2022 Indonesia Study Group
16 November. Tim Mann (University of Melbourne). Activist lawyering in a fragile democracy: the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI)
Under the authoritarian New Order, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) was Indonesia’s most prominent legal and human rights organisation and an influential hub of resistance to the Soeharto regime.
The far-reaching democratisation process that began after the New Order collapsed in 1998 involved many structural changes that should have provided the conditions for YLBHI to thrive. But in contrast to expectations, YLBHI struggled somewhat following the democratic transition. There was a period when YLBHI appeared weaker as an institution under democracy than it was under an authoritarian regime.
This seminar examined how democratic change has affected YLBHI and the strategies it uses to promote social change. Drawing on YLBHI’s experiences during the #ReformasiDikorupsi (‘Reform Corrupted’) protests in 2019, it will describe how YLBHI has made an unexpected return to prominence as Indonesian democracy has begun to unravel.
Tim Mann is Associate Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS). He recently completed a PhD at Melbourne Law School focusing on the role of activist lawyers in Indonesia after 1998.
He joined the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society in 2015 as editor of the Indonesia at Melbourne blog. He was appointed Associate Director of CILIS in 2017.
9 November. Lila Sari (ANU) & Budi Setiyono (Universitas Diponegoro). Clientelistic politics and rent-seeking in health sector funding allocations
What role does informal politics play in health funding in Indonesia? Special Allocation Funds (Dana Alokasi Khusus or DAK) are central government grants provided to the regions to help overcome regional disparities in public health. These grants give the regions extra resources to improve health facilities, infrastructure, and services. However, implementation of the grant is often ineffective, and prone to clientelistic and corrupt practices.
The speakers will presented findings from a study that examines the impact of informal politics on DAK from planning and allocation to execution and spending in five districts across Central Java and NTT. With these case studies, they explained patterns of informal politics and rent-seeking practices in DAK allocation and spending. Indicative findings show that, while planning and allocation of DAK funds have become more transparent, the implementation and reporting retain weaknesses that makes the system open to rent-seeking and clientelistic politics. Meanwhile, the system is becoming more centralised and rigid, reducing room for local governments to exercise their decentralised health service functions.
This project is a joint research collaboration between Lila Sari (ANU) and Professor Budi Setiyono (Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Diponegoro), and funded by the Ruth Daroesman Study Grant 2022.
Budi Setiyono is a professor at the Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Diponegoro, where he started working as a lecturer in 1994. His interests include governance, democratisation and political lobbying and campaigns. He has also served as Vice Rector of Communication and Business and Vice Rector of Academic and Student Affairs.
Lila Sari commenced her PhD at the ANU in 2019. Her research examines clientelistic politics and how it affects the healthcare services at the sub national level in Indonesia. Lila has over seventeen years of experience in institutional capacity building and advancing Indonesia’s public sector reforms. Prior to commencing her PhD she was a Program Manager at AusAID and has also served as the Program Manager for the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi.
2 November. David Reeve (UNSW). To remain myself: The history of Onghokham
In this presentation, David Reeve discussed his new biography of Onghokham, the hedonist historian and eccentric public intellectual (1933-2007). Onghokham was an important figure, who witnessed modern Indonesian history from a unique angle, as a multiple minority figure: of Chinese descent, from a Dutch-oriented family, with no religion, gay, hard drinking, pork eating. Yet he became one of Indonesia’s most famous and wide-ranging historians. Unlike much biographical writing on Indonesian subjects, To Remain Myself. The History of Onghokham recounts in detail Onghokham’s inner life, including his fears and confusions, his struggles with his sexuality, and his mental breakdown and jailing in 1966.
In this presentation, Professor Reeve discussed the process of writing the biography, as well as what it tells us, not only about Onghokham’s personal and professional life, but about Indonesian history writ large.
David Reeve has been visiting Indonesia for over fifty years, as a diplomat, researcher, historian, language teacher and program manager. He has worked in a dozen Indonesian universities. In the 1980s he was the founding Australian lecturer in the Australian Studies program at Universitas Indonesia. In the later 1990s he was the Resident Director of ACICIS at Universitas Gadjah Mada. He has published on Indonesian history and politics, Indonesian language, Indonesian popular culture, and Australian-Indonesian relations. He is retired from UNSW and has just published the biography of his old friend and historian/eccentric Onghokham.
