RI ‘prefers Labor’ in Australia poll

Climate change and asylum talks between Australia, Indonesia and the region could be at stake if the conservative coalition led by Tony Abbott defeats Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Labor Party in Australia’s elections, which will be held Aug. 21, say experts.

Experts agreed that the Indonesian government would likely prefer to continue working with a government led by the incumbent Labor Party rather than the opposition Conservative Coalition.

Abbot is a self-proclaimed climate change skeptic and has taken a confrontational stance against asylum seekers from Asia. He has made “stopping boat people” one of his campaign pledges.

“The outlook of many observers in the region of Australia will definitely become far more pessimistic in regard to how the country may improve its record on climate change if Abbott is elected,” Mutiara Pertiwi, an expert on regional issues at the Islamic State University, told The Jakarta Post.

“Many regional plans may have to be reviewed as a result,” she added.

Another expert, Hariyadi Wirawan at the University of Indonesia, said that despite Abbott’s stance, he expects no major changes regardless of who wins the election.

“Both Labor and the opposition have very similar ideas concerning the way they want to develop Australia’s relationship with Indonesia, especially regarding trade,” Hariyadi said.

A recent report from an independent international policy think tank, the Lowy Institute, said that business and investment links between Australia and Indonesia remained underdeveloped.

New Zealand, with a population of just 2 million people and an economy with one-fifth of Indonesia’s GDP, has more trade with Australia than does Indonesia.

The report also said that relations between the countries were focused primarily on “a negative set of security-related issues”, and said that one of Australia’s most important relationships will continue to stagnate without further incentives.

Mutiara said that the defining difference between Abbott and Gillard was the political legacies they inherited from their predecessors, John Howard of the Liberal Party and Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party.

“John Howard was always a more confrontational figure when he was premier than was Rudd,” Mutiara said, adding that “Rudd had a more Asian style in his attempts to establish a more friendly narrative with neighbors in the region.”

Haryadi said that high-profile incidents between Indonesia and Australia, such as the standoff between officials and 78 Sri Lankan refugees who refused to disembark from the Australian ship Oceanic Explorer, were more a matter of “technical problems” than a serious strain on relations.

Tension will remain, however, concerning asylum seekers regardless of who is voted into power, Haryadi added.

Mutiara said that the Indonesian government was more likely to care about what the Australian government did than who was in power. “At the end of the day, what matters to our government is the design of positive policies — not who designed them.”