese President and Premier, my main negotiating rival was Britain’s Deputy PM, John Prescott, who was advocating BP’s proposal. I can assure John Dawkins that Union Jacks, small or large, didn’t come into it.
I came to office sharing the views of my four predecessors that close links, at every realistic level, with the nations of Asia were fundamental to Australia’s future. Addressing the National Press Club for the last time as Opposition leader, on 28 February 1996, I said that Indonesia would be the first country that I visited as prime minister.
Paul Keating’s error with Indonesia was to define the relationship too heavily in terms of his personal relationship with President Suharto. I didn’t predict Suharto’s demise in 1998 or the rapid and remarkable transformation of Indonesia from a military autocracy to the third-largest democracy in the world. Nevertheless, when change did come rapidly and unexpectedly in Indonesia, my more detached association with Suharto meant that Australia was able to adjust and, over time, influence other events more effectively.
In the first weeks of office Alexander Downer arranged for me to see Mahathir, the prickly Malaysian PM, in Brisbane as the latter travelled en route back to Malaysia from New Zealand. It was a useful meeting. He spoke quite personally about his associations with both Hawke and Keating. He retained a lingering resentment about Hawke’s criticism of the execution of the two convicted Australian drug couriers, Barlow and Chambers. He also had a different, more narrowly East Asian vision for regional cooperation in Asia — one which sought to exclude Australia and the United States. The meeting restored normal transmission in diplomatic relations between Australia and Malaysia. Fortunately, the people-to-people links and business investment, particularly from Australia in Malaysia, had remained strong, despite the freeze at head-of-government level. This evidenced the lasting impact of the education opportunities for Asians under the Colombo Plan. There were a larger proportion of Malaysian alumni from universities in Australia than from any other country. This was a Menzies legacy.
My relations with Mahathir remained good until 1998. I had accepted an invitation to visit Malaysia in February that year. Due to the Government’s decision to respond to Bill Clinton’s request that we send SAS units to the Middle East to support American and British action under ‘Operation Desert Fox’, I decided, at the last minute, to cancel the visit. I felt that I should not be out of the country when it was announced that Australian troops would go overseas, potentially into combat. That was the right decision, domestically. I am equally certain, however, that Mahathir was particularly offended. This would have been all the more so given that the troops were being committed to a conflict with another Muslim country. Mahathir was openly critical of our later involvement in Iraq. He also made wild, and untruthful, allegations about the behaviour of Australian troops the following year in East Timor.
Mahathir was incensed at the critical comments I made about the way in which Anwar, his former deputy and heir apparent, on whom Mahathir had savagely turned, had been treated by the Malaysian police and judicial system.
The normal transmission re-established in Brisbane in March 1996, having broken down, was never restored whilst Mahathir remained Prime Minister. Other heads of government found him difficult. His successor, Abdullah Badawi, and I saw a lot of each other whilst Badawi was Deputy Prime Minister. When he assumed the top job we exchanged visits and generally saw to it that at a head-of-government level the historic warmth between our two nations was maintained.
I had arranged to have my first overseas visit, to Indonesia and Japan, in July 1996. Janette being diagnosed with cancer and needing to undergo a major operation later that month, I put off that travel until September. Early visits in a new prime minister’s term have symbolic implications; Indonesia was our nearest neighbour, and Japan had for years been our closest partner in the Asian region, so my priorities were right.
Japan had just installed a new Prime Minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, and the bilateral links were strong. The major challenge was to keep it that way and, as time went by, to reassure the Japanese that we were not flirting too much with the new suitor, China.
Kevin Rudd made a big mistake ignoring Japan during his first overseas visit, particularly as that visit included a stop in China. As a former Australian diplomat, he must be aware that status, face and form matter a good deal in Asian countries, not least Japan. Anyone who cared to listen knew how offended the Japanese had been at this treatment, given the long loyalty of Japan as a customer of Australia, dating back to the late 1950s.
I had met Suharto on several earlier occasions before becoming PM. He had always been a willing interlocutor with senior Australian politicians and had readily agreed to see me, firstly as Treasurer in the Fraser Government and later as both Deputy Leader and Leader of the Opposition.
This visit took place within the old paradigm. East Timor was to be mentioned, but we were not to obsess about it. It was still a highly sensitive topic with the Indonesian leadership. I travelled from the airport to my Jakarta accommodation with the Indonesian Foreign Minister, the wily and experienced Ali Alatas. We identified subjects which might come up at our meeting. He stressed the continuing prickliness about East Timor. The continuation of warm relations between Canberra and Jakarta came first. The tone I sought was businesslike rather than effusive.
