 and welcome to this latest Lowy Institute live event. My name is Michael Fully Love and I'm the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. I'm delighted to be here today with my colleague, Ben Bland, for the launch of his terrific new Lowy Institute paper, Man of Contradictions, Joko Wododo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia, the first English language political biography of Indonesia's President, Joko Wododo. Today we're doing this event in person, seeing as we could be in the same room together, albeit without a live audience at Bly Street. Ben Bland has spent much of his professional career trying to make sense of Indonesia. He did this first as a student of Indonesian politics at SOAS in London, then as the FT's correspondent in Jakarta and of course now as the Director of the Institute's Southeast Asia program. In the year and a half that Ben has been with us, he has shown all the best qualities of a good journalist and analyst. He writes quickly and well, he asks and answers the important questions and he's prolific. And his writing has appeared just in the last 18 months in the FT, the Washington Post foreign policy and the Telegraph to name a few mastheads. Now, we have published Lowy Institute papers since the establishment of the Institute nearly two decades ago. But for the past eight years, we've published them in conjunction with Australia's leading publisher, Penguin Random House Australia. And I've been delighted in the last few years to work with Penguin's excellent publisher at large, Nikki Krista on this series. This partnership between the Lowy Institute and Penguin is about publishing intelligent writing on big topics. A mentor of mine, the late Owen Harries, once gave me this piece of advice. He said, if you're going swimming, Michael, swim in the deep water, not in the shallows. And with the Lowy Institute papers, we seek to swim in the deep water to commission authors who write fluently about topics that matter to Australia and the world. And in man of contradictions, this fantastic new Lowy Institute paper, we have the perfect marriage of author and topic. The book was published last week and I'm delighted to say it's received excellent reviews from the Sydney Morning Herald and Reuters, widespread media coverage from the AFR and ABC News through to Bloomberg and CNBC. So it's a pleasure and a rare treat in today's COVID environment to be able to host Ben Bland in person today. Now, before I go to Ben, some quick housekeeping. At the bottom of your screens, you'll see a Q&A button where you can submit questions to Ben. Later in this event, I'll put some of your questions to our guest. As always, please include the name of any organization or affiliation that you may have when you send through your questions. But first, I have some of my own questions. So welcome, Ben Bland, and thank you for joining me here at Bly Street. It's great to be with you, Michael. All right, first of all, tell me why you wanted to write this book. What is it about President Joko Widoda or Jacoë as he's affectionately known that drew you to him as a subject? Well, to a sudden extent, Michael, it was luck or as Jacoë would probably put it, fate. So I arrived in Indonesia having been a student of Indonesian politics in 2012 as the FT's correspondent, the Financial Times correspondent covering Indonesia. And I arrived in the middle of a very hard-fought election campaign for the Jakarta governorship. This is one of the most important local seats in Indonesia and Jacoë was running as this outside candidate. And I'd studied Indonesia. I'd sort of read the theory, but I hadn't seen the politics. Exactly, the practice up close. And Jacoë was just this fascinating figure who didn't seem to say much, but he had this magnetic effect on Indonesian voters in Jakarta, the nation's capital. So I traipsed around in markets and malls, slum areas, following him and just seeing how people would swarm over him, despite him not saying much. He just said, you know, I'm gonna be a good leader. I'll listen to the people and I'll do what they want. And that seemed to have a transformative effect on the electorate. He won the election handsomely. And I just thought this guy has something. And I think it speaks to my own interests as a historian by training and a political geek by nature. I've always been fascinated in this question of what makes leaders, how much is it about them and their talents? How much is it about the great forces of history and how much sheer luck? And I think Jacoë combines all three. We'll come back to some of those seams, but first of all, tell us a bit what he's like as an interview subject. So you've interviewed him, I guess, on the campaign trail, I imagine, and in the presidential palace in Jakarta. What's it like? What's the feel? What's the chemistry when you're in the room with him? How do his staff relate to him? What's it like to be sitting there interviewing Jacoë? It's fascinating. It's fascinating that you can get so close to the president of a country of 270 million people, the world's third-biggest democracy. And that's one of the unique things about Indonesia and being an analyst and a previous year journalist covering Indonesia. So he's an interesting guy. He's very relaxed. When you're out and about in the streets, it's 35 degrees. I'm dripping in sweat. Most people are dripping in sweat. There are literally hundreds of people mobbing him back in the day when he could still go out without presidential bodyguards. And there's not a drop of sweat on him. Then when you go to see him in the presidential palace later, he deliberately has the air con off officially because he says he doesn't like the cold. But I think it's because he likes to sit there and watch the people around him sweat. But the most interesting thing I found is that he doesn't have that much of an entourage. Of course, there's the security guys. But whenever you meet him, you find there are very few note-takers there. There are very few officials. He's not one of these leaders or CEOs who comes armed with 12 experts to give him advice. He wants to play things for himself. And on the one hand, it makes you think you're getting great access. On the other hand, if you're a foreign CEO or a politician trying to get something from him, you have to wonder if there's going to be any follow-up without all those secretaries and note-takers and advisors there in the meetings. That's one of the many contradictions of Jacobi. You feel you can have this great connection with him. But then, particularly for those who want something from him, you have to wonder where it goes. Well, let me ask you about that, about his efficacy, his effectiveness as a leader and that question of follow-up. Your book paints a portrait of a leader who acts on gut instinct, who makes important decisions on a whim. For example, the decision to build a new capital in East Calamantan. Talk a bit about his leadership style and his effectiveness as a president. I think for so many leaders, the things that make them great leaders are also their weaknesses. Analysts like to sort of look through their careers and pick and choose. Only he could have or she could have had more of this and less of that, but often it's two sides of the same coin. And it was Jacobi's political instincts and I think his political cunning that allowed him to go from being a small-town furniture maker to the president of Indonesia in just nine years, a remarkable achievement in any country. But when you take into account the fact that Indonesian politics has long been dominated by dynasties, by the military, by elite religious and political figures, it's quite incredible. So I think he had this instinct for feeling what the public wanted. He had this instinct for beating the elite politicians who are trying to get one over him. But the flip side of that is he governs in the same way. So when there are complex issues at stake, Indonesia's infrastructure challenges, building a new capital, managing the COVID-19 pandemic, he goes on feeling, he's not a guy who looks at the data, he wants to listen to long-winded explanations, he wants the quick fix, he wants the quick take. And that's worked well to get him to the top of the tree. I don't think it's quite worked so well when you're managing a nation of 270 million people spread over thousands of different islands with a lot of complex governance challenges. So what would you, if you were to compile a balance sheet for Jacoi, what would be the positives and what would be the negatives? Are there a couple of reforms as president that he's achieved that you think that was great? And then what about on the other side? What are the expectations that he's failed to make? Well, I think one of the best things about Jacoi is simply what he's achieved and the fact that he laid this path to go from effectively nowhere to the top by promising to be a more effective city leader and then a more effective national leader. He's personally clean, which is a big change from some of the other elite figures. And he's had this laser-like focus on the economy and on infrastructure in particular, which I think has been really important because Indonesia went through a period of really rapid economic growth once it had recovered from the Asian financial crisis in 1997, 98, but the previous president, Cecilo Bambangu-Diyono, or SBY, he didn't really do much on the infrastructure. So Indonesia had this economy that had come a long way, but it still had terrible traffic jams, didn't have enough airport capacity, enough ports, and Jacoi has had this really concerted focus on building up the infrastructure, which I think has been great, as well as his focus on trying to improve access to health and education services, particularly for poor Indonesians. And that's something that he really pushed in solo. His home city is mad and in Jakarta and then in the presidency. So that's the good side. I think the negatives, while he's been a great success story of electoral democracy in Indonesia, he's been a very poor guardian of democratic practice. So unfortunately on Jacoi's watch, we've seen a growing securitization of policymaking. He's increasingly turned to the military and the police to get things done, which I think has eroded some of the democratic reforms we saw after the fall of Saharso in Indonesia. So I think that's a negative. I think the flip side of his focus on infrastructure has been that it's been a very scattergun approach. He hasn't really studied what are the most effective ways to increase economic growth and social equality in Indonesia. He's gone on instinct. Wherever he's traveling around the country, he's thought, okay, let's push a project here. Let's push a railway there, a port in Sumatra, a new toll road in central Java. So it's been very disjointed. And I think that's partly deliberate. So he's set up a structure of government in a sense where there's many competing actors to try and guarantee that he's in a safe political position. And he's kind of the King Solomon, if you like, who can decide what decisions do and don't go forward. And there's no concerted policymaking. And I think that's been a real weakness when it's come to the pandemic. Because if anything, it's a challenge where you need good data, you need good knowledge, you need good advice, and you need to be able to manage all these complex factors. And I think he's struggled in that kind of situation. Well, as you've mentioned, COVID, let's go there now. When we look around the world, I've said before that COVID is like a stress test for countries and for leaders. And some are succeeding, and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Scott Morrison in Australia and some other leaders, I think, are generally perceived as doing well. Some leaders are doing very poorly, like Mr. Trump in the United States. Where does Jacowi fit in on that spectrum? Well, I think Jacowi would probably land somewhere between Donald Trump and Jacinda Ardern. I'm not sure if that's a place you want to be, but certainly he's struggled, I think. In the early days of the pandemic, he claimed that Indonesia didn't have a problem. And then he later admitted that he'd withheld information because he didn't want the Indonesian population to panic. I think he's been slow to adjust to the shifting dynamics of what is a really complex problem and doubly difficult for a country like Indonesia, where while Jacowi improved access to the health system, the health system itself is very limited in terms of resources, in terms of the number of doctors, the number of beds, the number of ventilators, the financing. So I think what we've seen is that while he said that Indonesia couldn't take the sort of lockdown that we've had here in Australia, he had this focus on the economy, but the disease has continued to spread quite rapidly. Indonesia has now had nearly 8,000 deaths according to the official data, but no one believes the official numbers because Indonesia is testing at one of the lowest rates anywhere in the world, which means it's almost certain that the spread of the disease is far worse than the official numbers suggest. But the government's advice is simply, we've got to get on with people moving around, we can't afford lockdowns. This is the new normal where we have to live with the virus, but it's hard to see how the Indonesian economy can start booming again while the virus is spreading so rapidly in Indonesia. And I think he's failed to get this balance between public health and the economy quite right. But I think we do have to say that all leaders have struggled with this balance and Indonesia hasn't yet done as badly as the US, as Brazil, as India, but certainly it clearly stands out as a laggard in Southeast Asia. And there's no sign yet that the government has the wherewithal or even the desire to get the pandemic under control. What about corruption? You mentioned that one of the merits, the ticks for Jakowi is that he's seen as personally clean. But what has he done to spread that example throughout the Indonesian system? How much has he fought corruption? How much has he leaned into that problem? This is another one of the great contradictions, the great paradoxes of Jakowi, because one of the things that propelled him to the presidency from the mayorality of his hometown was that he was seen as being a clean broom, a new guy who had a different way of doing things. One of his advisors talked about Jakowi being the guy who would stop the octopus of oligarchy from strangling the Indonesian people. But what's happened is that as Jakowi has moved higher and higher in politics, instead of getting rid of the octopus of oligarchy, he's gone into business effectively with it. And I think he's had to adapt, in a way like many leaders, he's pragmatic. So once you're in the presidential palace, he wants to stay there. So he's working with the powers that be the media owners, the business people, the political party chiefs. And I think one thing we've seen that's quite concerning for the anti-corruption fight in Indonesia is a systemic weakening of Indonesia's respected anti-corruption agency, it is called the Corruption Eradication Agency in Indonesia. There's a very