Australian students send home positive message

For many Indonesians, the sentiments of the Australian public toward them are a mystery.

But Australian public opinion of Indonesia has been disproportionately swayed by the media’s focus on asylum seekers and terrorism.

The recent visit to Indonesia by Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd highlights the lack of understanding between the two nations.

Rudd’s visit coincided with the start of the annual “ACICIS” program run out of Perth, Western Australia, and made clear the need for stronger ties between the two neighbors.

ACICIS stands for “Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies”.

The non-profit program, designed to engage Australian university students with Indonesian society, sees 45 students from across Australia take part in 6-week internships in and around Jakarta.

“They’re here, pursuing their careers in journalism and development studies, but more importantly [they are] getting on top of this great and fascinating subject called Indonesia.” said Rudd of the program’s participants. “This is terrific for the future. We want more young Australians to be doing this sort of thing.”

ACICIS aims to re-educate both the Australian public and it’s media to strengthen ties between the two nations in the future.

“Indonesia is something of a multicultural marvel, something Australia purportedly calls itself,” says ACICIS participant Lia Collinson. “The wealth of knowledge that can be shared through programs like this makes you realize what strong companions the two nations could be together on a world stage.”

Late last year, Australian public television broadcaster SBS ran the much-publicized show Go Back To Where You Came From, the title referring to the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that ran rampant during the 2001 Australian election campaign.

The Australian Coalition government at the time turned border protection into a major election issue in the wake of both 9/11 and the incident surrounding the sinking of the SIEV 4 (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel).

The show saw six ordinary Australians embark on a 25-day journey that traced, in reverse, the journeys refugees have taken to get to Australia, the hope being that their preconceived notions about refugees would be challenged.

Professor Sharron Pickering from Monash University states that in Australia there is a “mundane deviance discourse” — an inherent assumption by the public that an individual who seeks asylum is doing something wrong.

This notion has been built up by both the Australian media and its political figureheads who insist that the arrival of these “boat people” is a cause for alarm, despite UNHCR figures that state Australia receives only 0.4 percent of global asylum claims.

The successes of the ACICIS program reflects a slow turnaround of Australian public ignorance of the countries to their north, as highlighted in recent words by Australia’s Victorian Premier, Ted Bailieu.