7 September. Gabriele Weichart (University of Vienna). Memory, heritage and commodification: The many sides of disaster tourism in Indonesia
Historically, local people’s experiences and knowledge regarding natural disasters have been largely unknown to the wider world. But especially since the tsunami of 2004, which had particularly devastating effects on the west coast of North Sumatra, a new politics of commemoration has emerged, motivated by the desire not to forget such collectively tragic and influential events, but to make experiences of disaster accessible and understandable to a wider public. Examples are the tsunami museum in Aceh, the ‘lava tours’ and exhibitions on the slopes of Mt. Merapi near Yogyakarta in central Java and the stone monuments at the Lapindo mud flow near Sidoarjo in eastern Java.
While these initiatives serve the purpose of remembering the destruction and suffering as well as the victims of these particularly severe disasters, there is also an economic incentive, which in some cases may even be the driving force. Regional governments, and sometimes also local entrepreneurs, have identified new possibilities for promoting affected areas as tourist attractions, including offering disaster ‘experiences’ with voyeuristic appeal to domestic and international visitors.
This seminar investigated the commemoration of natural disasters in the context of Indonesia’s growing tourism industry, and also offered some reflections on how cultural differences in dealing with and responding to calamities and loss have figured in the commodification of disasters.
24 August. Hikmawan Saefullah (Padjadjaran University & Indonesian International Islamic University). Transformations of youth resistance: underground music scene and Islamic politics in post-authoritarian Indonesia
The Indonesian underground music scene was once known as the bastion of progressive and radical Leftist politics for urban youths during the Reformasi era (1997-2002). This was marked by the emergence of leftist collectives such as the Anti-Fascist Front (FAF), Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist (AFRA), and the Nusantara Anti-Fascist Network (JAF-Nus) that were formed by activist punks who were affiliated with the People’s Democratic Party (PRD). After the fall of Suharto on 21 May 1998, leftist activism in the scene declined, and was followed by the emergence of the right-wing Islamic underground movement such as the Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia-linked Liberation Youth and Hambos Community, One Finger Underground Movement, Punk Muslim, and Underground Tauhid. The rise of Islamic conservatism in this period also gave birth to what is known as the hijrah movement where some of the scene participants turned to Salafism and opposed music which they considered as forbidden in Islam. People associated with these movements took part in various Islamist mobilisations including the 2007 International Caliphate Conference, the 2012 Anti-Liberal Islam Protest, and the 2016-2017 Action for Defending Islam (Aksi Bela Islam). This seminar examined the ideological and organisational shift of some underground music scene participants from secular, progressive, and leftist politics towards Islamic conservatism and right-wing Islamism in post-authoritarian Indonesia.
Hikmawan Saefullah is a Lecturer in the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Padjadjaran University and a Fellow at the Center for Muslim Politics and World Society, Faculty of Social Sciences, Indonesian International Islamic University. He has been involved in the Indonesian underground music scene as both a musician and fan since the mid-1990s. In 2022 he completed his PhD in Politics at Murdoch University on ‘Transformations of Youth Resistance: Underground Music Scene and Islamic Politics in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia.’ His published works include 'Jihad Against the Ghazwul Fikri: Actors and Mobilization Strategies of the Islamic Underground Movement' (2020) and 'Nevermind the Jahiliyyah, here's the Hijrahs: Punk and the religious turn in the Contemporary Indonesian Underground Scene' (2017). His research interests include Indonesian politics, Islamic politics, Subculture/Youth Culture, Social Movements, International relations in the Middle East and Africa, Sunni-Shia sectarianism, and Media and Global Communication.
3 August. Ronit Ricci (Hebrew University of Jerusalem and ANU). Banished Indonesians: Experiences of colonial exile in Sri Lanka
The small, Indian Ocean island known as Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon was a site of banishment throughout the 18th century for members of royal families, convicts, servants and others sent there from across the Indonesian archipelago. Descendants of these exiles who remained on the island continued to speak and write in Malay, the archipelago's lingua franca, and to adhere to a collective Muslim identity for several centuries and into the present. The talk considered if and how earlier religious and literary traditions of banishment tied to the island - those of Adam's fall from paradise to Sarandib and Sinta's abduction to Lanka – played a role in the lives of the early exiles and their descendants.
Ronit Ricci is a Professor in the departments of Asian Studies and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and affiliated with the School of Culture, History and Language at ANU where she is happy to spend two months every winter. Her research interests include Javanese and Malay manuscript cultures, Translation Studies, and Islamic literatures of South and Southeast Asia. She is developing the new field of Indonesian Studies in Israel. Her current research project, funded by the European Research Council, explores interlinear translations from across the Indonesian-Malay world from multiple perspectives.