ambitious idea behind that, not just to reduce corruption, but to get rid of it. And under SBY, we saw constitutional court judges, ministers, leaders of political parties all going down in corruption cases. And under Jakowi, the law has been changed to weaken the powers of the anti-corruption agency. And we've also seen a shift in personnel and simply fewer high-level prosecutions. And I think to many observers and many Indonesians, it looks like this is a kind of effective compromise, right? That politics will be more stable if we take the heat off these guys. And Jakowi, while the anti-corruption agency has been weakened, the flip side is he's managed to get three quarters of Indonesia's normally pretty querulous parliament behind his governing coalition. So he's amassed this huge base of support. But I think there's a concern about the implications for the fight against corruption. And while Jakowi himself seems personally very clean compared to many other leaders, there are implications for what happens to the country in future, because he's potentially going to hand over a system with a much weaker anti-corruption agency than before. And maybe future leaders won't have such a clean personal view on politics. So I think it's quite worrying for people who focus on anti-corruption and people who think it's a great threat, which it does seem to be for Indonesia. What about the role of dynasties in Indonesian politics? As you say, one of the great things about Jakowi was that he was a new man from solo, this person who didn't have the sort of established family links. Has there been any sense that he would establish his own dynasty? What role does his family play in Indonesian politics and business? Well, until a year ago, you would have said it's impossible that Jakowi would launch his own dynasty, partly because he was the consummate outsider. That was the thing that propelled him to office and he really thrived because of the competition of politics because he had to prove himself to the voters time and again in solo, in Jakarta and nationwide. That really made him a better leader. It made him listen to people. But then in the last year or so, he's moved sadly, I think for many of his strongest supporters to launch his own dynasty. So Indonesia has a whole spate of local elections coming up later this year and Jakowi's son is running in solo for the merility of the same city that Jakowi used to govern. His son-in-law is running for the merility of Medan, a large city in North Sumatra. I think it's quite a dramatic transformation. I mean, I've met Jakowi's son some years back. He was a very shy guy. He ran his own catering business. In Jakowi's own autobiography, he brags about, unlike other people, I'm not gonna use political office to help my children. They're gonna be better people because they have to make their own way in life. And of course, Jakowi and his son-in-law say, this isn't a dynasty. This is simply young people exercising their democratic right to stand for election. They say somewhat disingenuously, why should we be denied our democratic right to stand for election simply by accident of our birth? But it's clear that Jakowi is pushing this. He's helped to ensure that these guys have the nomination from his political party, the PDIP. He's helped ensure that they have great coverage nationwide. But of course, it comes down to the Indonesian voters. Later this year, they will have to decide. And we know that they can sometimes upset the apple cart. It's unlikely to see it happening with Jakowi's son-in-law, though. And he's really trying to take on the mantle of his father, but with very little experience in politics. And I think that grates with some in Indonesia. Ben, tell us about the role of religion and Indonesian democracy under Jakowi. We know that Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation. It's long been held up as an example of a Muslim-majority country that can succeed as a democracy. But there has been some sense of some backsliding on that front under Jakowi's term. So where are we up to now, do you think, on that question? Well, I've personally always found the talk of Indonesia as a beacon of democracy or a beacon of Islamic tolerance quite unhelpful, because it covers over quite a complex picture in Indonesia. And I don't think it really reflects the tension. So Indonesia is in a very curious place for a Muslim-majority nation, and there is no Islam in the constitution in Indonesia. And at Indonesia's founding in 1945, there was this compromise reached between really secular nationalists like Sokarno, Indonesia's founding president, and those who wanted to have Sharia law, Islamic law, written into the constitution and at heart of Indonesian government. And the compromise was to make Indonesia a religious nation, but with no one dominant religion. So there's six official religions of which Islam is one. And this was always a messy compromise that over the previous 75 years has been tested time and again with sort of mass movements, uprisings, violent rebellion, et cetera. So I think that's the context we have to understand when we look at Jakowi's place. He himself seems to be a pluralist. He's quite happy working with people of all different religions in Solo and then in Jakarta. Both his deputies were Christians, minorities in Indonesia. But the challenge is there has been in the last five years or 10 years this rising conservatism in Islamic circles in Indonesia. And that manifested itself in this mass campaign in 2016 and 17 to unseat Ahok, who was Jakowi's former deputy, who then succeeded him as governor of Jakarta. And I think Jakowi was quite shaken by the ferocity of this movement. There were huge demonstrations in Jakarta with perhaps over a million people on the biggest day. And I think that prompted him in a way to lean towards some of the more authoritarian guide ropes in Indonesia. That's when he really looked, I think, to the military and the police to try and crack down on some of these Islamic groups, while at the same time looking to co-opt some of the forces of conservatism. And there I think there's an interesting comparison with Soharto in that he was also a leader who had this mix of co-opting some of the radical groups or conservative groups, while also using the coercive forces of the state to try and find this balance. So it's one of those questions where Jakowi's own tensions there embody these deeper contradictions in the Indonesian state. So in some senses, there's nothing new here, but the challenges at the same time are just as fresh now, in a sense, and the questions as unresolved as they were in 1945. Early in his presidency, Jakowi highlighted his ambition to turn Indonesia into a global maritime fulcrum and to make it a developed economy by 2045. How much progress has the country made on those two very grand ambitions? Well, I think it's easier to take them separately. They are linked in the sense that Jakowi's maritime vision was partly about Indonesia's role as a diplomatic actor in the world and in Asia in particular, but it was also about developing the maritime economy. But let's take them separately. So on the diplomatic front, we haven't actually heard much about the global maritime fulcrum since it was launched. It was an idea that was really pushed by Rizal Sukma, who was then head of Indonesia's leading think tanks, CSIS, then were pointed by Jakowi to be ambassador to London. But the argument was never really fleshed out. I don't think Jakowi has spent much time thinking about it. By and large, because of the second question, he's really an economy first