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View all search resultsThe Flynn effect: COVID-19 brings Australia even closer to Indonesia
COVID-19 could potentially represent a reset in the Australia-Indonesia relationship, one based on a range of yet unforeseen people-to-people problem-solving possibilities.
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T
he COVID-19 crisis has produced an intriguing parallel response in neighboring Australia and Indonesia. This has revealed the limitations of the political process in both countries, while at the same time creating important ‘circuit breaking’ possibilities.
Winston Churchill once described liberal democracy as, “An appalling muddle, riddled with faults, dangers, unfairness, and contradictions”. Indeed, the vagaries of political culture in both countries well predates the pandemic, with both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo effectively forced by community expectations to navigate a middle way between essential public health measures and the survival of their respective economies—ultimately struggling with both.
The Morrison government, for instance, declared that the national vaccination program “wasn’t a race” — when it clearly was, losing critical public health momentum and in the process undermining confidence in the government. In Indonesia, the Jokowi administration prioritized the tourism sector to protect “brand Indonesia” over a hard closed border COVID response—damaging both.
In fairness to President Jokowi, before the pandemic a staggering 80 percent of the population in Bali was directly engaged in tourism and now the island is experiencing severe economic hardship.
My purpose here however is not to criticize politicians but rather to consider the thinking behind the appointment of senior military men to manage the pandemic response and to consider the possibilities associated with this new thinking.
In March, the Australian Defense Organization established a COVID taskforce and seconded Lt. Gen. J.J. Frewen from active duty to lead it. Gen. Frewen was then chosen by Prime Minister Morrison to be the coordinator general of the National COVID Vaccine Taskforce.
Morrison significantly commented that the appointment gave the government an opportunity to, “step up another gear”, and that “A completely new organizational structure could solve a very big problem” — particularly the application of military-level planning in the logistics of the vaccine rollout.