15 June. Professor Bambang Brodjonegoro. Prospects for Australia-Indonesia Trade-Investment Partnerships
Professor Bambang Brodjonegoro delivered a lecture on ‘Prospects for Australia-Indonesia Trade-Investment Partnerships in the Digital, Telecommunication, Energy and Infrastructure Sectors’. He explored various aspects of the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA), including trade and investment dimensions, and how trade and investment can benefit both countries.
About Professor Bambang Brodjonegoro: Professor Bambang Brodjonegoro, is well-known Indonesian economist. He is the former Minister of Research and Technology, former Minister of National Development Planning of Indonesia, and former Minister of Finance. He is an independent commissioner for several companies including Bukalapak, Telkom, Astra International, TBS Energi Utama, Oligo Infrastructure and Indofood.
25 May. Anthony Reid (ANU). Aceh’s contested history: 50 years of reluctant engagement
Aceh has been an anomalous problem for Java-centric understandings of Indonesia, even though paradoxically central to nationalist mythology. Adopting its history as a PhD topic was perhaps a risky route to becoming the Indonesianist I aspired to be as a 1960s student. But it served me well as the Southeast Asianist I eventually became. Though again anomalous in the semi-autobiographical survey of Southeast Asian Studies I am undertaking, it deserved a chapter because it pointed the way to many themes that have dominated my work – slavery, nationalism, gender, the Turkish connection, gunpowder states, 17th century crisis, Islamisation, cosmopolitan versus vernacular, tectonic discontinuities, and the whole ‘Age of Commerce’ idea. Moving to Singapore (2002-9) gave me an opportunity and sense of obligation to seek to ameliorate the traumas of that period. This presentation was one perspective on the post-colonial contest for sovereignty in one of Asia’s awkward corners.
18 May. Riyana Miranti (University of Canberra), Tri Mulyaningsih (Universitas Sebelas Maret) & Eny Sulistyaningrum (Universitas Gadjah Mada). Women’s roles in the Indonesian economy during the COVID-19 pandemic: Understanding their challenges and opportunities
This seminar previewed the authors’ forthcoming Survey of Recent Developments for the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (BIES).
This Survey discussed the impact of COVID-19 on the livelihood of Indonesian women. The pandemic has been disproportionately affecting women around the world, including in Indonesia due to the existing gender inequalities at work and at home. This has forced adjustments in labour utilisation and in movement from formal to informal sector in the labour market. Women bear mostly unpaid work or care for families and communities at home. The pandemic has also affected households differently in that larger, urban and female-headed households suffer more, although it has created new opportunities such as those for SMEs utilising digitalisation. We will also discuss recent macroeconomic developments especially the role of government intervention in lessening the severity of the pandemic. These include empowering women in the digital era, providing family-friendly policies at work, continuing investment in human capital, and improving social assistance.
Unfortunately slides are not to be shared as the paper is undergoing peer review for publication in the BIES.
16 March. Pierre van der Eng (ANU). Jakarta’s first stock exchange: Operations and significance, 1890s-1950s
Well before the current Indonesia Stock Exchange started operations in 1977 in Jakarta, the city had been home to a stock exchange. Few know today of its existence and its operations remain a mystery. Colonial era publications are dismissive of its significance. What is fact and what is myth?
This presentation outlined the development of Jakarta’s first stock exchange, between its stepwise institutionalisation since 1898 and its demise in 1958. The purpose of the presentation is to place the case of Indonesia in the literature on the significance of stock markets in the process of mobilising external capital for investment by private enterprise in emerging economies. It turned out that brokers participating in the stock exchange traded the shares and bonds of companies that operated in Indonesia and that were registered in Indonesia or in The Netherlands. Many of these securities were also traded on the much larger stock exchange in Amsterdam. Although both securities markets were formally independent, their trading activities were highly cointegrated. Based on estimates of relatively high market capitalisation during 1901-1940, the presentation concludes that the Jakarta and Amsterdam stock exchanges together contributed significantly to the mobilisation of capital in The Netherlands, but increasingly also in Indonesia, for investment in the development of private enterprise in Indonesia.
12 April. Hal Hill (ANU) and Donny Pasaribu (ANU). Some reflections on Indonesia and the resource curse
Natural resources – blessing or curse? Indonesia provides an excellent case study for an examination of these issues. It is a major commodity exporter; the fourth most populous country in the world; and the world’s largest archipelagic state with huge mineral, forest and maritime resources. Indonesia also has three distinctive features that are particularly relevant for such a study. First, with the exception of the Asian financial and pandemic crises it has had at least moderately strong economic performance for the past half century. This distinguishes it from the majority of resource-rich developing countries, and therefore there are lessons to be learnt from its management of these boom and bust episodes, particularly the latter. Second, Indonesia has experienced two rather different resource booms: the first based mainly on oil and gas in the 1970s and the second based primarily on coal, palm oil and gas over the decade 2005-14. The economic, social and environmental impacts of these two booms have differed significantly. Third, the country experienced major regime change in 1998-99, from the centralized, authoritarian Soeharto regime 1966-98, which presided over the first boom, to the subsequent democratic, decentralized regime during the second boom. The very different political and institutional arrangements had important implications for the management of the boom and its distributional impacts. We examine these issues in comparative context, employing as reference points two very large natural resource exporters, Brazil and Nigeria, and Malaysia, a smaller, more dynamic East Asian comparator.