president. In his view of foreign policy, you might call it friends with benefits who has the most cash, the most investment dollars to offer Indonesia with the fewest conditions. That's what he sees the world for. That's what he sees diplomacy for as a tool to build the economy. Now, on the economic question, I think progress has been far slower than Jakowi expected. When he was elected as president in 2014, he talked about pushing Indonesia's GDP growth rate up to 7% a year, but it stayed static pretty much before COVID-19 and around 5%. There were signs that it was slowing even before the pandemic hit. So I think he made some progress, as I was saying earlier on infrastructure, on pushing these health and economic and health and education access initiatives, but not really enough deep structural reform. And that, I think, is because of another great contradiction that while Jakowi has talked a lot about making Indonesia's economy more open, more competitive, easier for foreigners to do business in, if you like. At the same time, he has these deep protectionist instincts, and he's actually provided over a sweeping campaign of nationalization, some of Indonesia's biggest mining and oil and gas assets. He's provided over a big program to increase the role of Indonesia's state-owned enterprises, which probably are the most dominant in any economy in the world outside of China, a little remarked upon facts. And I think yet again, he's reflecting this tension in the Indonesian public and Indonesian history that the country needs foreign investment. It needs foreign know-how if it's to reach these grand goals to be a developed country, to be a prosperous and more equal country. But on the other hand, because of Indonesia's really bracing and unpleasant experiences with Dutch colonial exploitation, effectively liberalism, economic liberalism, is a dirty word because it's seen as being tied to the Dutch capitalists and how they exploited Indonesia. So it's a really difficult balance, and I don't think Jakowi has found a stable balance, which is why Indonesia hasn't been able to attract the foreign investment in needs to really push its economy on. Because after all, foreign investors, they can live with protectionism, but they need stability. And I think Jakowi hasn't found that stable ground that say Japan, Taiwan, South Korea found during their growth spurts, where they had industrial policies that favored state-owned companies, they favored the domestic economy, but they gave enough opportunities for foreigners in the right sector and they gave predictability. So he's still struggling to get there. And I think COVID makes it harder because as everywhere else in the world, it's driven this debate in Indonesia about do we need to be more self-reliant, whether it's drugs, food or other factors. You mentioned China. Many countries around the world have seen their attitudes and public opinions to China harden in recent years in tandem really with China's hardening of its own external policies. What's happening to Indonesian thinking and positioning on China? And in particular, how does Jakowi, what's his sort of lens onto the PRC and his counterpart, China's President Xi Jinping? When Jakowi made his first trip to Beijing, I think it was to a Belt and Road Forum, he came back, seemingly pretty impressed, largely because Xi Jinping had taken him on a bit of a tour of some of China's great development projects. I think they'd seen the high-speed rail and other initiatives. And I think he saw the ability of the Communist Party to transform China's economy as something impressive, something to learn from, I suspect, that has something to do with Jakowi's own push to increase the role of state-owned enterprises. He thought, this is a good model. We can use these guys as a tool to really drive economic growth and development and build our national economy and our own resilience. So I think that's one part of it. But of course, Indonesia, like every other country in the region, has its own tensions with China. There's no explicit territorial dispute as such, but China's nine-dash line cuts into the northern tip of Indonesia's exclusive economic zone in the Natuna Sea. And in the last five or 10 years, there's been quite a few incidents where Chinese and Indonesian vessels of various flavors have clashed with each other. So while Jakowi wants to get the investment dollars from China, he's really keen to keep the money flowing at various times when maritime tensions have increased. He's had to show a hard line on the sovereignty questions. So a couple of times earlier this year and in 2016, I believe, Jakowi flew out to the Natuna Sea. He did these cabinet meetings on Indonesian Navy vessels and said that he wouldn't make any compromises when it comes to Indonesian sovereignty. But beyond those instances, we haven't seen a dramatic push to improve Indonesia's naval capacity, its broader capacity to actually police its waters, simply because I think Jakowi's not that interested in that aspect of things. He's more focused on the economy. And I think he also understands that Indonesia has a large ethnic Chinese minority population. There is an unfortunate history of violence against that community and tensions. And I think he's reluctant to see those old wounds reopen. So he tries to play the great power politics element of it down and play up the practicalities of Chinese investment, creating jobs for Indonesians. But it's a delicate compromise. And we've seen time and again in the last few years, these campaigns spreading disinformation in Indonesia, claiming that there are millions of Chinese people brought in by Jakowi to take Indonesian jobs. I think Jakowi's political opponents know it's a weak point and that's why Jakowi really plays down the talk of what's going on and really focuses on just getting things done quietly. All right, let me turn to the bilateral relationship between Australia and Indonesia. Jakowi was warmly received here on a state visit recently to Canberra, the new trade agreement, I think finally came into force in July, I believe, after a decade of negotiations. So how would you assess the state of the bilateral relationship at the moment? I think Malcolm Turnbull said recently that he thought the relationship was the best it's ever been. Do you agree with that? I think the relationship's going really well. It hasn't always been easy in recent years and there was a tendency for small disputes or disputes in particular areas to toxify the whole relationship and lead to kind of diplomatic histrionics, often on both sides or tip-for-tap withdrawals of ambassadors and the like. I think what's been really good in the last few years is a maturation on both sides and a willingness to accept that Indonesia and Australia are probably more different than any other two neighbouring countries anywhere else in the world. There'll be disputes and differences and there's a need to be able to silo those, accept that there are differences of opinion and move on with the rest of the relationship. And I think that's really been heartening to see in the last few years with the conclusion of this trade agreement. There have been various issues that have cropped up, including the mooted move of the Australian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which, if it had happened, would have upset a lot of people in Indonesia, but that was played down, actually. Even though it was an election year in Indonesia, it was managed quite well. So I think that's really heartening to see and there's a lot of potential, obviously, for the relationship to develop, particularly