Debate continues over Australian handling of Oceanic Viking
Updated
There has been intense debate in Australia over how Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government handled the month-long saga of the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who spent a month moored off Indonesia on the Australian ship, the Oceanic Viking.
The Sri Lankans have all now disembarked and are being processed by the UN, but tempers on both sides of Australian politics are still running high. The government's critics insist the incident has soured bilateral ties with Jakarta, especially after Indonesia's president cancelled this weekend's trip to Australia, East Timor and Papua.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra Correspondent
Speakers: Haryadi Wiryawan, associate professor and chair of international relations at the University of Indonesia; Professor Tim Lindsey, from the Asia Law Centre at the University of Melbourne
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MOTTRAM: The idea of the diplomatic snub greatly excites the Australian media, always closely watching for signs a neighbour has taken offence at an aspect of Australian policy. There's no doubt the issue of the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking moored of Tanjung Pinang for the past month has been deeply sensitive. But some observers reject bold headlines in Australia about a rift in Australia-Indonesia relations over the issue. Haryadi Wiryawan is associate professor and chair of international relations at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. He says he believes the relationship remains stable.
HARYADI: The immigrants are not that big issue. Its more an issue for Australia than Indonesia.
MOTTRAM: Australian Indonesia expert, Professor Tim Lindsey, from the Asia Law Centre at the University of Melbourne agrees.
LINDSEY: Whilst there may have been issues between Indonesia's department of foreign affairs and Australia in working out a solution about what to do with the Sri Lankans on the Oceanic Viking and took up a huge amount of attention in the Australian media and Australian Parliament, that was simply not the case in Indonesia. It normally wouldn't be. These issues are just not national significance issue in Indonesia, whatever they may be in Australia.
MOTTRAM: Professor Haryadi Wiryawan says the issue of asylum seeker movements does need more discussion between the two countries, and more assistance to Indonesia, with its weak navy, massive territorial waters and corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. But he says President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono believes in strong relations with Australia for many reasons, one of them being Indonesia's concern about the rise of China.
HARYADI: The President also believes that Australia being part of this regional arrangement now, the ASEAN+6 is still a very strong partner to counter China in economic field.
MOTTRAM: Critics of the Rudd government say key evidence of Indonesia's displeasure with Australia is in the cancellation of President Yudhoyono's visit this weekend to Australia - as well as to Papua and East Timor. Tim Lindsey says it's got nothing to do with asylum seekers and everything to do with the enormity of the corruption scandal engulfing Indonesia's leader, a scandal that's been dubbed Indonesia's Watergate, in reference to the fall of former US President Richard Nixon. Tim Lindsey again.
LINDSEY: He is implicated in a multi-agency political scandal and coverup in which wire taps exist in which he is accused of supporting, he's named in fact by conspirators, as supporing a multi-agency plot against the anti corruption commission. Now that rates way higher than any issue about how to deal with asylum seekers as far as anyone in government in Indonesia counts.
MOTTRAM: What about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's approach to the diplomacy over this, was there any sense as far as you understand it that Rudd was seen as treating Indonesia as somehow second class and easy to buy off?
LINDSEY: I think we need to understand here that this has really got nothing to do with the asylum seeker issue and everything to do with a President who ran for election on an anti-corruption platform now facing allegations that he is trying to wipe out the country's first and only ever successful anti-corruption commission or at least to allow it to happen.
MOTTRAM: Tim Lindsey says the relationship is broad and deep, politically and institutionally, though Haryadi Wiryawan notes there is another different question in the minds of some. He says some of Indonesia's generals are wary of Australia's plans for extensive new military procurements.
HARYADI: Some of them will think that Australia has gone too far by planning to buy those more sophisticated F-35 war plans and other military equipment.
MOTTRAM: It's here, Professor Haryadi says, that Australia must explain itself, but even that appears not be jeopardising bilateral ties in the terms some commentators are claiming.
