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here was excitement and optimism in the air. I was pleasantly surprised last Thursday (March 10, 2011) at a function organized at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Education Foundation to welcome participant teachers of the BRIDGE.

Project Young Indonesian teachers, who this year were selected from Muhamadiyah schools in various regions of Indonesia. People mingled easily among their Australian counterparts, speaking in both English and Indonesian. The video footage shown during the dinner revealed even younger Australians and Indonesians speaking each other’s languages.

Australians speaking Indonesian and Indonesians speaking English is certainly not a new phenomenon. However, over the last 10 years in Australia, hearing young Australians speaking Indonesian is fast becoming a thing of the past. According to Murdoch University Indonesian specialist David Hill, the number of students learning Indonesian has dropped by an average of 10,000 every year. Between 2001 and 2009, the number of tertiary students learning the language has plummeted by 30 percent across Australia. This trend is not slowing – let alone turning. Some universities have had to close down their Indonesian programs because they are no longer viable to run. In other words, funding for such programs has dried up.

Let us look back to see the events which have led up to this unfortunate state.

The Howard government axed an Asia literacy program for Australian schools in 2002 – as the estimated worth of which in today’s terms is about $100 million a year. When the Rudd government came into power in late 2007, he replaced the program, albeit on a much smaller financial scale of $62 million over four years.

Understandably, the Rudd government’s injection of funds was not sufficient to return the enthusiasm of the past. University of Melbourne Asian Law Center director Tim Lindsey agrees with Hill that Australia has less capacity in Asian languages now than in the 1960s.

This is an emerging situation which should worry those who are politically and socially aware of and concerned about regional harmony. Indonesia is still viewed with a degree of suspicion by many Australians who believe that Indonesians hate Australians. In fact, the 2002 Bali bombings were aimed specifically at Australians, they say. The court in Bali sentenced Schapelle Corby and nine other Australians harshly for bringing drugs into the country – something a great number of Australians do not regard as a crime fitting the sentences. In their minds this is only further proof that Indonesians harbor bad intentions in relations with Australians.

It is obvious that a better understanding of Indonesia is badly needed. This serious misconception is certainly undermining the existing good faith between the two countries. Equally serious measures are needed to address this. More intensive and extensive learning about Indonesia would be a good start. However, the negative image created by misconceptions has led to an increaser in Australian students abandoning Indonesian studies. A recent audit found that 99 percent of school students who take up Indonesian have dropped it by year 12.

Having observed the seemingly inevitable disappearance of Indonesian studies from Australia’s education system, it is undoubtedly heartening to see how the Australia-Indonesia BRIDGE project is maintaining its strength and commitment.

The Asia Education Foundation, along with its partners Australia-Indonesia Institute and the Myer Foundation, initiated this scholarly partnership program in 2008. With combined funding from the Myer Foundation and the Australian government through AusAID, the BRIDGE project has been managed with consistent competence — picking up what many conventional school programs cannot afford.

It has, among other things, opened up many, many lines of communication between teachers and students from the two countries. Email exchanges between students of partnering schools go beyond mere mutual language instruction. They provide each other with knowledge about their lives and day-to-day general concerns.

For example, one assignment completed by a school on Kangaroo Island, a relatively remote area in South Australia, is a comparative study on environmental degradation on their island relative to similar circumstances on Java. Excluding interviews with local farmers, the presentation was delivered in Indonesian.

At the tertiary education level, the Australian Consortium for ‘In-country’ Indonesian Studies, known by its acronym ACICIS, a program managed by Murdoch University in Western Australia, has been able to continue thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation and the consortium’s strong commitment. By spending three months studying in various Indonesian universities, Australian students have been able to gain better and broader understanding of their neighbor’s cultures and later help dispel the built-up of suspicions harbored by many Australians.

The effort to clarify international misconceptions is always better coming from compatriots rather than from sources of suspicion.

Do we really need to know each other better? Why can’t we just agree that we are different?

We are not situated on opposite sides of the globe, and are thereby certainly not irrelevant to one another. Not only are we neighbors, we are also important economic partners and regional security partners. Mutual trust is crucial. If we are different, we should know where the differences are, instead of wasting our energy in trying to address what most likely does not exist.

What is stopping both the Indonesian and Australian governments from being more proactive in addressing the situation?



The writer is a journalist and an adjunct research associate at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne.