Photo: Tony Abbott speaks to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta. (Reuters: Beawiharta)
Unlike other states named in the Snowden leaks, Indonesia chose to react noisily. Their reaction had some vulnerable skin to bruise because of past actions by Australian special interests, writes Lance Collins.
The storm in a teacup sparked by the Snowden leaks and the heated response from Jakarta - when Tokyo, Hanoi, Dili and Beijing were also mentioned - has resulted in predictable commentary from the usual suspects.
The narrative goes that the special relationship with Indonesia, given that state's strategic importance and complex political and cultural factors, requires sophisticated handling by people with particular insight.
Such cultural relativism was the currency of Canberra's response to a range of thorny issues from the takeover of West Papua through to the invasion of East Timor and ridicule of American warnings about the development of terrorism in eastern Indonesia.
Those who have traded in this currency are known as the Jakarta Lobby.
The relationship between Canberra and Jakarta is about power, or perceptions of it. The current imbroglio, despite the noise, will blow over fairly quickly because it is in the interests of both sides for it to do so.
Unlike the other states named in the leaks, Indonesia chose to react noisily: they were handed a free kick and used it. Their reaction had some vulnerable skin to bruise because of past actions by Australian special interests.
Days before the first Australian combat troop deployed to East Timor, it was revealed a hunt was on for an Indonesian spy: a senior Australian bureaucrat evidently.
First, Jakarta expressed mixed outrage and dismay, the country's foreign minister complaining of a breach of trust, such spying being something they would never do. Indonesia demanded an apology as demonstrations materialised outside the Australian Embassy and references to an alleged betrayal over East Timor were dragged up.
This is where past follies raise their head.
With East Timor, destiny was set by the Whitlam government's decision to take Richard Woolcott's DFAT advice of supporting Jakarta's invasion, over that from Bill Pritchard in Defence, who advocated dissuading them because it would result in an "erosion of the mutual confidence essential to our long term defence interest".
In 1999 the Howard government advocated East Timor remaining part of Indonesia. Indeed the deputy secretary of DFAT stated in the Senate that this end was the purpose of Howard's letter to Indonesian president BJ Habibie.
All the while, Canberra was denying the role of the Indonesian military in the violence. Who could forget the Defence Intelligence Organisation's immortal line: "TNI paradoxically provides a moderating influence on both sides by decreasing the likelihood of widespread and serious conflict"?
The plain truth was: no TNI, no militia
In my view, Canberra's wayward moral compass at this time was a significant factor in the death of the DIO liaison office in Washington, Mervyn Jenkins, as a hunt for whistle-blowers was initiated.
Habibie responded unexpectedly by announcing a ballot and in the face of Australian public outrage over Indonesian military-sponsored violence in East Timor, Howard did an 11th hour and 59th minute backflip. Humanitarian intervention was on: success guaranteed by international support behind American diplomatic and economic pressure and over-the-horizon US military support.
Well and good, except that, seemingly to shore up its Persian Version for posterity, in 2001 DFAT published the government's narrative of how self-determination for East Timor had been the goal all along; duplicity justified by the need to out-manoeuvre the Indonesian military, which had temporarily lost its perfume to Canberra's senses.
In the aftermath of the independence of East Timor, a number of Indonesian officers wrote Weimar-like accounts of how they did not lose but were stabbed in the back.
Thus an Australian Government primary source document backed up the Indonesian mis-appreciation of what happened in 1998-1999.
In September 1999, days before the first Australian combat troop deployed to East Timor, veteran journalist Brian Toohey wrote a front page article for the Australian Financial Review which revealed a hunt was on for an Indonesian spy: a senior Australian bureaucrat evidently. Most nations with their troops about to face off against the state doing the spying would show some interest in this, but both major parties and the mainstream media allowed the story to die.
Similarly both Canberra and the media dropped a related issue after Jakarta's Intelligence chief, Mahmud Hendropriyono, boasted to Sarah Ferguson, at the time a journalist with Channel Nine's Sunday program, of bugging Australian military and political figures in the lead-up to the East Timor intervention.
He chortled noticeably in denying he had managed to recruit Australian traitors.
How different the atmospherics of the last weeks might have been if that Australian of mixed loyalties, and any others, had been caught, outed and punished. Other countries do it, and for good reason.
Instead, Australia’s security agencies were engaged in suppressing whistle-blowers.
It emerged in the Senate this week that "less than five" Australian politicians had their electronic communications intercepted by authorisations granted to the Federal Police. This was evidently not for investigations into fraud, corruption, assisting foreign powers or the like, but it poses a deterrent to whistle-blowers.
That brings us back to the perceived beginning of this drama, Snowden’s leaks brought on by the indignation over how Western intelligence and security systems have systematically intruded into the lives of private citizens, who after all, are a greater threat to the secret state than any terrorist.
Australia's own commissar class of insiders has got us into the current situation with the Indonesian state. There are many special interests at risk if these 'catastrophic' circumstances get out of hand.
Jakarta does not want the spotlight on its access here. Canberra does not want its dirty linen aired, or even searched for it seems. Then there is a range of financial, commercial and career interests at stake.
In the contrition Jakarta will seek - outside and after the glare of publicity - as things return to 'normal', will be the real gains they are able to make: more aid, more intelligence access, more freehold land ownership, concessions on the live cattle trade, technology transfer.
Time to wash the teacup perhaps?
Lance Collins was senior intelligence officer for the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) between September 1999 and February 2000. He left the Army in 2005. He is the co-author of Plunging Point: intelligence failures cover-ups and consequences. View his full profile here.
Indonesia was handed a free kick and used it - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
