Helping Indonesia to help itself

There are about 40,000 Indonesians in Australia. The majority are fee-paying students and their families. Most are Christian Chinese Indonesians, rich because you have to be to pay the airfares and fees. They are not a representative sample of the Republic's citizens and they're not going to be the future administrators and politicians. The public service is almost entirely Muslim.

At the moment Australia gives “partnership scholarships” to 600 clever students chasing post-graduate qualifications. A further 270 are offered as “development scholarships”. The total cost is $78 million with most of the money going into the pockets of Australian educators.

Australia is widely perceived by Indonesians to be a nation that doesn't like Indonesians. This is despite its great generosity towards the victims of the 2004 tsunami in Aceh and the quake in Yogya. The perception has a lot to do with foreign policy, crass comments by senior politicians about pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and deputy sheriffs in South-East Asia, and tough visa application rules. Politicians claim Indonesian attitudes have moved on, but these issues still rankle on the street.

The $458 million we're spending in Indonesia this year would buy a lot of scholarships for the smart but poor who could pick up skills for use in their homeland - and learn that the West isn’t the hotbed of evil portrayed by fundamentalists.