 Hello, I'm Associate Processor Greg Feely and it's my pleasure today to be joined in conversation with Bill Farmer who was Ambassador to Indonesia and also a very distinguished public servant in Australia including Secretary of the Department of Education and Multicultural Affairs but now retired but still frequently visiting Indonesia. And Bill, your view of how the Australian-Indonesian relationship is going, I know that you have made a few public comments where you've expressed regret about some of the recent developments. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your views on the bilateral relationship in the last few years. Look, I think we've come to one of the periodic low points in our relationship and that's unfortunate because certainly over many years our governments have tried to build up what we've called ballast in the relationship, people-to-people contacts, business contacts, contacts between our security forces, our customs, our immigration, our fisheries people, all of the sorts of elements of a relationship which enable Australians and Indonesians to work together. And we have worked together really well and continue to do that although that's not always evident from the public discourse. I think that we've seen perhaps over a 10-year period a vast change in the way that our two countries have dealt with each other, a change away from Australia's dealing with the authoritarian regime of President Sahato where essentially if President Sahato was on the side everything else fell into place. Now we have two messy, vigorous, robust democracies with anyone from the most intelligent to the lamest rat-bag being able to say what they like and that inevitably makes things much more complicated than it might have been 10 or 15 years ago. I think it's very unfortunate when we have the political leadership in both countries really looking at short-term political gains for domestic political reasons as we've seen in both Australia and Indonesia over this last 18 months in the context both of election campaigns but also when dealing with particular issues. And I think it is unfortunate when some of the appeals that are made to popular sentiment in each country really overlook the fact that whatever is said in Australia is going to be repeated in Indonesia, whatever is said in Indonesia is going to be repeated in Australia and raising the temperature unnecessarily seems to me very unfortunate. How much would you put down the current you mentioned that we're currently at a kind of one of the regular nutties of the relationship and how much would you put that down to the personalities of the people who are leading both countries or senior key ministers in the governments of both countries and how much do you or how much do you put this down to broader societal attitudes for better or for worse, both countries are democracies and politicians are very mindful of what the broader electorate says. Very good question. I think that we can illustrate that in part by looking at the difference between President Yudhoyono and the current President of Indonesia, President Jokowi, Yudhoyono was really predisposed to looking at cooperation with Australia through a positive lens. He was ready to expand the range of things that we worked together on. With President Jokowi, I don't think we have that mindset. We certainly does not seem to be as interested in international issues as President Yudhoyono. So that's one way, that's a benign way if you like, it's just a difference in personality and approach. But I think also that it is possible to examine this question of the role of leadership in a democracy when we're dealing with close neighbors as we are between Australia and Indonesia. For example, the question of the impending execution and then the execution of two Australians in Indonesia earlier this year, I think that our political leadership began very well. They were doing exactly the right thing. They were making high-level approaches to ministers, to the President, reflecting very clearly, deeply held views among the Australian community. And that I think was appropriate. I think we went off the tracks, though, when our government seemed to be scrambling around for additional things to say, additional arguments to put in an environment where it seemed pretty clear to me anyway that we'd had our say, we are not going to sway Indonesia, and that making some, I think, somewhat inflammatory statements was going to be quite counterproductive. So there's a balance that political leaders always have to look for in leading a democracy, but also in managing our diplomatic and foreign relations in ways that are conducive to Australian interests. I was very interested, I've heard you say publicly, compare, I know it's a hypothetical, but compare how Australia, the very strong Australian response to the execution of the Bali 2 in Indonesia. It led to, for example, if an Australian was on death row and facing execution in one of the many American states that still has the death penalty. And whether Australia would say the kinds of things and take the kinds of retaliatory action that it did take in the Indonesia case, would you be willing to perhaps talk about some of those views that you have on that? Well, it is obviously a hypothetical case, but it bears on a broader issue. Do we think about our relationship with the United States or with New Zealand in terms of a whole set of issues and problems? No, we don't. How do we think about our relationship with Indonesia? Too often, I think, we immediately do, and I'm guilty, as guilty as this is anyone, we immediately go into the listing of the issues and problems. And there's a mindset there that I think is not helpful and one that we should change for the future. But if not withstanding Australian representations in the hypothetical case of