'Personal touch' on display at Aussie PM's return visit to Indonesia

The Star

16-05-2025

JAKARTA: President Prabowo Subianto on Thursday (May 15) threw a festive reception to welcome Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese back to the State Palace in Jakarta, marking their first official meeting following the latter's second-term inauguration just two days prior.
Keen observers saw the meeting as a promising sign of continued rapport between the two countries' leaders, which has defined the tone of bilateral relations for the better part of a decade.
However, as with any changing of the guard, there is also no easy guarantee of future political synergy, they warned.
In a momentous gesture symbolising Canberra's continued emphasis on its relationship with Jakarta, Albanese once again chose Indonesia as his first international destination, honouring prevailing diplomatic custom after winning this month's federal election by a landslide.
Prabowo welcomed his arrival to the State Palace on Thursday morning with a grand procession involving a military motorbike convoy, a guard of honour, nearly six dozen cavalrymen on standby and 200 secondary school students waving the flags of the two countries.
Following the ceremony, Prabowo and Albanese held a private tete-a-tete centring on strengthening cooperation in defence, digital technology, energy transition, education and the green economy, according to an official statement from the Palace.
'It is a great honour for Indonesia to receive the maiden visit of PM Albanese just one day after his inauguration,' Prabowo said in a joint press conference following the meeting.
'Australia and Indonesia are fated to be neighbours, and good neighbours will help each other during times of difficulties. I am personally determined to keep good relations [...], and we are grateful that Australia sees us as its close friend,' he said.
Albanese, meanwhile, highlighted his view that the partnership between the two countries must 'match the scale of the growth and transformation that is underway' in both Indonesia and the region at large, a view that he said drove him to make the same choice to visit nearly three years ago.
'No relationship is more important to Australia than this one, and no nation is more important to the prosperity, security and stability of the Indo-Pacific than Indonesia,' Albanese asserted.
In 2022, Albanese made it clear for the first time in years that his administration would put Indonesia at the top of Australia's foreign policy priority list, visiting then-president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo in Bogor, West Java, and sharing moments he described at the time as 'heartfelt'.
And while analysts will argue that there was some blowback when the PM failed to show up at Prabowo's inauguration last October, the personal touch between the nations' two leaders had also become a defining feature of contemporary Indonesia-Australia relations.
Indonesia-oriented diplomacy was not always a given for Australia, given Canberra's dynamic domestic political landscape and its 'revolving-door' of leaders that have often tested bilateral ties.
In 2013, for example, tensions were high when then-prime minister Tony Abbott's spying on president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was exposed by Australian and Indonesian media. At the time, Yudhoyono slammed Abbott publicly on social media, and the Foreign Ministry swiftly recalled its envoy to Canberra.
Tensions spiked again in 2015 when Jokowi authorised the execution of two Australian drug trafficking ring leaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, a controversial move that resulted in the temporary withdrawal of the Australian envoy to Jakarta.
Albanese's 2022 visit to Indonesia, however, was hailed as a fresh start for Jakarta-Canberra relations, with the Labor Party leader going above and beyond not only to prioritise Indonesia politically, but also form a close personal relationship with its leader.
One year after his Bogor visit, where Jokowi invited him to weave through the botanical gardens on locally produced bamboo bicycles, Albanese returned the gesture by taking the former president sailing around Sydney's famed harbour.
While some critics may say that Jokowi and Albanese's kinship was defined partly by their shared background of coming from humble beginnings, in contrast to Prabowo's bourgeois upbringing, the prospect for a close relationship remains on the cards.
'The atmosphere, in terms of personal rapport, is extremely positive,' researcher Susannah Patton from Australia-based think tank Lowy Institute told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
'Prabowo is clearly a more personable, warm and confident leader [compared with Jokowi],' she said.
'As a defence minister, he was already well-disposed to Australia and Western countries, which is something Australia would really welcome as it promises a more mature strategic dialogue between the two countries.'
On Wednesday evening, just hours after the Australian leader's arrival in Jakarta, Prabowo made an impromptu visit to see Albanese at the hotel he was staying in what the Palace described as a gesture of 'deep respect'.
Prabowo, at the Palace the next day, also invited Albanese to visit his estate in Hambalang to go horseback riding, although that has not happened yet.
Thursday's meeting produced a joint communiqué affirming Indonesia and Australia's cooperation in various sectors, as well as a four-year plan of action for their comprehensive strategic partnership.
And while Albanese's second state visit indicates a positive sign for continued rapport, proper geopolitical synergy would still require more than good acquaintanceship, Patton said, especially given Canberra and Jakarta's differing stances on the United States-China rivalry.
Australia's security alliance with the US, for example, has on multiple occasions created friction with non-aligned Indonesia, including when Canberra failed to give Jakarta a timely heads-up before joining Aukus, a pact with the US and the United Kingdom to procure nuclear-powered submarines in what analysts suggest is a means to counter Chinese influence in the region.
Indonesia's close relations with China and Russia in both economic and security interests have also caused domestic concerns in Canberra.
'Challenges in deepening Indonesia-Australia ties will persist, [and] economic cooperation will still be an uphill battle despite the good sense,' Patton said. - The Jakarta Post/ANN