Rubbishing our reputation

Here’s a rough guide to Westerners visiting Indonesia.

Bali gets chosen for its cheap packaged holidays, knock-out rural landscapes and friendly folk; relax for a fortnight, eat lots, drink more and head home. This year the island expects to welcome almost double last year’s 2.3 million.

Some get disturbed by cruelty to animals, trashing of beaches, the poverty and hardships. The Republic has a social protection system but it doesn’t come within coo-ee of Australia’s Centrelink benefits even at their most parsimonious.

A few visitors are moved to action, raising funds and sometimes returning as volunteers or setting up NGOs to help rectify the wrongs.  The Nusa Tenggara Association  pioneered by the late Dr Colin Barlow concentrates on the poorest areas of the archipelago furthest from Jakarta.

The late Perth ceramicist John Fawcett established a foundation  ‘to eliminate curable blindness in Indonesia’ and has already run 50,000 cataract operations. Here’s an education programme - and there are many more though little known.

Then there are those who think Indonesia’s relaxed lifestyle means anything goes, so local values can be vandalised.

Measured by column centimetres and video footage the Russians are top of the slobs - though likely to be dethroned by Okkers winning infamy by posing naked in culturally important places and loading their capers into social media.

Others squabble with cops over wearing crash helmets, a legal requirement not always enforced impartially.

It’s an axiom of journalism to use names, as ‘anon’ taints a story’s credibility. However, this columnist won’t identify the latest Australian alleged transgressors to avoid giving what UK PM Margaret Thatcher called the ’oxygen of publicity’. 

The World Association for Christian Communication wrestled with the issue: ‘Thatcher misconstrued the role of public interest media, but the underlying question is legitimate. How to report problematic content and contentious happenings while retaining a measure of objectivity, balance, and fairness?’

It’s possible some of those Australians outraging our neighbours are suffering from health issues or mental illness. Others may play up to boost their influencer ratings by publishing their plight for fame and funds, though turning notoriety into dollars is now difficult.

In 2005 when blue-eyed ‘beauty therapist’ Schapelle Corby was jailed in Bali for drug importation the media fed off her plight. She was released in 2017 but attempts to cash in on her story were largely thwarted by laws preventing convicted criminals profiting from their offences.

These Ugly Aussie  stories don’t come from sleuthing journos but from police PR where the motives for release and the finer details are rarely checked by the Western media. In Indonesia, it’s a mistake to assume accuracy and transparency. 

Bali governor Wayan Koster says he’s had enough of visitors’ arrogance, assumed entitlement, law-breaking and cultural insensitivity. He provides no data to show how many offend, so wants all to suffer.

He’s asked the national government to stop Soviets from using the visa-on-arrival system as though all Ruskies are rogues. 

The Governor is also mulling a ban on all tourists renting motorbikes - unlikely as too many locals make money that way, and introducing dress codes. This would drive visitors to relaxed Thai beaches, so another doomed idea if Kuta hoteliers see empty rooms.

The hoon tales are getting more coverage in Indonesia than the rising costs of sembako, the nine kitchen essentials listed by the government, a barometer of the economy and normally the prime talking point apart from murders and sex scandals.

One story of stupidity repeated a hundred times doesn’t equal a hundred offenders, but don’t let logic distort the picture.

All this is bad news for anyone concerned about our image; setting the record straight is one of the Australian Embassy’s jobs.  Like any professional  lobby group, it should be alerting local reporters to achievements and positive initiatives by tourists and expats to trounce the negativity.

The possibilities for improving understanding are endless, starting at the top. In 2021 the Morrison government appointed career public servant Penny Williams as the first woman ambassador to Indonesia - and incidentally the mum of four. 

It seemed a splendid move and a positive story in a country where personalities are more important than policies.

As a youngster she studied in Indonesia and is reportedly fluent in the language, creating opportunities to vigorously boost people-to-people relationships. Unfortunately, it seems the Embassy has done little to capitalise on these attributes with Ms Williams rarely in the media.

The Embassy website shows just a dozen ‘media releases’ this year and no ‘articles and speeches’. It uses Instagram where it has 68,000 followers -and Facebook with 278,000 followers. The postings are largely froth and DFAT PR. Anzac Day got a 32-word cliche splash on Twitter, though not on the website.

Tim Lindsey and Tim Mann, two of Australia’s foremost academic experts on Indonesia have dubbed, the Embassy ‘a fortress … Australia needs an accessible place where we can showcase our arts and culture … Germany and the Netherlands have set these up in Jakarta – it is crazy that we have not.’

The differences they want addressed include history, religion, ethnicity, and language, through to legal systems, political systems, global alliances, and ‘strategic interests’.

The Ambassador  was told of these criticisms and invited to respond. She declined to talk to your correspondent, though she  ’regularly engages with the Indonesian media – print, radio and television – in Bahasa Indonesia and English.’

Requests for links to published stories resulting from these engagements have yet to be provided.

In the absence of what sociologists call a counter-narrative, we’re stuck with being labelled poseurs, pissers and spitters.

Or as we’d say- just larrikins having a bit of harmless fun. Indonesians need to harden up,  get a sense of humour - then she’ll be right.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 5 May 2023: