Meanwhile every media outlet in Australia, it seemed, was seeking clarification on whether Indonesia would accept the return of asylum seeker boats that had been intercepted in Australian waters.
When asked about the Coalition policy, Natalegawa, who received a doctorate of philosophy in international relations from ANU in 1993, has often maintained Indonesia would work with whatever government won office at the next federal election.
When the matter was raised by Channel Ten on Monday night, he responded: “If I was asked whether we support or not support the 'push back the boats' policy…such a policy would constitute a unilateral type of measure that we do not support”.
The remark prompted Natalegawa's Australian counterpart, Senator Bob Carr, to conclude he had made it “very, very clear” that Indonesia would not accept “the pointing of boats back towards Indonesian waters”.
But according to an ANU Indonesia expert, the topic just doesn't wash with our northern neighbours.
The truth of the matter, says Dr Ross Tapsell from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, is that the asylum seeker debate just isn't big news in Indonesia.
“We often think that the issues which are of pressing importance to us are, or should be, of pressing importance to Indonesia,” he said.
“Frankly, that's not the case.”
As Tapsell points out, the effect of forest fires in Sumatra on neighboring Singapore and Malaysia makes news headlines in Indonesia – Australia's dilemma with irregular boat arrivals doesn't.
He believes if Australia were truly interested in pursuing a close relationship with Indonesia, it would commit to working with the nation on a range of issues, including climate change, China's position in the region, and on the Coalition's reverse Colombo plan, where more Australian students will be sent to Asian universities.
A recent 25-page federal government report on where Australia wants its relationship with Indonesia to be in 2025 recognises the close Asian neighbour as “an emerging global player”.
But Jakarta Post chief editor Meidyatama Suryodiningrat slammed the “well laid out, readable text” as “a quick list of remedies that do little to address fundamental problems that will colour the relationship”.
So accessible was the content, “one would have thought it was authored by a production house, or a McKinsey-style consultant, rather than bureaucrats,” he said.
By nature, Meidyatama maintained Indonesians were not suspicious of Australia “in the same way Australians were towards Indonesia.”
“As long as Australia retains a security posture which remains “American” in its strategic outlook, there will only be amity with reservation between the two nations,” he said.
As the world's largest archipelago state, ANU Southeast Asia expert Professor Hal Hill argues Indonesia doesn't have the capacity to monitor, let alone regulate irregular movements of people through its 17,000 islands.
“The government also has to worry about the welfare of the estimated half a million Indonesian citizens working illegally in Malaysia and several million working in some of the world's troubled spots, including the Middle East,” said Hill.
“Why, most Indonesians ask, does wealthy and 'empty' Australia worry so much about a few thousand hapless refugees who pass through Indonesia on the way here?”
He recommends the two countries acknowledge similarities they share, including the fact that both undertook major economic liberalisation in the 1980s, after decades of looking inwards.
“We are both commodity exporters. We both worry over how to manage China's commercial embrace,” he said.
He acknowledged closer inter-governmental relations were being achieved, through Australia extending a generous scholarship program to Indonesians, allowing it to be the largest offshore tertiary education provider for private Indonesian students.
“We can build on these powerful common interests, as we have in the past, through productive joint initiatives in regional commercial architecture and diplomacy, which can anchor our broader Asian engagement,” said Hill.
But the vision would only work, if Australia's leaders moved beyond the “narrow domestically driven transactional politics” it was framed by.
Dr Marty Natalegawa was in Australia this week to receive an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University.
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