Teman-teman yang baik
Forwarded message from Wa-indon follows.
Leonie
From:
wa-indon-bounces@central.murdoch.edu.au [mailto:wa-indon-bounces@central.murdoch.edu.au]
On Behalf Of David T. Hill
Sent: Thursday, 3 November 2005
11:27 AM
To: wa-indon@murdoch.edu.au
Subject: [Wa-indon] Indonesia
Article in WEST AUSTRALIAN
Members may be interested in this article published in this morning's
WEST AUSTRALIAN.
regards,
David.
.............
The West Australian,
3 November 2005, p.14
Mixed signals go out on ties with Jakarta
Canberra has
ignored advice that Indonesian studies be given strategic priority, says David
Hill.
It is a measure of the complexity of Australia’s
relationship with Indonesia
that the most comprehensive recent government report on it ignores the vexed
issued of fishing rights.
Between August 2002 and early 2004 the Commonwealth Parliament’s Joint
Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade considered 124 written
submissions and heard from nearly 150 witnesses. Its report, ‘Near
Neighbours – Good Neighbours: An Inquiry into Australia’s
Relationship with Indonesia’,
was tabled in parliament in May 2004.
The 251-page report languished for 16 months until Minister for Foreign
Affairs, Alexander Downer, responded to its 28 recommendations last September
8.
Despite the seasonal arrival of Indonesian boats, the tussle over fishing zones
is a relatively minor component in Australia’s most
multi-facetted international relationship.
While such omissions from the Report are regrettable, far more disappointing is
the government’s failure to act decisively on many major recommendations.
The government generally endorses recommendations which have modest financial
implications, such as ‘strengthening of the bilateral relationship
through encouraging the establishment of links between local regions in Australia and Indonesia’.
On some issues, there has been good progress. After a deplorable decline in
Australian aid to Indonesia
between 1993- 2003 (from $130 million to $121 million per annum), the
government highlights a pre-tsunami increase for 2004-5 to $160 million.
Commitments following the tsunami have raised Australia
from Indonesia’s
fourth largest bilateral source of financial support to third place (after Japan and Germany).
Prevailing concerns about terrorism dominate the report and the
government’s response. Closer relations between the armed forces is seen
as crucial in a regional strategy against terrorism. The Government’s
most extensive response to a single recommendation detailed the rebuilding of
its defence relationship with Indonesia,
ruptured over East Timor in 1999.
Several submissions and witnesses urged the Committee to avoid links with the
infamous Kopassus (Special Forces Corps), tarnished by serious human rights
abuses throughout Indonesia.
But pressure to collaborate on counter-terrorism has out-weighed concerns about
human rights. Kopassus will restart joint training with the SAS at Swanbourne,
with a preparatory visit to Perth
expected this month.
The report placed major emphasis on educational links with Indonesia. It
recommended an ‘enhanced’ program to provide a ‘substantial
package of scholarships’ for Indonesian students. The Government noted a
10% increase in education and training assistance to Indonesia between 2002-3 and
2004-5. Such educational assistance is a valuable long-term investment,
creating substantial goodwill in Indonesia.
Included are new programs to assist ‘mainstream Islamic schools’ in
Indonesia, with
‘particular focus on in-service training of teachers’, designed to
‘help building in Indonesia
a better understanding of Australia’.
However, contrary to Recommendation 17, the government has declined to increase
support for the Australia Indonesia Institute (AII), the main agency funding
people-to-people social and cultural links with Indonesia.
The Government sidestepped the key recommendation that Indonesian Studies be
designated a strategic national priority by both the Australian Research
Council, which funds university research, and the Department of Education,
Science and Training, which funds teaching.
Instead, research priorities will not be reviewed until ‘around 2006-07
when the Government will consider whether the existing priorities and goals
should be amended or enhanced’. This provides nothing for universities
striving to strengthen research and teaching of Indonesia-related subjects.
The Commonwealth has chosen to leave strategic educational planning to the whim
of the market. It is a grave miscalculation.
The Committee recommended that the National Asian Languages and Studies in
Australian Schools (NALSAS) program, which invested over $200 million from 1994
to 2002, be restored. NALSAS provided crucial funding for Asian languages,
including Indonesian, throughout the school system.
In WA schools, enrolments in Indonesian increased dramatically from about 2,300
in 1993 to nearly 40,000 in 2003. The 2002 closure of NALSAS will have a
knock-on effect causing enrolments to decline.
The Government implies that NALSAS has been superseded by a $110 million
allocation over four years for a School Languages Program to improve Asian,
European and Indigenous languages, plus about $10 million for four other
limited initiatives.
Less than $1.50 an Australian a year for support across all languages, this
will do little to enhance Australia’s
competence in Indonesian.
Instead of taking the initiative, the Commonwealth has fobbed off
responsibility to state governments ‘to ensure languages and studies of Asia programmes in their schools are adequately
funded’.
As Indonesia
struggles on its path to democratisation, the coalition has taken some major
steps to broaden and deepen the relationship. But its response to the
parliamentary report is patchy, only exposing how much more needs to be done.
……………………….
David Hill is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies
and Fellow of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University.
....................................................................................
Professor David T. Hill
Chair of Southeast Asian Studies
School of Social Sciences and Humanities
(Education & Humanities
Building, Room 2.11)
Division of Arts
MURDOCH UNIVERSITY WA 6150
AUSTRALIA
tel: (+61-8) 9360 2412 (direct); 9360 2504 (School office)
fax: (+61-8) 9360 6575