on the economic front. That's what Jacowe's most interested in. It's also, in a sense, what Australia most needs because it's one of the most undeveloped relationships of Australia's partnerships in Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region. So there's a lot of potential there, but I think it's gonna be difficult to move the economic ties forward for a while because of the pandemic and the impact that's having on the economy in Indonesia and here, as well as the difficulties of cross-border travel. Do you think that Canberra's expectations that it puts on the relationship with Indonesia are too low or too high? And why do I put that question? Because sometimes people say Australian governments have lost their sense of ambition with Indonesia and we should be taking it much more seriously. But on the other hand, I recall one of our first Lowy Institute papers by Ken Ward, condemned a crisis, argued that our expectations are always too high, for example. And he, Ken, argued that the long, the statement by a number of recent prime ministers, for example, that no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia is, he thought that was wrong and it also set the expectations too high. So what do you think? Have we got the expectations about right now? Is that what you're saying that we're sort of more realistic now? I think things are generally better in the sense that there is a clearer understanding of Indonesia's potential as well as its limits. I worry about what I always worry about in politics, which is the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. So I think there's a lot of talk about the importance of Indonesia, but at the same time, we see cutbacks in Indonesian language study and funding for that. We see cutbacks in funding for Asian studies as well. So that's concerning. I think the other question, if you like, is not understanding of the importance of Indonesia, but the expectation for what Indonesia can do in the world. And I think there's a lot of people in Australia who on the one hand fear that Indonesia will one day be so strong it invades Australia or represents the number one military threat, but at the same time, they also think Indonesia could be this great balancing force in Asia to really shift the balance of the region back against China and maintain the existing order. And I think in a sense, they're probably wrong on both counts. Indonesia is really struggling, even before COVID, with a lot of domestic questions about building the economy, domestic political stability. And actually even before Jacobi, there's really limited time and limited capacity for Indonesia to be looking at these broader questions of the regional balance of power. I think that's one element. And the other thing is, it needs to be a better understanding of Indonesia's non-aligned position, its strategic autonomy, and how much it will protect that at all costs. And that goes back to these previous domestic disputes, political turbulence that often arose when Sokarno and then Soharto took much more active positions in global affairs. It tended to lead to these deep ructions in Indonesia and actually make domestic politics less stable. So I think Indonesia first and foremost wants to protect its freedom of action. So it does worry, of course, about China becoming too powerful, but I think it's not gonna be willing to bandwagon in the sense that some people here hope it will. And I think we have to understand that Indonesia's capacity to intervene and desire isn't quite as strong as some people hope. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be ambition for the relationship. It's more about accepting Indonesia as it is. You mentioned Sokarno and Soharto, who were both significant international figures and even with SBY, you had a figure who loved diplomacy, loved international relations. Jakowi is not like that. As you said, he's very inward looking. He's very focused on the Indonesian economy. Is he the outlier, do you think? Or is this the new normal? Do you think? I mean, it depends, of course, who follows Jakowi. But Indonesia does have this sense of itself and its importance in Southeast Asia. Do you think Jakowi is just an outlier or do you think this might be a new trend? I think I'd actually argue the difference between Jakowi and SBY and foreign policy is more one of at the margins and rhetorical positioning than actual diplomatic effectiveness because Indonesia's core foreign policy view of the world is that it must remain independent and active. And I don't think that's changed that much since the SBY days. It's just a slight shift in emphasis. So SBY was more interested in the grandstanding speeches. Jakowi's not really interested in doing that, but he does have an ability to charm foreign leaders. He doesn't go to the UN General Assembly, but he does like to go to APEC and the G20 forums where there's potential to promote Indonesia as an investment destination. And he always has an ability there in his own folksy way to win people over. He clearly won over Malcolm Turnbull, who I think described him as one of the world's most important leaders and a cool cat in every respect. So there's a strange situation where on the one hand, he's personally quite charming, but he's just simply not interested in foreign policy. I think in a sense, Jakowi does embody how Indonesians see their place in the world. I think we have to accept that. He is a democratically elected leader and I think most Indonesians want him to be focusing on developing the economy, trying to ensure they have better jobs, better access and better quality of health and education. You're right that Mr Turnbull put a big emphasis on Jakowi, was very impressed by him, described him in his book, I think, as the hope of the side. Mr Morrison from memory went up, I think, to Jakarta for Jakowi's second inauguration, if I'm right. But there've been a lot of external shocks during Mr Morrison's prime ministership. And he's been very focused on COVID and on China and on some other issues. What's happened to the relationship recently? Is there a, I think you and some of my other colleagues have worried that the Pacific step up might mean a Southeast Asian step down. How would you sort of summarize our approach to Indonesia under Mr Morrison's prime ministership? Well, I don't think there's been a great shift. I mean, this is, if anything, a small sea, as well as potentially big sea conservative government. And really, there hasn't been a great shift in emphasis. They've really taken over the settings that were already in place. So I think the relationship has been handled pretty well. Frankly, I think what worries me more generally is, yeah, the lack of increased spending on Southeast Asia, the fact that this is a really important region. I think there's some times in Australia a sense that because Australia has this position as the number one actor in the Pacific, let's put more focus there because we can get more done, we can get more bang for our buck. In Southeast Asia, it's too big. China, the US, Japan, Korea, there are too many actors. But I would urge more ambition for Southeast Asia, which in the end probably requires more money. It's not possible to keep getting more for less. I think the other thing that worries me, which is specific to the current situation with COVID and the travel restrictions in Australia is kind of leaving the diplomatic battlefield open to others because we've seen in the last few weeks the Chinese foreign minister, the Japanese foreign minister, the Indonesian foreign minister going on maneuvers. They've been traveling