The subtext of that first meeting between Suharto and me was that of Indonesia as a nation performing strongly and willing to have good relations with Australia, provided that Australia accepted the character of the Indonesian Government, and that sensitivities such as East Timor were dealt with in an appropriate manner. If so, everything would be fine.
I dwell on the psychology of that meeting because it was the last occasion on which a meeting between the heads of government of the two countries was conducted in such an atmosphere. A year later, when I saw Suharto again, on my way home from a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Edinburgh, Indonesia was in financial crisis, having been battered by the Asian economic meltdown. I came to Jakarta to announce Australian assistance as part of an international bail-out of the Indonesian economy. These economic events dramatically changed Indonesia, the dynamic in the relationship between Australia and our nearest neighbour and, most importantly, ultimately led to Suharto’s removal as president.
During the election campaign Paul Keating had said that Asian leaders would not deal with me as prime minister. Even for someone way behind in the polls, predictions of that kind are always quite foolish.
Nonetheless, some Australian commentators were intent on that Keating prophecy being fulfilled. My every word was analysed. There was a particular brouhaha over the fact that in my speech at the official banquet in my honour in Jakarta I said, ‘Neither do I see Australia as a bridge between Asia and the West, as is sometimes suggested.’ These
words were followed by others which put them in proper context, yet for several days the press wrote of a ‘blunder’. There was also comment over the fact that words I uttered during a speech did not appear in the prepared text of the speech issued to the media. It seemed an utterly inconsequential preoccupation. The Australian media were quickly to learn that I rarely read speeches, let alone read them word for word.
Suharto was grateful for Australia’s help in 1997, but he must have known that the sands were shifting rapidly. Within months of my visit, an era in his country ended, and he was replaced by the excitable, voluble and quite unpredictable B.J. Habibie. My relationship with Habibie was almost totally consumed by the focus on East Timor, dealt with extensively in Chapter 29.
Unexpectedly Habibie was succeeded by Abdurrahman Wahid, known as Gus Dur, an almost totally blind, highly intelligent, Baghdad-educated, Muslim former cleric and scholar. He was the most fluent English speaker of the five Indonesian presidents with whom I dealt (they were all good). Wahid could imitate the Australian accent, having a standard joke that a person should always go to Australia either yesterday or tomorrow. It should never be ‘today’, thus playing on the broad Australian pronunciation of ‘today’, which sounded like ‘to die’.
He was an inveterate traveller, and finally the long drought in visits to Australia by Indonesian presidents was broken when Wahid came to Canberra in June 2001. The last visit had been that of Suharto in 1975. During Wahid’s presidency, our relations with Indonesia trod water. Although our exchanges were polite, there was no real energy. The anti-Australian feeling arising from our role in East Timor lingered.
Indonesia’s fledgling democracy passed its real test in July 2001 with the transfer of power from Wahid to his Vice-president, Megawati Sukarnoputri (the daughter of the first president of the Indonesian republic, Sukarno). The National Assembly voted unanimously to end Wahid’s tenure after Wahid had tried to retain power by declaring a state of emergency and purporting to dissolve parliament. The armed forces, the Supreme Court and the People’s Consultative Assembly all rejected him. They pledged support for the due process newly established after Suharto’s departure. It was a significant event; a change of Indonesian president had occurred with virtually no bloodshed or social unrest. Whatever else might be said about the country, this was a promising sign.
Megawati’s major appeal was her patrimony. She did not prove to be an energetic reformer and, in time, greatly disappointed her supporters. Her presidency covered two highly charged events involving Australia: the Tampa incident and the terrorist attacks in Bali which killed 88 Australians.
Megawati and I spoke to each other more frequently by telephone and, in the wake of the attack, had a common reference point for many of our discussions. We agreed on practical anti-terrorism measures, and cooperation to fight people-smuggling improved. Although improved, the relationship was still held at a distance.
It was the arrival of Dr H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) on the Indonesian political scene, and the close relationship I established with him, which proved the catalyst for the more intense friendship of today. A former general in the Indonesian Armed Forces, SBY was Megawati’s coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs. A Muslim who detested terrorism and understood the need to fight it at every turn, SBY knew the challenge Indonesia faced on both the economic and security fronts. He is a likeable, engaging man.
He represented his President at the commemoration of the first anniversary of the Bali attack on 12 October 2003. He made a passionate speech denouncing terrorism. By then speculation had begun that he would be a candidate for the presidency of Indonesia when a popular ballot for that post was held the following year. His speech was a rallying call to the mainstream of Muslim Indonesia to fight terrorism. He concluded his speech quoting from the Koran, ‘Take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law: thus doth he command you, that ye may learn wisdom.’2
SBY easily won the run-off presidential ballot against Megawati on 20 September 2004, obtaining 60.6 per cent of the valid vote. He was the first-ever Indonesian president elected by popular vote in a truly democratic ballot. It was a landmark for his country. It was also good news for Australia as SBY had genuine warmth towards our country. At the time of his election, one of his sons was studying at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.
