Very good article.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, our prime strategic partner would expect us to sink the shipping of our prime trading partner."

Definitely not a good look.

The upside of the whole thing is that everyone has an interest in peace and free trade, and Australia should exert itself to promote them.

"If goods don't cross borders, armies will."
Bastiat

It was in fact the economic policies of protectionism that gave rise to the military policies of expansionism that led to WWII. With free trade, if you can't physically produce something, it doesn't matter. You can just buy it in. But protectionist policies, to the extent of their protectionism deny entire national communities the advantages of the division of labour, which is the economic basis of human society. Thus protectionism is fundamentally anti-social and worse, being backed by force.

Australia's diplomatic strategy should be to encourage peace and free trade, and to discourage war, aggression, and what amounts to the same thing, socialism in all its forms.

A good long read which packs in enough themes for 2 or 3 articles.

What jumped out for me was the possibility that Indonesia's economy might, by 2030, be larger than the UK or Germany's and Australia's. See in the 10th paragraph the hyperlink "belarger than those of Germany and Britain" leading to http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/archive/indonesias-economy-to-be-in-worlds-top-six-in-2030-standard-chartered/

If there is a correlation of a large Indonesian economy having a large military then Australia should watch its step. Abbott needs to sort out the current standoff with the Indons.

Pete

"It is the approach of a country which has no culture of an independent diplomacy."

Describes Australia perfectly! We will pay a heavy price for this abject failure in the future.

Even N.Z. stood up to the U.S. and the French. Australia has been falling over itself to accommodate to the U.S. pivot lock, stock and barrel seemingly unaware of its geographic location and importance of regional trading partners.

And now we have a village idiot as our Prime Minister!

Will the last one to leave turn out the light?

An excellent article.
We need to be extremely careful about upsetting our nearest neighbours just because some of the population don't like Muslims or immigration of Asians (asylum seekers?).

Trade with Indonesia is very important to Australia, whether we like it or not.
Abbott needs to fix this mess quick smart, no matter which Government 'spied', or where the asylum seekers set out from.

Abbott is not a good communicator, and neither is his deputy...so what to do?

Suse, what to do? Appoint Abbott as Sports Minister and Turnbull as P.M. would be a good start.

I agree this is a good article with mush to discuss. It might usefully have been a two-parter.

His description of Australia as "a country which has no culture of independent diplomacy" is particularly apt. It comes through in the capitulation on the TPP which the local media shamefully won't cover. It is apparent in the decision to revert to the Howard era policy of abstaining on UN General Assembly resolutions critical of the illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Our orders on that one apparently come from Tel Aviv.

All of this is compounded by the neophyte duo of Abbott and Bishop, whose blundering on the world stage, and not just Indonesia and Sri Lanka, is a major embarrassment for all of us who hope for an independent and intelligent foreign policy.

Not the least of the looming tragedies, as the author points out, is that in the foreseeable future American geo-political ambitions may put us in the position of sinking the ships of our major trading partner. If Morrison's approach is any guide, we won't even be told about the policy. No wonder this morning's poll has an undeserving Labour in the lead and Abbott in negative approval territory.

a major embarrassment for all of us who hope for an independent and intelligent foreign policy.

James O'Neill,
If Abbott is a major embarrassment in your academic wonder world than what did you consider Rudd & Gilard as ? There wouldn't be a term yet would there ?

I am pretty confident to see the day when you're all forced to back-peddle after a pragmatist Abbott will put the incompetent academic Rudd to shame.

Describes Australia perfectly! We will pay a heavy price for this abject failure in the future.
David G,
You mean the Whitlam, Hawke, Keating & Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Australia.

Individual, surely even you can see that Abbott has made a serious mistake in his dealings with Indonesia?

We aren't discussing the past right now, we are discussing what our new PM is doing about the current crisis.

Have you checked the polls lately?

I was reading the news on Zite' this morning:
"The first Nielsen poll since the September 7 election, published in Fairfax newspapers on Monday, puts the opposition Labor Party ahead of Abbott's Liberal/National coalition by 52 percent to 48 percent.
The Sydney Morning Herald said it was the first time in more than three years that the Labor Party was in front."

Oh dear...

Suseonline,
Only the likes of you say he's made a mistake. The likes of me say let's wait & see what the end result is before condemning everything before it happens. The next President of Indonesia is a Catholic so things will look somewhat different from now.

"The next President of Indonesia is a Catholic so things will look somewhat different from now."

Just who are you talking about here? Purnomo Yusgiantoro? Is he even running? I'm not really knowledgable about the subject, but isn't the candidate for the Golkar party Aburizal Bakrie?