around the region. Chinese foreign minister travel to Europe. They're present. And I know people are doing a lot of video conferencing. You can get a lot done in theory, but it's not the same as the human touch. And I think there has to be a concern there about Australia not being present in the diplomatic contest, this great power competition we're seeing now, which is unrivaled in recent years, while others are on that ground. And I think things like that will be noted and remembered in Jakarta, in Napierdor, in Singapore, in other capitals. So I think that's a concern. Of course, I know that politicians here have their own issues domestically, but I think it would be remiss not to point out that tension and how the rest of the world has started to get back to that diplomatic normalcy. All right, we've got a... I want to go to questions from the audience. I have collected already some questions that people submitted in advance, but there's still a chance to submit some questions. So please do so now via the Q&A button. I'll try to get through as many questions as I can. So the first question I have is from John Tillerman, who's a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. John asks, does Jacoey have the ambition and clout to muster ASEAN into a more coherent regional force? No, next question. Jacoey is not interested in Indonesia leading ASEAN. I mean, from talking to some of the people who work with him, Jacoey doesn't really like ASEAN meetings because when he first went, people just sat there and read out statements and he thought, what's the point? If everyone knows what they're going to say, why don't they just share those statements in advance and then we can actually talk about something useful? So I think he finds it a personally rigid and frustrating format and I don't think he necessarily sees Indonesia as playing the leading role that others expect it to. Having said that, I think he initially appointed a foreign minister, Retna Marsudi, who was much lower profile than her predecessors, but she has grown into the role and I think Jacoey has given her a bit more room to try and push some leadership for Indonesia in the region. So we've seen ASEAN adopting this outlook on the Indo-Pacific, which was really an Indonesian project and I think that represents a diplomatic success for Indonesia. The problem I have with it is I'm not sure what it means. It's basically a restatement of ASEAN values about non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, about peaceful resolution of disputes and about focusing on economic development. So I think there's some wiggle room for Retna Marsudi to push things a bit further, but I don't think Jacoey wants to expend much of his hard fought political capital on regional diplomacy. All right, we have a question from Daniel Campbell, who's a student at Monash University in Melbourne and Daniel asks, every year the Lowy Institute poll shows that Australians know little about Indonesia. What is the cause of this ignorance? I wish I could give you the answer. I know that the data in our annual survey is a cause of much frustration to people at DFAT. It's a cause of much frustration to people in Indonesia, but I think Australia has no monopoly on ignorance about Indonesia. I think it's the same in much of the rest of the world. If you went around the world with a map of the world and asked people to put a flag in Indonesia, you probably wouldn't get many good answers. Many people have been to Bali, but they're not aware that it's actually part of Indonesia. So I think it's not unique to Australia and I think it comes down here to that question of, yes, the country's a geographic and close, but they're so different in terms of politics, in terms of culture, social experience, and there simply aren't enough people who've spent enough time in Indonesia, apart from Bali, or learning about Indonesia. So I suspect you'd find in Indonesia that the understanding about Australia is also pretty limited. Well, let me ask you on that, because we have a question from John Hoffman, who asks, what do Indonesians really think about Australia and Australians? I can't speak for the Indonesian people, but I would say, at least diplomatically, Australia doesn't figure as highly in Indonesia's strategic view of the world as the other way around, at least as far as the rhetoric here goes. So I think Indonesia is much more focused on its own near backyard in ASEAN. It's focused on China, Japan diplomatically, and I think under JAKOI, it's particularly because of that, sort of almost like a mercantilist view of the world, that you do most with those who bring you the most benefits for your country and for your economy. So I think diplomatically it doesn't figure as highly, and it isn't a great understanding. There are also frustrations in Indonesia. I mean, I think two years ago, I went to this conference. It was meant to be a conference about Australia and Indonesia, and one of the great frustrations was visa access. So it's very, very hard for Indonesians to get visa access to Australia. They have to jump through a lot of hoops even before COVID-19, and that gives many Indonesians a sense that while Australia talks a good game on developing the relationship, actually that implies a low level of trust in the Indonesian people, and there's a certain frustration there with that, which I think is genuine, JAKOI raised the visa issue when he came to Canberra earlier this year. So I think it's a difficult relationship on both sides with a lot of room to grow at the public level, I would say. So we're not top of mind for Indonesians, but would it also be fair to say that some of the sort of the negativity that has existed in the past that Australia is a sort of quasi-colonial country, or we're interfering in their country in relation to East Timor, or by criticising Indonesian leaders for corruption, or by spying on Indonesian leaders, we're not top of mind, but is there a sense that there's not so much negativity on their side? I think, as I said earlier, there's been a maturing of the relationship. So it's still quite paradoxical. You'll still hear a lot of people in Indonesia raise that worry about Australia's intentions towards Papua in particular. Does Australia still want to steal Papua? Like they took East Timor, that's the sense of a lot of people popularly in Indonesia, unfortunately. So there's that on one side, but on the other hand, there's so much cooperation, particularly at a government-to-government level that goes on also at the education level. So many Indonesian officials have studied in Australia, and there are really good technical linkages between universities, between government officials, defence, cross-diplomacy, development, of course. So that exists at the same time as this other narrative. And in Indonesia, it's quite possible for both these views to exist, that on the one hand, you can have all this great practical cooperation with Australia, and on the other hand, there is that suspicion there still lurking in the background. We have a question from Daniel Woker, former ambassador and contributor to The Interpreter, asking, where does Europe fit into Jokowi's mindset? To what extent does he think about Europe? Well, Jokowi got his nickname from a European, from a French client of one of trade fairs. He attended selling his furniture, as he did back in the day, who wanted to distinguish him from all the other Indonesian furniture sellers called Joko. So he has an early connection to Europe through trade, through business. I think, again, it's no different to how he sees everyone else. He understands