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EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Professor Tim Lindsey is director of the Centre for Indonesian Law at Melbourne University. I spoke to him earlier.
Professor Lindsey, thanks for joining us.
TIM LINDSEY, PROF., INDONESIAN LAW EXPERT: Thanks.
EMMA ALBERICI: The Indonesian ambassador to Australia has tonight issued a press release in which he says this has nothing to do with the Australia-Indonesia relationship. Are you convinced that's the case?
TIM LINDSEY: Look, I think that the reduced quota for beef cattle imports below expectations in Australia probably has a lot more to do with difficulties in Indonesian domestic economic policy than it has to do with foreign relations.
Indonesia's long had a struggle between protectionism and deregulation. And the economic performance to date of the government of president Joko Widodo has been fairly lacklustre.
A lot of protectionist limits on imports are in place and in the lead-up to the fasting month this year, this led to a spike in food prices that increased the annual inflation rate to about seven per cent.
There's always a high demand for beef in the lead-up to the fasting month because the celebrations at the start and the Eid celebration coming up in a few days increase demand.
Now, that led president Joko Widodo to authorise a sort of one-off, so-called one-off importation of about 279,000 head of cattle and to lift restrictions on onions and chillies as well, in response to that.
Now, the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture says that they've now got enough cattle to see them through to the rest of the year. We'll see if that's true, but that's probably got a lot more to do with the reduced quota below expectations than, really, foreign relations.
EMMA ALBERICI: Should we read anything into the fact that this sudden drop in the allocation for the latest three months came with no warning?
TIM LINDSEY: No. I think that probably reflects again the nature policy making under the government of president Joko Widodo. He's an embattled president who has little control over his cabinet, which is seen as performing very poorly, particularly in relation to economic policy.
And sudden reversals of policy - lifting import bans, suddenly imposing price controls, ordering one-off importations to deal with food price spikes created by this protectionist policy - is not unusual, has not been unusual this year. So I don't think it's necessarily about that at all.
Also, it's worth bearing in mind that Indonesian orders for beef cattle from Australia have fluctuated quite a bit in the past. The average over the last five years is around 105,000. There were expectations of 200,000. The current order is 50,000. Last year it was 184,000. And the Indonesian Embassy has announced some 400,000 permits have been issued for this year.
So there is a degree of volatility and fluidity in it anyway and I don't think we should leap to associate it with the difficulties, the actual difficulties that do exist in the relationship. Again, I think, it's got a lot more to do with the Indonesian government's poor management of domestic supply in the beef cattle area.
EMMA ALBERICI: Well, we should still probably take this opportunity to take stock - pardon the pun - of the relationship more generally.
It's only a couple of weeks since allegations surfaced that Australian officials paid people smugglers to return to Indonesia. How was that news received in Jakarta?
TIM LINDSEY: Oh, it's been received very badly; there's no question about that. There's no doubt that the bilateral relationship between the two countries is strained.
The foreign minister of Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, has said that if the allegations of payments made by Australian authorities to people smugglers to turn back boats are proven, that will be a major problem in the relationship.
But the issue of boats has been a tense issue between the two countries for some time. Indonesia insists on a multilateral solution, although there's nothing on the table. Australia insists on a unilateral solution. This will be a flash point in the relationship for some time to come.
This follows in the wake of a number of other incidents: going back to the wiretaps, the Snowden revelations of Australian wiretaps on President Yudhoyono and his inner circle; the withdrawal of the ambassador and the suspension of ministerial visits following the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran earlier this year. These are...
The ministerial visits have now been re-authorised and the ambassador is back in Jakarta, but there's no doubt that the relationship is a tense and difficult one.
But again, I don't think that is the cause for this issue about beef cattle quotas. I do think, however, that if Australia wants to create a more reliable arrangement in relation to beef cattle - set up some sort of clear deal and a basis on which Australian cattle producers can be more confident - these tensions are going to make that very difficult.
EMMA ALBERICI: You mentioned Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. Before the two men were killed in May, you wrote that their futures hung on matters that had very little to do with the actual crimes they committed or their own conduct since. To what were you specifically referring?
TIM LINDSEY: I was referring to the fact that the imposition of the death penalty on them and the refusal by the president of clemency and the actual carrying out of the execution all had a lot more to do with politics in Indonesia than, really, the offences they were convicted for.
Early in his presidency, president Joko Widodo put himself out on a limb, saying that he would show no mercy for drugs offenders. He based that on statistics about high levels of deaths in Indonesia which have since been shown - including in Indonesia - to have been faulty and unreliable.
He refused clemency for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, on his own admission, without reading the clemency documents. Now, their execution really was a result of a weak government, a president seeking popular support by being tough on drugs on the basis of some very dodgy data to support that.
In the end, like most death row situations, the question of who dies and when really is a political lottery that has very little to do with the operation of law. That's true as much in any country that executes as it is in Indonesia, but it was particularly significant in Indonesia because this was a new, weak and embattled president trying to seek political support.
EMMA ALBERICI: Are representatives of Chan and Sukumaran continuing to pursue their cases: the cases, particularly as you mentioned, of the president not reviewing the case before clemency was denied and so on?
TIM LINDSEY: Now, that matter was exhausted in the administrative courts and it really can't go any further. There is a matter that will come on before the Constitutional Court in due course, raising issues about the clemency law. And that will be pursued, but it will be some time before it's decided.
EMMA ALBERICI: And is there any indication that the Australian Government continues to make representations about the death penalty with Jakarta?
TIM LINDSEY: What they should be doing, I think, is in fact working with Indonesia, which has a large number of its citizens on death row around the world, including elsewhere in Asia, to make the point that this is not a question of drugs offences or of the sovereignty of individual countries: it's a matter of principle about the death penalty.
There's no reason why Australia couldn't join with Indonesia to try and get Indonesian citizens off death row. That would be the best way to make the point that the death penalty is unacceptable.
EMMA ALBERICI: In 1994 the then prime minister, Paul Keating, said there was no other country more important to Australia than Indonesia. To what extent, some 20 years later, is that still true?
TIM LINDSEY: Every single prime minister since Keating has said that, including the current Prime Minister. And there's no doubt that if Australia doesn't have a good relationship with Indonesia, then the whole web of its foreign relations are made much more difficult.
But I'd go a bit further and say that this issue about beef cattle shows that, whatever the rights and wrongs of any situation in the bilateral relationship - and it's not always our fault, nor is it always Indonesia's fault when the relationship is disturbed - there are always unexpected consequences for us.
And so getting that relationship right as often as we can, whenever we can - and we can't always do it; there are times when principled stands have to be taken - but getting it right as often as we can will have to be a primary concern of any government, whatever its political colour in Canberra.
And that will only increase as Indonesia is predicted by most rating agencies to become one of the top economies in the world: top five by 2050. If that's true then the urgency of really getting a relationship that allows us to deal with inevitable tensions right is going to be even more important. And we really don't have a great track record.
EMMA ALBERICI: We have to leave it there. Tim Lindsey, thank you very much for your time.
TIM LINDSEY: Thank you.
This interview was conducted 14 July on ABC News.
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