From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Thursday, May 15th. In this time of political and economic chaos, we arguably need our allies more than ever. So let's cut to Tuesday evening, when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew
to Indonesia to meet its president, Prabowo Subianto. It was notable Albanese's first overseas trip since being re-elected, but recent waves of protest against Subianto have erupted in the country amidst fears that the president is taking Indonesia back to its authoritarian past. Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher on what sort of ally Anthony Albanese has in Indonesia's leader Prabowo Subianto. Okay, Peter. Tell me about the significance
of Anthony Albanese making a trip to Indonesia yesterday. We know this was his first overseas stop after being re-elected as prime minister. So is this something that makes the ears of leaders around the world prick up?
Well, in one way, no, because it's the most obvious and natural thing in the world to do. And he's not the first prime minister to make his first trip to Jakarta, because it's really our only strategically significant neighbour. It's a mighty country of nearly 300 million people, an enormous arc of archipelagic islands that stretch over a couple of thousands of kilometres across all our northern approaches. So it's it's a hugely important country for us, and it's
natural that you'd visit your closest and most important neighbour. Sorry. New Zealand.
Yeah. Fair.
Um, but in another sense, it does make other leaders ears prick up, because it's a country that China and Russia both want to extend their influence over. And there's a competition afoot, and Australia is on the other side
of that competition. Obviously we want to we want to keep relations with Indonesia as solid as possible to protect not only only our economic, but also, critically, our strategic future and to prevent Indonesia falling too closely into the orbit of either China or Russia, which are obviously predator states. Russia just wants to throw its weight around and do as much damage as possible in the world. But China is larger, smarter and longer term and wants to dominate
the world. So this is why Indonesia is such a vital threshold and swing state and it's tradition all during the Cold War, all during the post-war period and until now is to be a non-aligned nation. It was actually one of the co-founders with India of the Non-Aligned movement, which had its first meeting in the city of Bandung
in Indonesia. and this was the group of countries that refused to take sides overtly with either the Americans or the Soviet Union, and they still see that as their central defining characteristic in the modern world.
That's really interesting. I had never heard that before. And if this country is so important to us, obviously crucial to that is who's leading it. So can you please tell us about Indonesia's president Prabowo Subianto?
Prabowo is, I think, an absolutely fascinating figure. For years, he was on an unofficial blacklist and refused permission to travel to Australia. The Americans being, you know, a little bit more obvious about things, actually put him on a blacklist and refused to give him a visa for many years. And now he's the president of the world's third most populous democracy. So what's happened? Um, he was born with
Javanese royal blood in his veins. Was, uh, allowed to marry one of the daughters of the long ruling dictator of Indonesia. Suharto and Suharto, then made him the head of the special forces in Indonesia called Kopassus, which is
at any time an important and powerful job. But for Suharto, he wanted Prabowo doing this job to be his political enforcer, to the point where Prabowo was suspected of and reported to have committed all sorts of human rights abuses, quashing dissidents, torturing, and all the rest of it to protect Suharto's regime. And that's the reason that ultimately he was banned from visiting Australia and the US. But in the meantime. I mean, here's an extraordinary anecdote that tells you a lot about this.
This man, as the head of Indonesian special forces, as the Suharto regime is toppling and literally in its last days, it was the last 2 or 3 days it was reported that Prabowo went to see his father in law in the presidential palace, the Istana merdeka, which means a freedom palace in in Jakarta. But the fascinating detail is that the palace staff would not let Prabowo in to see his father in law, the dictator Suharto, until he removed his sidearm and they had an argument about it. Now,
why would that be? Evidently, they feared that he was there not to consult or help his father in law, but to murder him and seize power through a coup. Wow. In the dying days of his father in law's regime. So this is paints a picture of a pretty ruthless and pretty opportunistic sort of character. After those years, Indonesia
became democratic. Thank goodness for that. Prabowo had several cracks at the presidency until finally last year, he broke through not as a military strongman because he had campaigned rather colourfully, riding a white stallion. That's right. And giving these xenophobic tirades to mobs in arenas. And it was quite a quite a scene, but that didn't work for him. So at the last election, he, he transformed himself into what was called Cute grandpa. He adopted the Donald Trump dance moves.
He went crazy on TikTok and a younger generation. And there's a huge number of Indonesia is a very young country demographically who didn't know about his years. And they were last century as this dangerous alleged human rights violator just fell in love with cute grandpa. And now he's president.
