An excellent article on a subject that is rarely in the news.

Perhaps 4 short-medium term factors have damaged Australian-Indonesia trade relations, including

1. Tony Abbott constantly shooting undiplomaticly from the lip. Abbott's primitive (Australian audience aimed...) utterances to Indonesia alienated Indonesians, including Widodo1.

2. executions of Australian drug heavies

3. "Refugees" landing in airports on Java, bribing Indonesia officials heavily, then being shipped out in leaky "refugee" boats to Australia

4. live cattle issues - Australia stopping exports under the Labor Gov, Indonesia stopping imports more recently

But the long term factor is Indonesia's system of underpaying its officials, which forces them to be corrupt. Hence the author's "Many institutions are rottenly fraudulent (Indonesia ranks 107 on the Corruption Perception Index); graft impacts almost every contact with the public service."

So there is a need to pay off influence men. Meanwhile Australian law has maintained an untenable, uncompetitive, position that Australian businessment should not pay such bribes.

The difference is that our corruption is legal. Australian politicians and 'public servants' simply cover their criminality with the formalisation of positive law.

The Australian govt activities mentioned in this article are a good example. All the gubbas involved got paid, above the market rate for their 'services'. Yet we already know that the assumptions underlying their activities are false, namely
a) that other (i.e. non-Indonesian) opportunities for investment do not have to be considered on competing terms, and
b) that 'public servants' would be better at identifying viable investments or malinvestments than those exposed to the risk.

In these circumstances, how can we avoid the conclusion that the Australian govt activities mentioned, spruiking trade or learning Indonesian, are just legalised corruption?