that the EU, European Union, is a big market for Indonesian products. He understands that European companies are big potential investors in Indonesia. And so in as far as that's the case, I think he's happy to pursue those relationships. There's talk of a trade deal with Europe, but there are a lot of thorny issues, not least Indonesia's palm oil industry and how it's seen and treated in European law, which has been a big bone of contention. But I don't think Jokowi takes a strategic view of these things as purely practical. If you guys are gonna offer us access to your market to sell our goods, that's great. If you guys are gonna give us investment dollars, give us technology, give us access to education and health, that's great. Beyond that, I don't think he's too bothered. We have a question from Thomas Mansfield, who's an Australian public servant. And Thomas asks, who do you see as Jokowi's likeliest successor? Well, like every good democracy, as soon as you're reelected, particularly in a term-limited system in Indonesia, like the US, the inevitable question is, who's gonna succeed you? It's so early to say, right, it's now 2020, it's 2024 for the next presidential election, the jockeying has begun. You'd have to say the early favorite is probably Prabowo Sobianto, currently Jokowi's defense minister, formerly twice-defeated rival of Jokowi, which kind of tells you something about how chaotic, but in the end, circular Indonesian politics can be that you could fight two bitterly for elections against someone, then bring them into your government and they might potentially be your successor. So he's one of the names in the frame. Then there are a whole bunch of other governors from Java in particular, who seem to have done a relatively good job, almost in Jokowi's mold of focusing on improving basic services at a local level. So they're eyeing potentially the 2024 race, but what it comes down to in Indonesia is getting enough support from the elite political parties to meet the high political party support threshold to be a candidate on the one hand, and on the other hand, you actually need to be electable. So Indonesia's elections remain really free, fair, hotly contested. So you actually have to have some retail political skill to win this race. So it remains to be seen. Prabowo, as I said, will be one of the names. He's effectively tried to be president four times and the voters have said no every time. He's gonna have a go, I'm sure, but others will and in the end, the Indonesian voters will decide. What sort of role, knowing Jokowi as well as you do, what sort of role do you think he would play after he leaves office? Well, until six months or a year ago, I guess most people would have imagined Jokowi would quietly leave the scene. But when he made this decision, or his son and son-in-law made their own independent democratic decision to run for election, I think it really changed how people saw Jokowi. And I think it's clearly an attempt to try and make sure he has some sort of stake in the political system. Mayor of Solo, if his son wins election, it's not a hugely powerful role, but I think it would give him quite a symbolic position as someone who's able, Jokowi's, who's still able to have influence in the political game and whose voice, who say matters. So I think we can expect him to try and play a role. He wants his focus on infrastructure, his focus on the economy to be continued. He wants to have a positive legacy and I think that's what the capital move is about as well. So he does clearly have his eye on his legacy, but he's not the sort of guy, Alar Tony Blair, who's gonna sit down four years ahead of time and plan out his exit from the stage day by day. Jokowi's gonna go by feel and it depends what happens in the chaotic world of politics around him. All right, we have a question from Richard Borsak, who's a former Wall Street journalist based in Jakarta. And he says this, you've highlighted the multiple reasons why many people have been frustrated with Jokowi, including the weakening of the Anti-Corruption Commission and his closeness to the military. But with common people, does Jokowi remain as popular as when he took office in 2014? Has he held, has he kept the faith, do you think? Remarkably so. If you look at Jokowi's approval ratings, they're in the 60% range. They haven't really moved much since 2014. We know that he was re-elected last year on a slightly bigger margin of victory than in 2014. So he remains remarkably popular. And while there is this elite debate and outside debate about Jokowi's weaknesses, to all intents and purposes, he's a remarkably successful leader as far as most Indonesians are concerned. I think one issue is that because so many of the media tycoons, the political parties have moved behind him, there aren't many elite voices in Indonesia criticizing Jokowi. So I think that's partly helping him dominate the debate. But he still has this amazing ability to connect with Indonesian voters. So when Jokowi said, when he was asked, for example, about why he hadn't instituted a lockdown, he said, oh, it doesn't work anywhere in the world, which we know isn't true. But he also said something along the lines of, well, if we have a lockdown, then people can't work. If people can't work, they won't have any money. If they don't have money, they can't eat. If they can't eat, they won't have an immunity and they'll get the virus. And I think while it's easy to laugh at Jokowi's unscientific comments about the lockdown, his way of communicating does just connect with people. And there is a core truth to it about the difficulties of managing Indonesia, which I think means that he has remained very popular. One other thing that's worth understanding is that voter surveys show that Indonesians themselves are quite illiberal in a sense that they view democracy as a tool to deliver economic benefits. They view it in instrumental terms. They're not so interested in the niceties of having a concerted opposition and individual rights. They're much more focused on welfare overall. So in that sense, again, things that are seen as Jokowi's failings by a lot of political analysts. And to be fair, some of Jokowi's own civil society supporters by many Indonesians, they would be seen as, you know, this guy is listening to us. He's doing things the right way. A couple of questions from the audience on Jokowi's external policies. From Ramat Kayo, who's an associate fellow at ICS, does Indonesia have the diplomatic capacity to help broker a solution to the Rehingya crisis in Myanmar? And I guess more broadly, to what extent does the plight of the Rehingya really chime in Indonesia? That's a really interesting question from Ramat. I think Indonesia has capacity to a certain extent. I think there's a lack of willingness to go too far on any diplomatic issue, particularly in ASEAN, because of these principles of non-interference in internal affairs. Indonesia has its own separatist issues in Papua. And so it doesn't want to set up a principle where you can interfere. But I think Rentno Marsudi has worked quite hard within these limitations of ASEAN to bring attention to the Rehingya issue. And in its own way, Indonesia has pushed, as far as it can, to push the Myanmar government quietly to do more and to try and rally some of the other governments of Southeast Asia onto the issue. But I think within ASEAN as an organization, there are always going to be limits to how far these issues can go. In terms of public opinion, there have been times when there have been big protests in Jakarta and elsewhere in sympathy with the Rehingya, who