Albanese set to land in a changed and changing Indonesia

The Age

12-05-2025

Another target is funding for schools and universities, and this galvanised the first Dark Indonesia protests in February. The student-led movement claims that Prabowo is using the pretext of austerity to suffocate higher education.
Their suspicions only grew when the president tried to allow granting of coal and mineral mining royalty rights to universities. Dark Indonesia – Indonesia Gelap – claimed that this was intended to subvert university independence and undercut climate-related research. The protesters' No.1 demand is that the austerity program be revoked.
Prabowo's decision to widen the scope of the military's involvement in civilian affairs has aroused deep fears. One of his first acts was to dress his cabinet ministers in combat fatigues and lead them on a three-day military boot camp.
More seriously, Prabowo has allowed serving members of the military to occupy senior government jobs, breaking through one of the guardrails designed to stop backsliding towards the military dictatorship of the Suharto years.
The concern in Indonesia today is that Prabowo might be seeking to reverse-engineer a military takeover of the government. 'Don't give a blank check where soldiers could be placed at any posts. It will ruin the system,' a retired general who helped shape the post-Suharto system, Agus Widjojo, told Reuters.
ANU professor emeritus Greg Fealy says that the concerns of Dark Indonesia are sincerely held: 'There is genuine substance to the critique that he's increasing the role of the military in public life. The risk is overstated, but it's heading in the wrong direction for democratic Indonesia.'
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And prospects for Golden Indonesia? 'It's looking far less in prospect for Prabowo, not because of things he's done but because of things that have happened,' says Fealy. 'The Trump tariffs could hit Indonesia quite hard directly, and also indirectly because they will hit China, which is Indonesia's main trading economic relationship.'
Trump has announced a 42 per cent total tariff on Indonesian imports to the US, although 32 of those 42 percentage points are suspended while being reviewed.
Prabowo's predecessor, Joko Widodo, promised annual economic growth of 6 per cent but rarely got above 5, so Prabowo's growth target is heroic: 'It would take a whole lot of things to align favourably to hit 8 per cent,' says Fealy, 'but he's doing everything he can to achieve it and to claw in foreign investment and increase exports.'
This brings us to Albanese's visit. 'More than anything else Prabowo will want to talk to Albanese about, he will want to talk trade and investment,' Fealy says.
So it's no coincidence that Albanese has exactly these topics on his list for his summit with Prabowo.
Australia and Indonesia already have a free trade agreement. But Albanese sees scope for much more trade liberalisation with Jakarta. Now that the US has erected a tariff wall around itself, the nations that make up the other 85 per cent of the global economy are busily talking to each other about new trade arrangements.
Albanese also intends to discuss the prospects for the Sun Cable project to deliver renewable power to Indonesia. The $30 billion project will collect solar energy from northern Australia and run it through an undersea cable to Singapore. But it must transit Indonesian waters, and there could be scope for some of its electricity to be sold to Jakarta in an offtake.
The director of the Lowy Institute's South-East Asia program, Susannah Patton, dismisses an Australian commentary that the Albanese visit was 'symbolic diplomacy'.
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'It's hugely important,' she says. 'Prabowo has centralised a lot of power' in the Istana presidential palace. Australian ministers previously had good access in Jakarta through Indonesian foreign affairs ministers and defence ministers. But Patton points out that there is only one avenue to power that counts today.
With China and Russia both seeking more influence over Indonesia while the US metes out hostile trade treatment, the Australian connection to Jakarta is more vital than ever: 'Albanese needs to find a way of establishing strategic dialogue, talking regularly with Prabowo by phone; it's the only way we are able to have any influence.'