Individual, are you suggesting Abbott communicates better with Catholics?
What, are you expecting them to pray together for the answer to the current crisis?
He certainly gets on well with Pell, that's for sure.

It is certainly not only me who feels this way about Abbott, obviously.
One only needs to read any newspaper re polls to discover that.
Of course, it could also be some sort of 'conspiracy' to oust Abbott, but I don't think we really need a conspiracy for this problem...

suggesting Abbott communicates better with Catholics?
Suseonline,
As per usual you're getting it all wrong by looking at things from the wrong angle with the wrong mentality. I'm saying that the situation will be different with a new leader who has a different approach to Abbott not Abbott with them.
It has absolutely & totally & utterly nothing to do with Abbott communicating better with a possible catholic leader of the largest muslim nation. It has everything to do with how Australia(ns) will be summed up by a different indonesian Government.
Australia is being judged by the australian morons in Bali behaving like rock apes. If Australians desire to be seen in a good light then they need to present themselves in a good light. The vast majority of decent Australians never go to Bali so the Indonesians don't get the opportunity to see decent Australians. All they have to judge us by are the morons invading Bali doped to the eyeballs & drunk out of their minds.

Individual, as usual you are generalising again by suggesting all Australians who have been to Bali are 'morons'.

Do you know ALL the people who have ever been to Bali?
Are you upset because you never had the opportunity to go to Bali?

You are the one who brought up the Catholic subject about Abbott, so don't get all huffy!

Suseonline,
Again, you're not thinking before hitting the keyboard or you're of such twisted character that you simply feel compelled to twist statements for the worse every time. I did not say all Australians. I stated that the Australians who behave badly, again, not all. It's the rock apes who are how many Balinese Indonesians view us by & who could blame them.
Anyhow, Abbott will turn out to be a far better diplomatic PM than that moron Lazarus was before him.

Hi Suseonline

Hang in there. Intelligent moderate commenters on OLO like you always have trouble from those with doctrinaire views on odd tangents.

Even if Abbott is following US orders in Australia's standoff against Indonesia Abbott needs to sort things out.

Regards

Pete

Hi Pete,

"Odd" hardly covers it, and "doctrinaire views" is surely a polite euphemism. I agree with the general sentiment you expressed to suseonline. One should always strive for an intelligent, calm and well informed discussion. Unfortunately the usual suspects, and we both know to whom I refer, seem incapable of maintaining such a discussion.

Hi James

Yeah "doctrinaire views" was indeed being polite. I was going to say "extremist" but I didn't want to get them started.

Cheers

Don't you guys have any fancy words for "I don't know what to write but I have to write something" ?

superfluous :)

superfluous :)

plantagenet,
Wow ! What an intellectual. A country would be lost without the likes of you.

True

True !

plantagenet,
Eleven out of ten for delusion !

And so say all aficionados of the café latte chatterati, bro.

Pete,

If you examine Individual's posts over the past year (and several others like him) a pattern is readily discernible. The first comment usually addresses the topic under discussion. From then on it is a series of ad hominen comments, often completely off topic. It is a pattern too well established to be just by chance. We know from the modus operandi of Operation Mockingbird that certain avenues are followed. Raise a red herring here, attack the critic as a "conspiracy theorist" there; suggest they live in academic ivory towers; have an irrational hatred of the US etc etc. I am sure you recognise it.

The author of the article nominally under discussion actually raised some important points. Nothing in the reported comments of Bishop/Morrison/Abbott on foreign policy issues in the days since would lead one to think that the author has somehow got the wrong idea.

Australia's place in the Asia-Pacific region, our trading patterns on which our prosperity depends, our ill-starred choices in foreign policy (remember 'all the way with LBJ'?) and publicly siding with Israel on UN votes are all topics worthy of serious discussion. Can I respectfully suggest that what you have to say is valuable and I enjoy reading your substantive comments. Don't be sucked into tit for tat trivia. Life is too short and the issues too important.

Hi James

It is true what you say. The joys of prodding the rogue knuckle-draggers who baboonize OLO frequently distracts and detracts.

Several things have held me back from putting in serious work on OLO articles including: 7-8 OLO articles per day (a la throw it on the big pile)...the fate of articles mainly being drawing 70% of comments from extremists or ad hominen wolves...writing on my own website for the benefit of a serious security-intelligence crowd...and knowing it might be quite destructive to write about some subjects (of expertise) like Aus-Indonesia at the moment.

So basically until some of the above conditions wain I'm spending most of my sideline time writing on my own website - Australia by the Indian Ocean at http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/

Cheers

Pete

It may be news to the arrogant and dismissive David G that the "village idiot" who is our present PM has three uni degrees, one of them from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar, possibly a higher level of intellectual achievement even than that of the brilliant David G.

Tonyo