 Hello, I'm Hal Hill from the Australian National University and we're on the sidelines of the Crawford Australian Leadership Forum and it's my very great privilege to introduce a most distinguished Indonesian policymaker and academic, Dr Dewi Fortuna Anwar. Dr Dewi needs no introduction but let me just say she is Indonesia's leading foreign policy expert and she has a remarkable breadth of knowledge of policy both as an insider and an outsider. Dewi, welcome to the forum and welcome again to Canberra. Let me raise some questions with you, fairly broad in scope. First of all, President Joko Widodo, Jokowi, is now about one-third of the way through his first term and most likely he'll have a second term. How would you say he's travelling about a one-third of the way through his term? Well thank you very much Hal and it's always a pleasure to be back here in Canberra and meeting so many friends and now I'm really enjoying this Crawford Australian Leadership Forum. With President Joko Widodo and Vice President Yusuf Kalas, the first year of the presidency was a bit patchy as you know usually this is the case when you form a new administration but a lot of the bureaucratic dismantling and restructuring of ministries have now been finalized so the cabinet is up and running. The president is very much in charge of the cabinet. You know if you remember the first two years there was some difficulty of coordination with strong personalities in the cabinet and that is now improving quite significantly with the president very much in a strong leadership position and importantly the government has received increasing support from parliament when President Joko Widodo started the presidency the coalition party supporting the government only had about 43% seats in parliament now the overwhelming majority of parties in parliament those in the oppositions except Garindra have now move have declared themselves to be supporters of the government so in terms of pushing forth legislations in parliament and managing the cabinet the government is doing quite well well of course we have difficulties with the economy Indonesia has weathered the financial crisis of 2008 relatively well the structural reforms that have been put in place after the Asian financial crisis have borne fruit so Indonesia has become much stronger in terms of the you know financial institutions but of course we continue to suffer the effects both of the financial crisis and now the downturn in commodity prices our revenues of course decline because Indonesia is still very much dependent on commodity exports and tax collection has fallen below targets so the government budget is not as as good as it wanted as it was projected in fact only you know the first few months of the 2016 fiscal year we already have to to cut some 50 trillion rupees of national budget and probably if the tax amnesty doesn't really bring in you know the promised fresh money from from overseas the the budget will probably go down even further so the politics is good economy we are all suffering like the rest of the world yeah and in some ways a bit like Australia Australia's also been through this massive commodity boom and the political economy narrative in Australia hasn't yet really adjusted to the fact that we haven't got a commodity boom anymore and I guess the same sort of challenges is operating in Indonesia yeah but on the other hand as they you know that you know society necessity makes good policy and precisely because we are in the middle of this you know systemic challenges global financial and commodity challenges there is and we are competing with the rest of the world there is now a Kina recognition and also commitment to carry out various fundamental reforms in terms of improve to improve Indonesia's economy competitiveness and in ease of doing business this is a very ambitious target for example of improving the ease of doing business from the 109 ranked now to 40 by next year we'll see what happens but you know everyone is on on you know on this very tight agenda that the president is and the vice presidents are supervising very hands-on in this yes good and looking outward where is Indonesia going whereas President Yudhoyono had a very strong interest in regional and global affairs I guess it's fair to say that President Jokowi initially didn't really have the same sort of interest but inevitably Indonesia is going to get pulled into a lot of regional and global issues you know ASEAN for example and Indonesia and China and Indonesia in the Middle East so where would you say Indonesian foreign policy is going at the moment there is a very strong emphasis on economy diplomacy and President Jokowi Dodo I mean as the President President Jokowi came to power there was a strong emphasis that Indonesia doesn't just want to carry up foreign policy for the sake of diplomatic niceties or international reputation reputation put it that way or prestige that foreign policy has to bear concrete benefits to for improving people's welfare so the the the tagline is not one million friend zero enemies but rather you know people oriented foreign policy with both modest target so the stress is more on looking at key bilateral relations where Indonesia could get you know direct benefits for investment markets and so on and so forth but as you pointed out you know Indonesia is a big regional player it is one it is the world largest mostly majority country it is a prominent leader in the non-aligned movement in the developing world it is a member of the G20 it is you know the expected to play a regional role within ASEAN it is not something that Indonesia can actually ignore and and in fact Indonesia has not ignored it you know that the system is already in place where both the economic focus in foreign policy as well as the more foreign policy proper you know diplomatic security orientations foreign policy can actually be be undertaken by Indonesia simultaneously so Indonesia has continued to be actively engaged both at the regional and multilateral level the other point which is always worth remembering in the case of Indonesia is it is the world's largest archipelagic nation state with depending on the sea level 13 or more thousand islands and as we know Indonesia implemented what's often called a so-called big bang decentralization in 2001 accompanying the democracy and I guess that's still work in progress that that decentralization but by and large it's working what would you say are the major challenges now in implementing regional autonomy vis-a-vis national government and local government so regional autonomy is supposed to you know the both serve political security objectives as well as welfare objectives the political security objective is that by decentralizing power giving more power to the people at the local level they would have a greater sense of ownership of being part of Indonesia no reason for them to demand independence for example when they do as well and even better you know under under a united Indonesia so sense of belonging ownership to the central government that's the political security objective but at the same time there's a real delivery objective to improve governance to improve surface delivery to allow you know various regions to develop according to their means and but a unique characters now the results of regional autonomy starting in 2001 has been rather patchy some have done well you know some regions have practice had developed really best practices and they've improved their welfare and governance but others have not done so some have simply multiplied the numbers of bureaucracies and the splintering up of regional governments with the end results that most of the government spending have been spent on paying the government bureaucrats rather than on develop improving service delivery so this is something that we are very concerned about and there is now a real desire already starting under SBY to improve the decentralization process so the decentralization law has been revised a number of times and the last one is in 2014 so the provision of government is now being given a greater supervisory role and the central government is also now more engaged you know in ensuring that the bylaws passed by regional governments do not impede economic development do not deter investors and as well time do not contradict higher laws for example on on pluralism or religious torrents and so on and and secondly you mentioned about Indonesia being a Nakhapiligit states we have already we have always talked about Indonesia's archipelagic principles but in realities in practice the focus has always been on land development now the one of the priorities of the Joko administration is of course the maritime areas you know there's in the Indonesia Jokowi talk about Indonesia is becoming a global maritime falkrom so the development and safeguarding of the maritime domain is a key priority and and that covers all areas so it both improving connectivity which inter-island shippings and the building ports and and and airlines connectivity but particularly the the the maritime connectivity is managing maritime resources and then improving maritime security and defense and then maritime diplomacy a lot of our maritime borders are not finalized yet you know delineation of boundaries for example and fifthly maritime culture we talk about maritime identity but in most traditions there I'm afraid of waters we have lost our seafaring tradition you know so so these are you know some some of the priorities that the government is trying to do