Trade and treaty partners; or friends and neighbours?

For Indonesians it's the Work and Holiday Programme. Note the syntax slip. For this deal applicants have to pass an English test, be tertiary graduates and approved by their own government.

The scheme is reciprocal but officials on both sides have nailed up the door. Australians are only allowed to teach English, work in hospitals and tourism. There are reports of students giving up on the paperwork and going elsewhere.

Though jobs are not restricted in Australia, Immigration demands applicants have at least AUD $5,000. Fees, insurance and air fares put visas even beyond the reach of the new Indonesian middle classes, defined as those who earn more than US $3,000 (29 million rupiah) a year. Indonesians rightly claim this restricts opportunities to the rich.

The Opposition is proposing a 'reverse Colombo Plan' flooding Indonesia with Aussie undergraduates. Professor David Hill who pioneered the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies forecast bureaucratic barriers.

He told The Australian: 'Obtaining a temporary resident permit for study in Indonesia is something that individual students find very, very difficult'.

Australian leaders may be serious about an Asian Century where curious and open-minded youngsters can poke around their neighbor's culture to erase prejudices.

But it's clear they haven't got the Indonesians on the same road, relying on change through symbiosis, not strategy.

Ms Gillard described the policy as a 'roadmap showing how Australia can be a winner in the Asian century.' If so the track is tortuous and potholed, and the GPS is malfunctioning.

Discrimination, incompetence or both? If implementation of such an easy policy can't get into first gear, what hope for the rest?

Indonesia needs to stop being fearful of its neighbour. We're not all Kuta bar slobs determined to fracture the Unitary State and steal jobs off becak drivers.

Just as they're not all fundamentalists bombing towards a Southern Hemisphere caliphate.

The Asia Century policy is agentle shuffle forward and a welcome shift from the drivers of defence and security. The hype makes it sound like a Southeast Asian version of the open border European Community that's helped dissolve ancient hatreds and foster unity through people-to-people contacts.

It's not. It should be.