SBY’s inauguration as President was scheduled for 20 October 2004, only a few weeks after my re-election as Prime Minister on 9 October. On impulse I indicated that I would attend the inauguration. There had not been an expectation that the inauguration would be an occasion for representation at a head-of-government level, rather at the more understated ambassadorial level. Once my intentions were known, other heads of government from neighbouring countries also decided to go.
Impulse-driven or otherwise, my decision to go plainly touched SBY. To me it was a most important occasion. By dint of the ballot which elected SBY, Indonesia had become the third-largest functioning democracy in the world. He was a man with whom Australia could have not only friendly but highly productive relations. He believed in democracy, the importance of economic growth and foreign investment, and was instinctively pro-Australian. He also wanted to resume better relations with the United States.
SBY also understood that as a moderate Muslim with strong anti-terrorist instincts he carried a heavy responsibility, not only in his own country but in the world Islamic community. I wanted our relations at a head-of-government level to start in a positive way.
After the inauguration ceremony SBY held a brief meeting with visiting heads of government. I assumed the role of spokesman on behalf of all present in congratulating SBY and assuring him and his country of our goodwill and desire to assist. Of itself, that was highly symbolic. The difficult days of late 1999 were firmly behind us.
Just a few months later the overwhelming tragedy of the Boxing Day tsunami which ravaged Indonesia more than any other nation brought our two countries closer together. An estimated 300,000 Indonesians died and countless millions were made homeless. The first physical relief for Indonesians came from units of the Australian military and those of the United States.
Australia’s response was more generous than that of any other country. It included, at $1 billion, our nation’s largest-ever aid package for a specific country. At every level of society, there was an outpouring of support and concern from Australians for what had happened in Indonesia. Our medical assistance teams in Aceh did heroic work. Australian Army engineers were heavily involved in the sweat, dirt and grime of the rescue effort.
I formally announced Australia’s aid package at a donors’ conference convened by SBY in Jakarta on 5–7 January 2005. I had telephoned SBY immediately news of the tsunami came through, offering all the assistance Australia could reasonably muster. I was the first foreign leader to call him, and we remained in constant contact until I saw him in person at the donors’ conference.
SBY knew in advance what I planned to announce. His greeting was warm, emotional and that of someone who was reaching out to a friend at a time of genuine need. There was nothing symbolic or artificial about Australia’s assistance. It was a lot of money, and we both agreed that it should be spent under careful supervision over a measured period so that the maximum benefit could be derived by the Indonesian people.
Out of this terrible natural disaster the opportunity had been taken to help in a thoroughly practical way, thus drawing the two nations even closer together. Australia is building 200 schools across 20 Indonesian provinces. In the space of six months, two deliberate acts of mine helped bridge a wide gulf which had existed for some years.
By the end of 2005 the bilateral relationship with Indonesia had become stronger than at any time in recent memory. The difference with past episodes was that it was built on the surer foundation of it being between two democracies.
It would never be a trouble-free association. Instances of young Australians ensnared in
the tough anti-drug laws of Indonesia, as exemplified by the case of Schapelle Corby, although difficult, were never going to derail the association.
As I was at pains to point out on numerous occasions, Asian countries have tough, anti-drug criminal laws. Young Australians who trafficked or dealt in any way with drugs did so at their own peril in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand. On a number of occasions I literally begged young Australians not to risk their lives and liberty by transgressing the anti-drug codes of neighbouring countries.
As a further sign of warmer relations, Indonesia proved to be a friend at court in Australia’s successful bid to be part of an East Asia summit, comprised of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Burma, Brunei, Cambodia and Vietnam) plus Japan, China, India and Korea. Australia and New Zealand wanted the group expanded to include our two nations. China was lukewarm. We received crucial help from both Japan and Indonesia, and without it we would not have won inclusion in the group.
Early in 2006, when all but one of 43 West Papuan refugees were granted asylum through Australia’s independent assessment process, real tension entered the Indonesian relationship. SBY had telephoned and assured me that the West Papuans would be treated well, if they were returned, and no doubt assumed that I would see to it that this happened. In responding to Indonesian resentment about the asylum decision, the Government overreacted and introduced a measure to change the law designed to ensure that all similar asylum-seekers would, in future, have their claims assessed offshore, thus providing a powerful deterrent.