Helping Indonesia to help itself

Developing? How long can a nation stay in perpetual puberty? Malaysia turned 50 this year and has long been a robust and independent adult. Modern Indonesia is 12 years older.

That many Indonesians are obscenely poor is not in doubt. Officially about 20 million are unemployed and a similar number under-employed. According to the Australian aid agency AusAID 7 per cent of a population of 242 million live below the international poverty line of US$1 a day.

The statistics don't lie. A visit to the crowded kampongs of Jakarta and Surabaya, or to remote villages, will prove poverty is real and wretched. Equally, a trip to any gated suburb in those same big cities will reveal the most ostentatious displays of gross wealth on a scale that would match Hollywood

Here are some more figures about Indonesian “poverty”:

• the Indonesian government claims its corrupt citizens have parked about US$100 billion in Singapore, money embezzled from banks and government projects;
  • one third of Singapore's 55,000 megarich are Indonesian citizens;
• the Soeharto family is alleged to have squirreled away US$15 billion during its 32 years in power; and
• in 2005 the Sampoerna family sold their tobacco company to Philip Morris and pocketed US$5.2 billion. Vice president Jusuf Kalla urged the family (the name translates as “pure”) to reinvest in their homeland but at last reports they were looking to buy overseas casinos.

Overseas non-emergency aid is mostly going to education, governance, infrastructure and health. The needs are genuine, but as long as paternalistic Australia does the job there's no need for Indonesia to get its act together and build better services for its own people, or make serious attempts to recover stolen cash. In a democracy that's what governments are supposed to do.

Despite all the deficiencies Indonesia isn't a failed state. It has all the civil engineers and skilled labor needed to build hospitals, schools, highways, rail lines, airports and bridges - all the factories required to supply the cement, steel and equipment - all the know-how to deliver potable water.

If Indonesia lacks some high-tech gear or specialised advice it can buy such goods and services from overseas. The only thing absent is the determination to pass and implement the laws, allocate the resources and get on with the job.

For every school in the archipelago funded by overseas taxpayers that's one less burden on local administrators, one more plush house for the military or luxury car for the bureaucrats.

Teachers and dedicated mid-level government officers who get some of the benefits from overseas aid are generous with their thanks. Others are suspicious. After Australia got involved in the East Timorese 1999 bid for independence, and since Australia has been supporting George Bush's Middle East adventures (always perceived as anti-Islam), many Indonesians believe our motives aren't pure.

Australia has some of the best fire-fighting skills in the world, truly tested by fire. Every year Indonesia has massive scrub fires in Kalimantan, usually deliberately lit, and that it can't control. The smoke haze has Singaporeans and Malaysians wheezing and weeping, sometimes for weeks. But Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban wants no help from outsiders. He said foreign aid would "disturb the country's sovereignty". This isn’t an isolated case.

The more fundamentalist Indonesians claim Western aid is part of a “Christianisation” campaign; others think foreigners are spying and scheming to promote regional separatism. Even among moderates there's a deep resentment against outsiders doing basic things that the local administration can and should do, and anger against their own idle governments who let foreigners take over.