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ndonesia and Australia'€™s mini summit was held in Batam last week, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono hosting the visit of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

After Abbott had telephoned Yudhoyono and Indonesian Ambassador to Australia Nadjib Riphat Kesoema returned to Canberra, the Batam summit has represented a new stepping stone to renew positive relations, not merely for Yudhoyono but also for his successor.

A warm, healthy and close bilateral relationship should be established, not only by increasing trade volume, exchanging high officials and through financial assistance, but most importantly through genuine trust and fairness.

In this era of very close relations, heads of state, presidents, prime ministers and ministers have the privilege and access to undertake direct, free communication as well as openly discuss common solutions, without turning to tapping phones. This was a sinful act, part of a Cold War mentality that has returned. There is no longer any moral justification for Australia to adopt a two-faced diplomacy.

Stop spying, sign a new code of conduct and do not turn back boats carrying undocumented migrants to Indonesia '€” this is the most important message for Abbott.

Indonesia did not see any logic behind these motives because they simply had nothing to do with Australian national security matters.

This is why a normalization in relations requires genuine trust rebuilding and a non-defective trust to take hold so that past offenses are prevented from recurring.

Indonesia had halted bilateral cooperation with Australia, which fortunately did not include a public boycott of Australian products. Does the Abbott administration seriously want to restore the damage?

There are always reasons to doubt the Abbott administration'€™s intentions to sincerely listen to Jakarta. Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University, for example, deemed that Australia had turned a blind eye to the damage.

It comes as no surprise. Last May, the Australian media reported that the Australian navy had loaded
two Albanians and one Indonesian onto a boat, before returning it back to a remote island off eastern Indonesia. Australia has not yet clarified the matter.

It is hard to believe that such a '€œscandalous act'€ of loading extra passengers onto the boat and sending it back to Indonesia recurred while Australia was making new gestures of restoration.

'€œWhat Australia is doing now is clearly against all comprehensive principles in dealing with issue of asylum seekers. Australia is acting as if it can simply move the problem to its neighbor. The boat has been forced back,'€ said Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 5.

'€œThis proves that the Abbott policy has not been successful. The unilateral policy coerces asylum seekers, threatens them and violates their human rights '€” and the policy does not bear fruit, because the boats keep coming,'€ he went on.

Australia and Indonesia initiated the Bali Process, but the Australian government'€™s Operation Sovereign Borders has done a lot of damage to Australia-Indonesia relations.

It seems Australia simply does not want to listen and is only reluctantly committed to moving forward the Bali Process.

People smuggling and trafficking in persons remain some of the biggest challenges that require the genuine cooperation of countries of origin, transit and destination.

The Bali Process and the Jakarta Declaration on the Irregular Movement of Persons are relevant forums for international burden sharing, collective responsibility and coordinated joint actions to prevent ills such as people smuggling and human trafficking from recurring.

Australia needs to adopt principles with a '€œhumanitarian pro-victim approach'€ to reduce risk to life.

Marg Hutton'€™s 2011-2014 report stated that more than 1,550 men, women and children had already drowned at sea while entering Australian waters. This fact should be part of all efforts pushing for renewal of a partisan policy.

The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) strongly criticized Australia'€™s aggressive maritime policy.

Now is the right time for Australia to listen and prove '€” with genuine efforts '€” to renew important relations with Indonesia. Enough is enough. The stakes are too high.

The writer, an alumnus of the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta, is an Indonesian diplomat. The views expressed are his own.