are fellow Muslims. So I think that that is there. But it hasn't really caught on as a political issue in the same way that, say, support for Palestine in Indonesia has. I'm not sure why that's the case, but so far it hasn't got the same public opinion. More interesting comparison here as well with the Uighur issue, where Indonesia, at a government level, has been remarkably quiet about the plight of the Uighurs, like a lot of other Muslim governments, governments of Muslim majority nations. I think that's where the real policy comes in and a lack of a desire to upset China. But also, importantly, this question of non-interference, which is really, really important to the Indonesian government, to the Indonesian military. They understand that China wants to keep its country together and they have to deal with their own separatist issues. And Indonesia sees it from that perspective more than kind of feeling for their fellow Muslims in Xinjiang. Speaking again of China, Gretinab's killer at University of Queensland asks, do you think Jakarta has been emboldened by coalitions of like-minded countries, including many lateral mechanisms, to push back more strongly against Beijing in relation to the South China Sea? Well, Indonesia is slowly getting more involved with mini-lateral cooperation, as it's called, small coalitions of partners looking at different issues. I mean, I did some research earlier this year on this nascent Australia-India-Indonesia grouping, which looks like they may have their first-ever meeting of foreign ministers and defence ministers this year. So Indonesia is interested in talking more, but there's a real concern that this isn't seen as ganging up on China if you can, ganging up on a hegemonic superpower. Indonesia is really reluctant to do anything that's seen as being against any one country. So I think they're feeling their way, but I think it's far short of standing up with other nations on the South China Sea. I remember in 2016, I think, when the arbitral ruling came out, in the Philippines case against China, talking to a really senior Indonesian diplomat and asking them, are you going to put out a strong statement in support of the Philippines and in support of the ruling, which effectively said that China's nine-dash line was not a legal claim? And they said to me, well, why would we do that? We can free ride here. The Philippines has done all the work. They can take all the pushback from China and we can get all the benefits because this is a legal ruling. I think that was the attitude. The problem there, of course, is if you're not morally standing up with your partners in the region, you're not presenting a knighted front. I think it's quite weak. So we have seen Indonesia more recently put out stronger statements, but I think there's a tension there that Indonesia is trying to manage and it's reluctant to put its head above the parapet, just like most of the other nations of Southeast Asia all playing a very delicate balancing game. I'm attracted to the idea of running an entire low institute event without mentioning Donald Trump, but we have a question from Philip Utama. What do we know about Jacoes' relationship with Donald Trump and the US government just quickly, if we can, Ben? I think there hasn't been much there, which is probably a good thing. Indonesia hasn't figured very highly in Donald Trump's imagination or his tweets, which is probably exactly where you want to be. I was in Washington last year and met an Indonesian diplomat who was working there and they said, we're working really hard to make sure no one thinks about Indonesia, no one says anything about Indonesia, and then we'll be okay. So I think they've done a really good job on that front. I'm gonna ask the last question, Ben, and go back to where I started this discussion. I think when you're writing a biography, it always helps if you like your subject. I wrote a book about FDR and his Franklin Roosevelt and his system for managing America's entry into the Second World War and the world, and the project occupied my mind for a long time. But one reason that was okay was that in addition to admiring Roosevelt, I liked him. I found him a charming company, not only for his friends and colleagues, but for his biographers. And I think Winston Churchill said that meeting Roosevelt for the first time was like drinking your first glass of champagne. Now, I don't wanna compare Franklin Roosevelt to Joko Widodo, but do you like Jacqui? Do you find him an attractive personality? Do you find him charming? Where do you, you've had to spend, he spends a lot of time in your head probably. How do you feel about Jacqui from that sense? Oh, I think he's a very contradictory guy, which is why I wrote this book. Even though people hate contradictions, people keep wanting to take one part of my book and say, oh, you're anti-Jacoi or you're a sucker for Jacqui. But I think he's a very contradictory guy. On the one hand, he seems so simple and the things he says and does seem simple. On the other hand, he basically pulled one over on all these elite Indonesian figures, billionaires, generals, the former presidents. So I am quite charmed by him. I think it's an incredible backstory going from where he did to the presidency in such a short period of time. It's like I say in the book, it's like a second-hand car dealer from Pittsburgh in nine years, becoming president of the United States. So yeah, I think he's a fascinating guy and he is remarkably cool for the most part in really challenging circumstances and his ability to connect. It's just something else. You can't fake that, right? So many politicians these days are surrounded by spin doctors, by advisors. Everything they do is stage managed and Jacoby is a guy. He does have advisors, of course, but he's a guy who just felt his way to the top. And I think, as I say in the book, he got there accidentally on purpose and I just love that combination of a guy who has something, he has some cunning. People always underestimate him and by hook or by crook, with a bit of luck and a lot of talent, he makes his way to the top and he embodies the hope of Indonesia that you can come from nowhere to the top by saying you're gonna do the right thing. You'll be less corrupt. You'll make people's lives better. So I think at the end of the day, it's a heartening story about Indonesia, but it's also one that tells us about the limits of how far you can go in such a short period of time. And I think Indonesia has a long way to go. A lot of challenges to come, but there's so much potential still and I think Jacoby embodies that. Well, thank you, Ben, for ending on such a compelling pitch for this fantastic Lowy Institute paper published by Penguin, Man of Contradictions, Joko Wododo and the Struggle to Remake Indonesia. It's available for purchase now from all good bookstores and online. Thank you very much, Ben, for joining me. Thank you, everybody at home for joining us for this latest Lowy Institute live event. Please keep your eye out for future events and also please keep your eye open for our podcasts, the brilliant COVID cast and also my own podcast, The Director's Chair. Today, we released the second part of my interview with Jake Sullivan, the Senior Policy Advisor to Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden and Jake is very interesting on Russia, on China, on alliances, Australia and climate diplomacy. So I'd urge you all to have a listen to that. So thanks again, Ben. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen and from everyone at the Lowy Institute, thanks for joining us and stay safe and well.