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History of Australian ties to Indonesia

By Tony Burke

Paul Keating defined it clearly when in 1994 he declared, "No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete"'. He also argued that "what all Australians need to understand" was "that the emergence of the New Order government of President Suharto, and the stability and prosperity which his government has brought to the sprawling archipelago to our north, was the single most beneficial strategic development to have affected Australia and its region in the past thirty years".

This echoed a comment Gough Whitlam made in 1967 when he expressed relief that "If the coup of 18 months ago had succeeded, as it nearly did, we would have had a country of 100 million dominated by communists on our border. We can only imagine the additional and crippling sums we would now be spending on defence".

Its quite clear from this that Australia was particularly grateful to Suharto for his role in removing Sukarno, Indonesia's founding president, and destroying the left in Indonesia with the massacres of 1965-66. In Australian foreign policy newspeak this is called "stabilising" Indonesia. In 1966, Harold Holt was quoted as saying that "with 500,000 to one million communist sympathisers knocked off, I think it is safe to say a reorientation has taken place".

Australia was well aware of the massacres. There were three Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) staff active in Jakarta at the time, and most probably the CIA relied heavily on their reporting. Similarly Australia's close links with the US would have meant that the Australian government understood -- and were perhaps even supportive of -- their desire for the killings to continue. ASIS also provided cover and travel for US operatives. Former US Ambassador to Australia Ed Clark praised Australia for helping the US "to take a hundred million people away from the communists, by doing everything that they could to help overthrow the Sukarno government".

Australian foreign minister Paul Hasluck visited Indonesia to meet Suharto three times between August 1966 and January 1968, before Suharto's formal appointment as acting President. The Australian government also quickly provided economic aid, mainly for infrastructure projects such as telecommunications, ports and road construction, which would facilitate foreign investment and trade rather than directly alleviate poverty. Much of this aid was tied to the import of Australian products. Australia also trained large numbers of Indonesian students who would return to work in the bureaucracy or in the corporate sector.

Australia provides military equipment

By 1970, Indonesia was Australia's largest aid recipient. The Australian government also began a military aid program, supplying Sabre jets to Indonesia and army surveying teams which mapped Sumatra and Kalimantan (which would have assisted the territorial operations of the Indonesian army. Australian army survey teams later mapped large areas of West Papua as well.)

In 1972 William McMahon and Doug Anthony personally thanked Suharto who was visiting Australia for his role as Kostrad commander in October 1965, which put him in a "decisive position" to influence the course of events. In Indonesia in 1973, Whitlam argued that Suharto had brought "peace and development" to Indonesia, and that he had fully restored "the principles of harmony and justice, democracy and freedom embodied in [the] constitution of 1945". At the time there were still more than 100,000 political prisoners being held by the regime -- yet Australia was more concerned with the reopening of the Indonesian economy to western corporations.

Australian complicity in the East Timor invasion

Australia was complicit in Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. In September 1974 Whitlam told Suharto that an independent East Timor might be "an unviable state" and a "potential threat to the stability of the area". While Australian pressure may have averted an early invasion in 1975, Australian officials, like Richard Woolcott, argued as the year wore on that we should show understanding to any Indonesian moves. This culminated in the notorious cable where he argued that negotiating over the seabed oil resources of the Timor Gap would be easier with Indonesia than with Portugal or the East Timorese. He wrote, " I know am advocating a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but this is what national interest and foreign policy is all about". Later, after having discussions with General Benny Murdani -- who was co-ordinating the military aspects of the operation -- Woolcott cabled Canberra that Murdani had promised him at least two hour's notice of an invasion.

While the Fraser caretaker government publicly condemned the invasion and voted in the UN against Indonesia, the policy was largely two faced. While conducting research in Indonesia late 1996 and early 1997, the author, Tony Burke spoke to the former Indonesian foreign Minister, Dr Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, who confirmed that behind the scenes Australian officials were showing support for Indonesia's position. In any case Fraser met Suharto in October 1976 (less than a year after the invasion) and this was closely preceded by the seizure of the radio transmitter in Darwin which Timor support groups were using to communicate with the resistance.

Since 1976 the health of the bilateral relationship with Indonesia has hinged on how much "understanding" Australia has shown on East Timor, and something that has become starkly apparent in the negotiations over the Timor Gap Treaty. In 1978 Fraser offered de facto recognition of the annexation, which was made legal in 1979. In fact Indonesia made this a condition for negotiations to start. Talks were suspended in 1981, and only began again in 1985 after then foreign minister Bill Hayden ensured the removal of East Timorese self-determination from the Australian Labor Party platform. It is significant that in this period (when the talks were suspended) two major Indonesian military offensives in Timor, with reports of massacres, bombings and systematic human rights violations took place. Australian government officials have argued that once the treaty was signed in 1989 -- when there was another upsurge of resistance and student activity -- it played a crucial role in stabilising the bilateral relationship from political upheavals. Since then levels of trade and foreign investment have increased, and there's been a dramatic increase in defence co-operation. Australia was sued by Portugal in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the treaty, but the ICJ was unable to rule because Indonesia would not recognise its authority. Australia's role in West Papua

Australia played a similar role in Indonesia's other major insurgency operations in West Papua. The Australian army helped map large parts of it (which would have assisted ABRI no end), and in 1985 Hayden pressured the PNG government to force the repatriation of many of the 10,000 West Papuan refugees that had fled across the border.

While there are many thousands of Timorese in Australia, the Australian government has consistently refused to accept West Papuans in any number. There have also been reports that the Australian SAS has trained members of the PNG Defence Forces to capture, interrogate and possibly even kill West Papua independence fighters.

This item was originally prepared as a talk which was presented to the 1997 ASIET national conference.