Indonesia

AUSTRALIA needs to overhaul its travel warning system or end up looking like the boy who cried wolf.

We found out last week that 567,000 Australians visited our neighbour Indonesia last year.

This means more than half a million Australians either didn’t know about - or, more likely, happily ignored -  the Australian Government’s travel warnings when they flew off to Bali for a week of sun, surf, beer, braiding, tattoos and tummy upsets.

Continue reading "Our travel warning system is the boy who cried wolf" »

The Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is due to visit Australia in early March and will be addressing both houses of Parliament.

It’s not that common to have a foreign leader address the Australian Parliament but it will be repeated later in March when the US President Barack Obama is expected to do the same.

Australia-Indonesia relations are always complex. At the leadership and government level they remain strong as the Howard Government had left them, despite frustrations in official Indonesian ranks over the Rudd Government’s handling of the Oceanic Viking saga and the ongoing issue of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers that remain in limbo off a West Java port.

Continue reading "Our role in defending democracy in Indonesia" »

Marty Natalegawa is a consummate diplomat. The Indonesian Foreign Minister is also his country’s former representative to the United Nations and Ambassador to the UK.

At the age of 46 he has done more than most top diplomats do in an entire career. Now he’s the Foreign Minister.

On Tuesday this week I interviewed Marty Natelagawa in his Jakarta offices. In a long line of difficult issues between Australia and Indonesia, people smuggling has been the most awkward in recent months, so of course I had to begin our discussion on just that.

Continue reading "This man may be our best ally against people smugglers" »

She sits in a prison, thousands of kilometres away from her family and friends. She doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t think much of the food that’s served up to her.

Her only crime was to try and bring drugs into a foreign country to make a bit of money and now she is stuck in a foreign jail for what must seem like an eternity.

How could you not feel sympathy for her? Easy. Her name isn’t Schapelle Corby.

Continue reading "How many other Schapelle Corbys are there?" »

Australian travel journalist Natasha Dragun lives down the road from the Ritz and Marriot hotels in Jakarta. She filed this post for The Punch on the bombings today.

I’ve lived in Jakarta for about 15 months (I moved here having spent 5 years in Beijing, and now work for a travel magazine based in Jakarta). I’ve always felt extremely safe here.

In fact, I’ve felt safer here than when I lived in Melbourne. Everyone here is always so friendly and lovely.

I’ve never been scared for my safety – even during the elections, or the executions of the Bali bombers… my family and friends were more worried than I was.

The security at both hotels (the Marriott and Ritz) is extremely tight, so I just don’t understand how the bombs got in.

Continue reading "“I heard the second one go off”: post from Jakarta" »

The sole remaining daily reminder in Australia of the existence of Schapelle Corby is the plastic luggage-wrapping service at our international airports.

More than four years after her conviction on drug smuggling charges - when Corby was the only story in Australia, the only topic of discussion at the pub, at barbecues, in the office tea room - the one thing that reminds us that she even exists is the roll of industrial cling-film in our departure lounges, so you can make sure your baggage leaves our shores and arrives overseas without 4.2kg of cannabis in it.

As she prepares to celebrate her 32nd birthday tomorrow - her fifth inside Bali’s Kerobokan jail - prison authorites let Schapelle have her hair cut and coloured by a professional hairdresser, saying they hoped it would cheer her up as she continues to fight with severe depression.

Her illness may be fuelled by the knowledge that almost all of her countrymen have pretty much forgotten about her - and that unlike in 2005, when most Australians disputed her guilt, public opinion appears to have swung the other way, not just against her but members of her family.

Continue reading "How Australia forgot about Schapelle Corby" »