Fear of the dark: Indonesia and the Australian national imagination

In late 1999, former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, attacked the Howard government's handling of the East Timor crisis, arguing that John Ho ward had neglected the most important priority in the management of Austral ia's relationship with Indonesia. Citing the enormous population imbalance between the two countries, Keating argued that Howard had failed to 'square away' the potential threat arising from Indonesia's population of more tha n two hundred million people. Keating's invocation of this reason to be fea rful seems distinctly at odds with his confidence and pride in Australia's relationship with Indonesia and his own personal closeness to former Presid ent Suharto during his period as Prime Minister. But the use of fear to win a political point in debates about Australia-Asia relations or to discipli ne Australian voters is far from unusual. Indeed, fear has been perhaps the dominant factor in shaping Australia's relations and policies towards Asia and the perceptions of a sceptical community. This article argues that fear is an integral and inescapable element of Aus tralia's relations with Indonesia. However, rather than presenting fear as evidence of flawed diplomacy or as being necessarily irrational, I argue th at fear is a constitutive element of relations with Indonesia in much the s ame way that trust has been an enduring feature of Australian relations wit h the United States. There have been, of course, many critics of unquestion ing Australian alignment with United States' foreign policy and, equally, t here have been critics of the various manifestations of Australian policy t owards Indonesia over the years. It is not my intention to suggest that Aus tralian attitudes to Indonesia have been without contradictions or that the y remained unaffected by changes in Australia, Indonesia and the region mor e generally. Among politicians on both sides of parliament and among journa lists and academics there have been many who have sought to improve what ha s been a troubled relationship. But despite these efforts, Australian attitudes towards Indonesia are partl y constructed in immutable discourses of fear and anxiety. The images and m etaphors used to describe Indonesian society and assumptions about 'our' an d 'their' national character reflect an enduringly negative view of Indones ia. Moreover, politicians, journalists and academics alike are caught up in this historical web of anxieties and fears. Seemingly routine and benign d escriptions of Indonesia's 200 million plus population, its low levels of p olitical and economic development and its status as the world's largest Mus lim nation, all play deeply on white Australian fears of Asia even if the a uthorial intention is to alleviate concerns about Indonesia among Australia ns. This article explicitly discusses the politics of fear in modern Western so cieties and explains how domestic anxiety about the policies of multicultur alism and immigration overlap with other concerns about events and peoples external to the Australian nation. Later, I analyse particular images that have been used to describe Indonesia and argue that not only do they have a ntecedents in colonial depictions of Indonesia but also tend to imply that Australian values and attitudes are superior. Finally, I argue that the key to establishing better relations with Indonesia is not a clearer understan ding of 'them', but an ongoing and thoughtful unpacking of the values and f ears that constitute 'us'.