By Mungo MacCallum Posted Mon 25 Nov 2013

Photo: The painstaking diplomacy devoted over the years to building trust with Jakarta has been trashed. (AFP: Adek Berry)

Tony Abbott didn't create the Indonesian spy debacle, but his attempt to brush the matter aside has done nothing to repair one of Australia's most important relationships, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is not only the Indonesian leader most sympathetic to Australia in that country's short democratic history; he is arguably Australia's best friend in Asia.

The outgoing president has been a tireless advocate for our interests in the councils of a frequently suspicious and sometimes downright hostile region. So why on earth would we risk this invaluable relationship by a ham-fisted interception of his, his wife's and his closest associates' personal phone calls?

The answer is probably the simplest one: because we can. It is easy to see how it could have happened. After a hard day's phone tapping at the then Defence Signals Directorate, a boffin and a spook are having a quiet drink or several at the canteen. "You know," boasts the boffin, "with the new gear we've got, we can hack into just about anything. Why, I reckon we could even listen to SBY's own mobile."

"Jeez, that'd be good," replies the spook. "Let's give it a go."

So they do.

It is possible, even likely, that none of the politicians around, then or since - not Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, nor any of their nominally responsible ministers - had a clue what was going on. After all, there has been no suggestion that the intercepts uncovered anything worth passing up the line. But obviously word would have spread through DSD itself and probably the wider intelligence community. And of course the material was routinely passed on to our great and powerful friends in Washington; that, after all, was what the whole operation was about.

And it was at this point that it all went wrong, because almost unbelievably lax American security meant that junior and untried operatives had access to the whole shebang, and one of them, Edward Snowden, decided that the punters had a right to know what was being done by their governments in their name. And so DSD broke the first, and perhaps the only, rule of espionage: don't get caught.

Abbott, as he must, has been trying to talk down the damage, but the hard fact is that almost all the painstaking diplomacy devoted over the years to building trust with Jakarta has now been trashed. There are still plenty of old hands around who have never forgiven Australia for its role in East Timor and since then there have been plenty of hiccups, like the arbitrary suspension of the live cattle trade and ongoing tensions over asylum seekers.

And most recently the revelations about Stateroom, the joint US-Australia spying network operating through embassies, has stretched things almost to breaking point. To find that this extends to a contemptuous disregard for the privacy of the president and his wife is too much.

Even if he wished to - and there is no sign that he does - Yudhoyono could not accept the intrusion; to do so would involve a humiliating loss of face towards the end of his highly successful term in office and a shameful capitulation by his country, now rightly proud if its emerging role as a serious player in world events. At the very least his reaction has to be as strong as that of the German chancellor Angela Merkel, when she was placed in a similar position. Some would say that it has to be stronger: Indonesia needs a clear win over Australia to prove that it has shaken off its colonial past.

Abbott's immediate response was along the lines of his old adage: shit happens. It had all been very embarrassing and unfortunate and he wishes it hadn't been in the papers. Better luck next time, if possible. But this, as a clearly angry foreign minister Marty Natalegawa pointed out, only made things worse: Abbott was trivialising a most serious matter. The first step had to be a full explanation - including, presumably, an admission that the spying had actually taken place, which Abbott has refused to give.

This is the time honoured practice, but it will not be good enough this time. Merkel got a private apology from President Obama and a public assurance that the practice would now cease. Abbott told the Australian Parliament he was not going to apologise and that he was not going to overreact, to which Yudhoyono responded with a series of outraged tweets. And he then shut down all co-operation with Australia on military and intelligence matters, explicitly including the one that hurt - joint action on people smugglers.

Nationalistic Indonesians took this as a licence to mount anti-Australian demonstrations and things continued to deteriorate as Abbott cogitated on how he should respond to Yudhoyono's demands; at least Barnaby Joyce cancelled a proposed visit, which must have helped a bit. Finally Abbott, or more probably a committee from the Department of Foreign Affairs, which had spent the previous week tearing its collective hair out as Abbott drove a wrecking ball through the relationship it has spent years, indeed decades, cultivating, prepared the swift, full and courteous reply Abbott had belatedly promised, and fired it off towards Jakarta.

But it may still prove to be too little too late. Abbott's earlier attempt to brush the matter aside has proved to many Indonesians what they always suspected about Australians: they are a brash and crude people, incapable of appreciating the niceties of civilised behaviour, and, now, under the leadership of a shambling, hairy Neanderthal, they have descended into total savagery.

We are told that Yudhoyono has received Abbott's letter and is now considering it - or just leaving Abbott dangling. Of course, even that information could be a piece of diplomatic tact. Given the way Abbott has handled the whole matter to date, it is just as likely that he put the wrong stamps on his letter and it will come back to him marked "Return to sender".

Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

A diplomatic disaster from the spy boffins up - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)