And we know that when he was elected last year, he won in a landslide election victory. And it was with the backing of his predecessor, Joko Widodo, who I know we've spoken about. He was enormously popular, and I believe at the time he had said that he was going to carry on with, uh, jokowi's works. Like, what sort of president has he become after this really quite fascinating transformation? At least a fascinating one from the outside. I don't know what's happening on the inside.
Yes. Well, one thing that he brought into into being was his central campaign promise to the people of Indonesia, which is a free daily meals program for every school pupil in the country and for nursing and pregnant mothers. And the idea was, firstly, it's obviously an anti-poverty measure because Indonesia was making solid gains against poverty until the Covid pandemic, which really set it back. And there's been a big rise in stunting of children's growth, which has
become a real national scandal. So Prabowo said, I'm going to give free school meals and to and to mums, young mums, pregnant, pregnant and nursing mums to overcome this problem, which is more than 80 million people to get food to daily. But it's happening, it's happening, it's started, it's well advanced. But if you think about the scale of 80 million people daily on a government handout of of food in a in a country that's made up of
more than 10,000 islands. I mean, even just conducting an election there is difficult enough, much less a daily food program. It's extraordinary. The problem, the real problem with it is the cost. And this this has created all sorts of problems because they've cut funding for everything else to fund a thing. This program is nearly 30 billion USD, 50 billion AUD a year.
Well, this gets us to my next question, because you've written that he is enormously popular right now. But at the same time, you've written about nationwide protests against Prabowo. So tell us what sparked them.
Yes, he is very popular, and partly it's because he's new. He only took power in October, and partly because this food program is what he promised. And it is a popular thing. But because they've had to cut money from a whole bunch of other areas of government outlay, it's it's created a big concern. And the protest movement that you've referenced, it's led by university students. The protest movement
is called Dark Indonesia. And it's called Dark Indonesia. In juxtaposition to Prabowo's stated vision for the future of Indonesia, which he calls Golden Indonesia, and his vision of Golden Indonesia is to turn it into a fully developed country in 20 years a democratic, rich, powerful country in 20 years.
But the student protesters have said no. What we see coming is dark Indonesia, and one of the the biggest reasons that they're on the streets, and this started in February and it's still rolling on sporadically, is the cuts to education funding, which affected both schools and universities. And the university protest movement is saying you, Prabowo, are trying to crush and extinguish education in this country and knowledge. But at the same time, we think you're making moves
to restore the power of the military. And we fear that you're taking Indonesia back to being a military dictatorship.
We'll be right back. Well, tell me about this, because we know that Prabowo's decision to widen the scope of the military's involvement in civilian affairs, it really has aroused deep fears within the country. Right. So tell us what he has done.
Well, on the symbolic level. He gave his new cabinet a bit of a jolt at the beginning of the term by taking them all, making them wear combat fatigues and taking them all on a three day military boot camp. I don't know how the Australian cabinet would go if they were all put in fatigues and sent on a three day boot camp.
I mean, that's kind of got XI Jinping vibes, doesn't it?
It does. It's got tough guy, military, militaristic sort of vibes. But the more substantial stuff is, for example, the food program that we talked about, some of that is being carried out, the food delivered every day by the military. And the protest movement is saying, well, hang on, you shouldn't be using the military for civil duties like that. More troublingly, though, is his, uh, he has created a law to open up more civilian jobs at senior levels
in the government, to the army, to active duty military officers. Now, that was that was the case under Suharto. One of the Post-suharto reforms was to stop that, to put in place a bunch of guardrails, of which this is an important one, to stop the military coming back into power and running the country. So the concern is that this is the thin edge of the wedge, and that he's going to continue to reinstall the military at the heart of the government.
And it is scary, isn't it? I think I read somewhere, probably in your piece that, you know, in doing so, in clearing the way for military officers to fill civilian positions, we're talking about, you know, for instance, positions in the attorney general's office. I mean, that's clearly something of a terrifying proposition if the country or others are concerned about. Some backslide into the days of Suharto and dictatorship.
Yes. And that fear is really at the center of Indonesia's consciousness is that, you know, we are we are still a fairly fresh democracy. We are a young country, and we haven't yet really cemented our democratic structures, natures and habits. So they're very sensitive to it. And look around the world. We're into an era of tough guy dictators and would be dictators and autocrats. So it's it's a it's a reasonable fear. There's also been a resurgence
of the traditional Indonesian problem of corruption under Prabowo. The, the major media organization in Indonesia named tempo, has been doing lots of investigative reporting, showing that, among other things, Prabowo's family and cronies are in in powerful positions controlling the food program rollout and and other programs.
