Australia says ‘no country is more important’ to it than Indonesia. But is this really true?
Australia-Indonesia relations are at their strongest level in 30 years.
So says Anthony Albanese, repeatedly evoking the days of Paul Keating and Indonesia’s late leader Suharto, obliquely transferring this uniquely close bond of the mid-1990s to his own budding friendship with Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s modern-day tough man.
There is a basis for the Prime Minister’s excitement. It’s called the Joint Security Agreement; a vague agreement signed in Jakarta last week against the geopolitical backdrop of a rising, belligerent China and a vengeful United States.
The text states that in case of “adverse difficulties” both countries will “consider measures that can be taken individually or jointly.” Albanese called it “historic”. Prabowo referred to this as “good neighborliness.”
The view of some in Indonesia is that this does not go much further than the 2006 Lombok Treaty and the 2024 Defense Cooperation Agreement; He said it was the Australians who wanted it to be called a treaty because it was scratchier than the word “agreement”.
Despite this, Albanese keeps Prabowo busy and looks south, which is a big deal for an Australian prime minister. Since 1999, when Australia supported East Timor’s independence, bilateral relations have been marked by periods of scandal, indifference and disappointment.
“The government is right to say that bilateral relations with Indonesia are on firmer ground than in the past,” says Susannah Patton, a Southeast Asia expert at the Lowy Institute.
“The relationship, which had previously had its ups and downs, has remained stable for the last 10 years without any major crises.”
However, with two very different neighbors and world views, he says: “It is inevitable that there will be economic crises in the future.”
Critics accuse Prabowo, a former special forces commander once blacklisted by the Americans for human rights abuses, of continuing his predecessor’s “democratic comeback”.
Meanwhile, in Transparency International’s latest corruption perception index published on Tuesday, Indonesia ranked 109th out of a total of 182 countries, falling 10 places since last year. But none of this can bother Alban too much, otherwise he would be unlikely to be able to deal with any Southeast Asian country, let alone the United States.
Trade between the two countries is on the agenda, and although it is developing, there is not much of a boom. Even though Indonesia’s 290 million citizens are right on our doorstep, it has just entered Australia’s top 10 bilateral partners.
Indonesia’s economic fortunes are rising by the lead. It is estimated that it will move from the world’s 17th largest economy to the top five within the next 15 years.
Echoing Keating, Albanese repeated the mantra “No country is more important to Australia” in his post-signing statement last week.
So is this really true? Professor Marcus Mietzner from the ANU says this is not proven in statistics.
“Beneath the enthusiastic rhetoric, economic relations remain structurally underdeveloped,” he says. Indonesian literacy in Australia is at its lowest level in decades, he says.
“Albanese and Prabowo do a good job of maintaining the daily and ceremonial side of the relationship and they deserve praise for that.
“But the fundamental issues – where and what money is spent on – are best reflected in the substance of trade, investment and defense relationships, which for Australia remain intertwined with the US, not Indonesia.”
The signing comes months after Australia formalized the Pukpuk Treaty (mutual defense agreement) with Papua New Guinea; Although this agreement is unlikely, it could lead to problems with Indonesia.
The simmering conflict between the Indonesian military and separatists just over the porous PNG border came into the public eye this week when Free Papua Movement rebels attacked the convoy of miner PT Freeport, killing an Indonesian soldier, according to the Indonesian government.
Separately, an Indonesian pilot and a co-pilot were this week chased into the jungle and killed by unidentified gunmen in Papua, just 100 kilometers from Australia’s newest ally. Conflicts involving the Indonesian military are likely to spread to PNG.
When asked about such a scenario at a press conference in Jakarta last week, Albanese changed his mind, saying Australia respected the sovereignty of both Indonesia and PNG.
In some ways, we won’t truly know the value of the deal until a crisis occurs.
Susannah Patton, Southeast Asia expert at the Lowy Institute
The palace tour was Albanese’s second since Prabowo took office in October 2024, and the welcome ceremony was another grand and expensive gesture reflecting the leaders’ closeness.
Prabowo seems to have a real affection for Australia. As a young man he was educated at Duntroon in Canberra. He refers to the boycott of Dutch ships imposed by Australian docks in 1945 during Indonesia’s struggle for independence.
When he was in Sydney last year, Indonesian media were excited when he called his Australian counterpart “Albo”.
Still, Australia shouldn’t feel too special about love. Unlike previous president Joko Widodo, Prabowo is a globetrotter who is pushing the boundaries of Indonesia’s tradition of non-alignment. He likes the saying “1000 friends are too few, one enemy is too many” and is developing deeper ties with Australia, but also with countries such as Russia and China.
But the friend Prabowo really wants to add to his list is Donald Trump. Prabowo, who has been trying to curry favor with the US president for more than a year and with the tax deal hanging over his head, recruited Indonesia to Trump’s Peace Board, a move that caused trouble at home for powerful Islamist groups who see the initiative as a tool for Israel’s aims in Gaza.
This week Indonesia said it could send up to 8,000 peacekeepers to Gaza, the only country to put forward that number since the board was established last month. Prabowo will attend his first meeting in Washington DC on February 19. Maybe he will finally sit down with Trump.
Prabowo’s relationship with Albanese is part of a broader effort to raise Indonesia’s weight to a level befitting the world’s third-largest democracy.
Exactly how the new agreement, which is not an alliance with Australia, might play out in real-world scenarios is not explained in the text. This is intentional so that no country is locked into a move it will regret.
Lowy’s Patton says he has a “fragile foundation” on the Indonesian side because he comes from top to bottom with Prabowo (as is his style) and lacks strong support from the bureaucracy.
“This may limit efforts to use the agreement to catalyze other cooperation, but it is still better to have the agreement than not to have it,” he says.
He says he could argue that if there were a crisis in Taiwan or the South China Sea, Australia should be at the forefront with Indonesia to discuss a common response.
“Even if we accept that Indonesia is unlikely to respond to these crises in the same way as Australia, I think this is an important consideration… because there is a risk that Indonesia could make decisions that would be adverse to Australian or US interests,” he says.
“In some ways, we won’t really know the value of the deal until a crisis occurs.”
When put together in terms of geography and timing, the leftist raised by a single mother in Sydney council flats and the podium-pumping military man are solid. At least for now.
Zach Hope is a Southeast Asia correspondent. He is a former reporter for the Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