30 March. H.E Siswo Pramono (Indonesia’s Ambassador to Australia). The rise of Asia in the context of Indonesia-Australia relations
Indonesia’s Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Siswo Pramono, delivered a talk at a special Indonesia Study Group. He discussed the rise of Asia in the context of Indonesia-Australia relations.
This seminar was not recorded or live-streamed.
16 February. Samira Lindsey (Monash University) & Archana Bangalore Ramesh (The University of Melbourne). Research travel grants presentations
Rule of law, corporate impunity and bribery: corporate criminal liability in Indonesia and Australia - Samira Lindsey (Monash University)
How good is law at curbing the tide of corporate impunity? Since 1997, there has been a legislative path to enforce corporate criminal liability (CCL) in Australia. Comparably, corporate offences have only recently emerged in Indonesia’s criminal law. Her research offered a comparative analysis of the CCL regulatory frameworks in Indonesia and Australia, using Peerenboom’s qualitative methodology. It demonstrated the importance of equitable enforcement of criminal laws against both individuals and corporations in fulfilling the rule of law.
Middle Ground: co-production of place as a means to counter displacement and other evils of development in Bandung, Indonesia - Archana Ramesh (The University of Melbourne)
Development and progress, appropriated by neo-liberal economies and politics in post-colonial cities of South and Southeast Asia are increasingly being represented through architecture as its poster child. In Bandung Indonesia, these agenda-based developments target Kampungs laden with negative symbolic capital occupying prime urban land replacing them with a new social order and formalized systems of space. Consequences are two-fold: displacement of urban vulnerable and erasure of local social systems.
Situated in a Kampung that is in the process of being evicted, this thesis takes on machineries of displacement and the asymmetrical aspirations of the site’s stakeholders calling for a co-production of architecture through a dialogue-based approach. The thesis called for architecture to reorient itself towards the context and operate with local knowledge acquired through an investigation of socio-spatialities to negotiate the numerous tensions of the context to produce a framework in place of ‘instant formalisation’ that threatens the local way of life.
9 February. Blane Lewis (ANU). The new intergovernmental fiscal relations law
On 7 December 2021, the Ministry of Finance and the DPR reached agreement on a new law related to the design and implementation of intergovernmental fiscal relations and local public finance. The law (UU 1 2022) was promulgated by Jokowi on 5 January 2022. This talk will argue that the new law advances a somewhat ambivalent approach to decentralisation. On the one hand, it allows districts to collect additional own-source revenues, which promotes local autonomy. On the other hand, it adopts tighter central control over district spending. Finally, the new law will leave much to be worked out in forthcoming regulations, especially as regards the allocation of some fiscal transfers, new tactics for fostering “asymmetric decentralisation”, and arrangements for transitioning from the old system to the new one.
19 January. Alin Halimatussadiah (Universitas Indonesia), Ryan Edwards (ANU), Rafika Farah Maulia (Universitas Indonesia), Faizal Moeis (Universitas Indonesia). Agriculture, development and sustainability in the COVID-19 era
This seminar previewed the authors’ forthcoming article in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.
The survey examined Indonesian economic development in the COVID-19 era, focusing on government responses and macroeconomic trends. The survey highlights the role that the agricultural sector has played as a driver of economic recovery and its potential to move towards more sustainable practices. Up to now, COVID-19 can be considered under control. Despite the increasing risk of Omicron, cases declined until the end of December 2021. High prices for primary commodity exports—principally coal and palm oil—rescue the fiscal balance and trade balances. The new tax law is expected to lower the fiscal deficit further and achieve the target of 3 percent of GDP by 2023. The new tax law includes the new carbon tax to be implemented in April 2022, starting with cap and tax scheme for coal-fired power plants. More ambitious climate targets have been adopted, including a commitment to no deforestation by 2030, resulting in the need for more stringent governance of agricultural sector. Taking oil palm as a case study, we looked at current challenges and the potential to reform the sector towards more sustainable agricultural practices.