Well, I guess this brings us back to Albaneses trip to Indonesia. So do we know what our Prime Minister has spoken to Prabowo about, or still plans to speak to him about? Do we know what the goal with this visit is, and how much Albanese is likely to achieve?
Well, we know what they've talked about. On the initial phone call, when Prabowo phoned Albanese to congratulate him on his re-election as prime minister because without Albanese knowing, Prabowo filmed it and put it put the video up in public for everybody to see, which was pretty funny.
I like to congratulate you on your great victory. I was so happy. I was so happy. I was so happy.
I want Indonesia to be my first visit.
Great honor, great honor. Good. Yes. Yes, yes.
It's an unbreakable.
Bond. Right, right, right.
So Albanese was shocked when his staff told him. Hey, did you know?
And why would he have done that? What was the goal there from Prabowo?
He likes to show himself off to the Indonesian people as being a big man, a guy that other leaders want to talk to. Fortunately for Albanese, it was just a pretty backslapping, convivial phone call. Yeah, there was a slight twinge of embarrassment because it caught Albanese saying to Prabowo, now, can I come to Indonesia? Do you want to invite me? Rather than waiting to be invited? But Prabowo said, oh, of course, you know. And they do have a good,
good personal relationship. Those two on the agenda are a few things. What Prabowo wants most of all is what his predecessor wanted. Most of all, Jokowi also wanted to get Indonesia out of the middle income trap. so-called, and make it get it on the path to being a wealthy country. That's their primary aim. And so Albanese goes there to talk to, and I did ask Albanese about
this before he travelled, actually. Uh, Albanese is going there to talk principally about trade and investment and the economic relationship. And that's smart because it's what Prabowo most wants. It's also the times, because of the Trump disruption to global trade,
but overshadowing all of that. And I'm not sure how blatantly they'll talk about it, is the China and Russia factor and the fact that they want to win Indonesia over to to their team, to the predator Predators team against Australia's interests.
Okay. But then we've got the news just in the last couple of days that China and the US have de-escalated their trade war. They've both dropped a lot of the tariffs that they'd put on each other. So does that change the calculations of how much we need Indonesia I guess for for trade or not. Like what impact does that have on us?
Well, it's helpful if the tariff war between the US and China doesn't occur. It's helpful for everybody in the world because it's one of the world's biggest two way trade flows. And to to cut it off. And those tariffs were so punitively eye wateringly high that effectively it was going to kill just about all trade between the
US and China. So for that not to happen is a positive for the world economy, because it was expected to send the world economy into a downturn and the US into recession, and China's already struggling to maintain its growth. It's it's in economic trouble. But that global effect is what would have hurt Australia most. If that's not happening, that's a good thing. However, the the Tony and 90 day suspension of the US-China tariffs on each other while
they try to negotiate something. And so far, Trump has failed to successfully negotiate any of the things that he promised. So in that in that circumstance, yes, Australia in fact, government position for years in multiple prime ministers has been. This trade relationship with Indonesia is really undercooked. It's a tiny amount of of trade relative to the size of the two economies. We need to do more. And there's a strategy for that. Government's been pursuing for a couple
of years. It hasn't really produced much of value. But this is a new opportunity. Partly thanks to Donald Trump to revive or to at least create a larger two way trade flow.
Okay, Peter, so just to wrap up, I did want to ask you, you know, there's fears within Indonesia and I guess outside of it as well, that Prabowo is eroding freedoms, perhaps even veering into authoritarianism. Does that lead this to be something dangerous politically for Albanese to increase trade with such a regime?
I suppose it's always a risk. But, you know, Samantha, we've had no trouble expanding trade with autocrats. China is our largest trading partner. Vietnam is another. And the government has been working hard to increase trade and political relations
with Vietnam. So really, the reason that Albanese wants to improve the trading and general relationship is first to directly advance Australia's interests in the short run, but second, to help Indonesia grow into the mode of a prosperous democratic nation and not to be captured by the fears that the protesters in the dark Indonesia movement are imagining.
So perhaps even help in some way to protect the country from going to becoming a dictatorship.
Exactly. To give Jakarta choices. To give it options. So that it doesn't see its future tied up only with China or only with Russia, and that it continues to have its options open and to cooperate with Australia. Australia signed its first really significant defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia
just last year under Jokowi. So to keep those options open so it doesn't become captive of a dictatorship to the north is a critical equity for Australia, and that's the overarching aim of what Albanese is doing.
Well, thank you so much, Peter. As always.
A pleasure, Samantha.
For your time. Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself and Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to
support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date, sign up to our Morningedition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.