the execution of an Australian by an American state, if our representations had failed, would we impose a freeze on ministerial context with the United States? Would we withdraw our ambassador from the United States? It's a question I did just invite everyone to think about. Just coming back to this issue of public attitudes and in particular to the boat people issue in Australia and how Australia has handled that, in Indonesia there are very few people who are sympathetic to the arguments that Australia puts. But within Australia, I'm fairly certain that the view of the Abbott government is that this is one of their strong political pluses that they have stopped the boats. And indeed, the prime minister says this repeatedly. So this seems to be a case where the electorate, or at least those parts of the electorate that are responsible for putting a government in, are strongly the view that we need to stop the boats. And so the government pursues that vigorously, even though Indonesians are often very irritated by the way in which we do this. So how is a government in a democratic system like Australia to respond to those pressures? Because the prime minister, senior ministers are on talkback radio, they're hearing regularly how strongly public sentiment is on this. And so what do we expect from our diplomats, from our leaders in this circumstance? Yeah, look, in that circumstance with a very strong domestic political imperative, any diplomat understands the environment in which they're working. Their government is set on a course. I think that's important. I think it's also important though to remember that there are positives in the turnaround issue from the Indonesian point of view. The positives that they won't necessarily be very keen to point out. Stopping the pull factor means that Indonesia would not be suffering the sorts of arrivals into Indonesia and the concomitant social and other problems that it's faced over the last 10 years. Now, saying that simplicity is not a winning argument with Indonesia. But having a discussion broadly based with a neighbor and a country with which we've cooperated over many years is I think something where you can actually have a discussion, you can introduce perspectives, you can agree to disagree even and we've certainly done that on numbers of issues over the years. I'd much rather have the discussion on a continuing basis between governments than run it through the headlines where we're both essentially yelling past each other. I've heard you be critical in public of the recall of the Australian ambassador. So this would seem a case in point where the public was almost demanding a very concrete retaliation by the Australian government to that. And if I've recalled correctly, you don't feel that was in fact a particularly helpful response by us. Could you talk a little bit about your views on this? I think the low opinion polls show that in fact a majority of Australians didn't approve of that measure. It's the first time we've withdrawn our ambassador from Indonesia, notwithstanding a whole history of very severe difficulties in our relationship with that country, including periods when our soldiers were shooting at each other, periods when Australian journalists were massacred by Indonesian soldiers in East Timor, periods of real political sensitivity. And so no, I didn't agree with that. I think that the role of the ambassador is to work in that country on issues affecting Australia's bilateral interests. And I would say the same thing about the idea of putting a freeze onto ministerial contacts. I just don't think myself that the momentary gratification of saying, let's withdraw the ambassador, let's have a freeze, I don't think that that is worth the period then of lack of contact and lack of certainty that you have. A period when you have to essentially scrabble around and say, well, what's the criterion for our resuming ministerial contacts? It's a question that's quite difficult to answer and I'd much rather it hadn't been raised. A final question. Do you have much optimism about the relationship, the bilateral relationship over the next five or so years? We have Jacqui in office for another four and a half years. The other government is facing an election next year, but it's very unlikely that public dynamics that influence our governments are going to change a lot. So do you think that we will be consigned to having the kind of regular sources of tension that we have now? Well, Greg, when I was ambassador, I was paid to be optimistic, as well as realistic. Now I do it for nothing. And I essentially do think that if we can approach issues in the right way, bearing in mind the enormous array of cooperation or ballast, you might say, in the relationship, we've got a foundation for working will together. I'd be saying over this next few months, we should be resuming ministerial contacts. We should be looking at ways of negotiating a closer economic partnership agreement. We should be introducing more Australian business people to Indonesia. We should be sending our young Australian scholars to Indonesia under the new Colombo plan. We should be resuming the sorts of contacts that we have between all sorts of government agencies which have stood us in good stead over time. And to the extent that we can get the political discourse disciplined in a way that puts an appropriate chapeau over all of that activity, I think we'd be doing well. There's obviously a question mark about it. I'm not a doomsayer, and I hope that we as two countries can get it right. Thank you very much, Bill Farmer, for giving up your time, for us to talk about some of the relations in the bilateral, some of the issues in the bilateral relationship, and we look forward to perhaps getting your comments again in one of these ANU forums. Thank you. Thanks so much, Greg.