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AUSTRALIA

Abbott nails Jakarta

  • 02 October 2013

Tony Abbott did handsomely in Jakarta. In just a few hours, he held frank but clearly warm private talks with President Yudhoyono, at a level of generality appropriate to discussion at head-of-government level. He delivered well-tempered public messages of apology and Australian respect for Indonesian sovereignty at the subsequent state dinner.

The major cloud that had hung over the visit in its last preparatory days — the vexed issue of intemperate Australian responses to uncontrolled asylum-seeker boat departures from Indonesia — was deftly dispelled.

We know little about the private talks apart from what was reported as said by the two leaders in their subsequent brief joint press appearance. Abbott was fulsome on his respect for Indonesian sovereignty. He said they had agreed that people smuggling issues needed to be discussed bilaterally as well as in the Bali Process multilateral context. Fairfax's Michael Bachelard described this as an Indonesian concession. I think this was more a courteous olive-branch. 

The envisaged bilateral talks between Scott Morrison and his Indonesian counterpart won't shake the parameters established of pledged Australian respect for Indonesian sovereignty on the people smuggling issue. Morrison will have little if any room to press in these subsidiary-level 'technical' talks the kinds of unreasonable demands of Indonesia that he and Alexander Downer have been publicly articulating in Australia in recent weeks. 

I doubt that there will be any more attempts by Australian ships operating under Operation Sovereign Borders orders to take passengers from intercepted boats back to the Indonesian 12 mile limit, as happened twice last week. OSB ships will also now patrol further back from the Indonesian contiguous zone, as they used to under the previous Labor governments. Australian-organised rescues of boats reporting distress will still take place in these international waters that are in the Indonesian search and rescue zone, but there will be less bullying of the under-resourced Indonesian search and rescue agency BASARNAS to take control of those rescues. 

Hopefully, there will be fewer deaths as a result. Both sides will want to move on from the three disturbing events of last week (two imposed returns of boat passengers, and one tragic sinking).

Nor are we likely to hear much more about Australia buying boats or buying information about people smuggling in Indonesia. Both proposals were sharp affronts to Indonesian sovereignty. 

Morrison and Downer lost last night, but Australia didn't. The national interest will be well served by the PM's deft handling of a
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