By Rowan Callick
Indonesia's business world is worried its Australian counterpart
has been missing in action.
Suryo Sulisto, the vigorous chairman of Kadin,
the country’s peak business body, is today ending an eight-day tour of Canberra
and state capitals telling Australian businesspeople how much this vexes him.
No shadow plays for him, no subtexts or
insinuations. He has been forthright through his visit about opportunities and
about what’s needed to grasp them.
He told The Australian he was eager to push
for the conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the title
of the free trade agreement on which the countries have been negotiating for a
couple of years.
When the Indonesian election is over — either
at the first round next month, or more likely after a second round in
September, if voting is close enough to require it — Kadin will press the new
government to fast-track the deal.
Sulisto says the two countries’ politicians
and journalists tend “to make mountains out of molehills” in highlighting
problems between them. “We need to exert serious effort to manage our
relationship better. If we listen to our media in each country, we would
believe that we don’t like each other, we don’t trust each other, we don’t really
have a future together.”
He began his tour as Tony Abbott was holding
relationship-repairing talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Batam
Island in Indonesia.
The Prime Minister now needs to make plans to
return after October 20, when the new president is sworn in — either Joko
Widodo, the tipsters’ favourite but a dark horse on economic policy, or Prabowo
Subianto, with lengthy form but a protectionist bent.
Sulisto would like to see this visit take the
form of a summit “to set the course for a new future together”. He says it is
“very apparent our governments consider each other as very important partners.
Australia’s largest embassy is in Jakarta. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s first
state visit was to Indonesia. When he spoke at the breakfast with Indonesia’s
business community then, his repeated use of two words, ‘trust’ and ‘respect’,
was very reassuring.”
But the unfortunate truth, he says, is “we
need to grow up, to be more mature, more wise”.
“I sometimes think high-school kids would be
more rational” about the state of the relationship, he adds.
Sulisto apologised to Australians during his
visit for not “sounding like a diplomat. I am first and foremost a businessman.”
This naturally went down well with the audiences, which were encouragingly
large compared with previous events with Indonesian speakers.
He regrets that Australian businesspeople fly
over Indonesia to trade and invest elsewhere.
Despite the size of the country’s markets —
with a population of almost 250 million, more than double that of Malaysia and
Thailand combined, including a middle class larger than the Australian
population — it is not among our top 10 economic partners.
Of course, some of the blame must attach to
Indonesia’s own policy U-turns and its fondness for protectionism — which Kadin
to a degree backs, supporting the new requirement to value-add minerals for
export. But Sulisto would rather use a different term to describe it: “Nationalism
does not mean protectionism,” he insists. “We don’t just want holes in the
ground any more.”
Indonesians don’t really know what Australians
mean, he says, when they say they want to be part of Asia. We have until
recently remained, for all the “Asian Century” talk and even the white paper,
remarkably incurious about our neighbours. Perhaps the crowds that came to hear
Sulisto indicate fresh interest.
But how many board members and chief
executives of our top 200 companies have even visited, say, Jakarta? How many
of those analysts who continue to mark down businesses for investing in Asian
markets such as Indonesia, have lived or worked in the region, or have contacts
there?
Sulisto nevertheless praised Australia: “You
have come a long way from your difficult beginnings and turned yourselves into
one of the strongest economies,” which Indonesians know about through the
dollars spent in Bali. “Thank you for that,” he adds.
He confesses that “social norms and hierarchy
often distance us from one another, while you have an openness in the way that
you communicate with each other that is inspiring”.
And in that spirit of openness he issues an
invitation: “We are the third-largest democracy in the world, and I am a
Muslim. I invite you to come and talk democracy, Islam, business, or anything
else you may wish … over a glass of wine. I love Australian wine, and have a
good collection.”
Rowan Callick is the Asia Pacific editor at The Australian. This article originally appeared in The Australian 12 June.
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