NATIONAL RESILIENCE INSTITUTE (LEMHANNAS)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA

18 SEPTEMBER 2008

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SPEAKER: THE HON JOEL FITZGIBBON MP

Governor Muladi, distinguished Lemhannas staff and students, honoured guests.

It gives me great pleasure to be able address you today on ‘Challenges for Australian Defence in the Contemporary Security Environment’.

Australia and Indonesia have been close engagement partners for many years; in fact, it goes back to when Australia supported Indonesia's independence from the Netherlands in the 1940s.

The Australian Government is committed to strengthening and maintaining the bilateral relationship over the long-term. This is essential to both of us as neighbours, who share security challenges of mutual concern, such as maritime security, terrorism and regional stability.

Lemhannas, and its vital role in preparing Indonesia’s future senior leaders through education, is well-known to Australia. As your institution's primary function suggests: the critical area in which we can sustain and build our bilateral relationship over future years is education and training.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has emphasised the importance of education, in particular increasing Australia’s Asian literacy. In order to achieve this, we need to enhance links between Australian and regional education institutions.

Both of our governments recognise this as a key cooperative endeavour between our two countries, which will strengthen our ability to understand each other and learn together, and to deal as partners with the challenges ahead.

Australia’s Defence Organisation contributes much in this field, not only through the broad and varied range of education and training opportunities offered to TNI and Dephan, but also through cooperation with institutions such as Lemhannas.

It might interest you to know that Australia’s commitment to engaging with Lemhannas is reflected in several areas of cooperation:

        ·Last October Governor Muladi signed a Memorandum of Understanding between Lemhannas and the Australian Defence College.   The MOU provides the foundation for closer educational cooperation between these two institutions, including staff and student visits and sharing of information on educational methods.

        ·This November, we will send a number of guest lecturers to present on topics of interest to Lemhannas’ Masters Degree in Defence Management.

        ·Each year Australia’s own Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies visits Lemhannas as a highlight of its annual academic program.

        ·Next year, Australia will send an officer to participate in the Lemhannas Regular Course– the first time it has been opened to partner nations.

This engagement with Lemhannas is reflective of the breadth and depth of our entire bilateral defence relationship, which I will come to later.

But first, allow me to speak to you about the Australian Government’s views on the current security environment and our strategic interests.

As I mentioned before, Australia’s interests are centred on the achievement of a stable and secure environment, particularly in our region.

Like Indonesia, Australia currently doesn’t face a conventional military threat, and we are unlikely to face one in the near future. But the Australian Defence Force must still be prepared to face a range of uncertainties and a broader range of security challenges.

The changing security environment has thrown up a number of challenges for Defence in Australia. Not only in terms of how we develop and deploy our defence forces within this environment, but also in terms of how we manage our resources and plan for the future.

This is something we are currently doing through our Defence White Paper, which is currently being prepared and will be released in early 2009.

Many of our strategic interests are broadly similar to those of Indonesia – keeping our nation and our people safe from attack, and deterring the threat of attack and other coercion by armed force. Maritime security and terrorism also represent important challenges for both our countries.

Climate change, energy security and, especially relevant for Australia, water supplies will be increasingly important issues for countries to grapple with.

For the entire region, natural disasters will be an ongoing challenge as we have seen all too frequently in the past.

In order to deal with the challenges posed by the international security environment, the Australian Government’s approach has three pillars – deeper regional engagement, active participation in multilateral forum, like the UN, and our alliance with the United States.

It is self-evident to say that a friendly, peaceful and stable regional environment is central to Australia’s and Indonesia’s future prosperity.  Australia remains firmly committed to forums that bring countries from the Asia-Pacific together to focus on security challenges, including the ASEAN Regional Forum and APEC. And we are a strong supporter of the role ASEAN plays in supporting regional security and stability.

Indonesia, as a current Security Council member, I’m sure would share our appreciation of the important role of the United Nations.

The United Nations represents an important forum for us to work with like-minded nations; building cooperative approaches within a rules-based international system to confront security challenges.

It goes without saying that our support for the UN in no way devalues our bilateral relationships. Bilateral relationships are an important and necessary element in the international system in the way we work together.

But the problems and challenges we are facing today – terrorism, transnational crime, pandemics, global warming, for example – do not respect borders and don’t always fall neatly within the existing framework of relationships – the recent natural disaster in Burma is a compelling example.

Australia’s alliance with the US is the corner stone of our security policy. We believe that the United States has an important role to play in our region and we are convinced that US engagement promotes greater regional stability.

Australia is also committed to a deeper engagement with our friends throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia.

The nature of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia is, unfortunately, too often linked by the media to the impact of terrorism on both our countries. Both Australia and Indonesia lost citizens to the attacks on September 11. Since then, many more Indonesians and Australians have lost their lives in attacks in Bali and Jakarta.

And while the media generally likes to focus on terrorism as the prism through which to assess the relationship, I don’t think they have done enough to acknowledge what has been achieved in the counter-terrorism fight.

The Indonesian Government’s impressive achievements in arresting over 440 and prosecuting over 200 individuals for terrorist related crimes are unprecedented. Australia commends these achievements, which are a direct contribution to improved stability and security in the region.

Defence contributes to counter-terrorism efforts through linkages between our Special Operations Command and Kopassus’ Counter-Terrorism Unit 81, which includes an annual exercise, senior leadership dialogue and staff level exchanges.

But counter-terrorism is only one part of our defence relationship with Indonesia – it is important, but not reflective of the breadth and depth of defence cooperation between Australia and Indonesia.

The Lombok Treaty, signed into force in February by our Foreign Ministers, is a significant development in bilateral security cooperation between Australia and Indonesia.

The treaty is balanced, forward looking and practically focused and will help to expand bilateral cooperation and exchanges on matters affecting our common security.

In particular, the Treaty provides a valuable framework for the future development of the bilateral defence relationship. As Minister for Defence, I look forward to progress in key areas of cooperation between Australia and Indonesia, including maritime security, peacekeeping, disaster relief and reform and governance.

Let me just touch on some of the engagement activities in these areas.

Maritime security is an important part of our program, especially so given over 50% of our trade transits your waters. As an archipelagic country, I understand that maritime security is also critically important to Indonesia.

Our maritime security cooperation includes bilateral patrol boat exercises, and maritime surveillance exercises involving patrol aircraft. We are also developing procedures to conduct coordinated patrols with the Indonesian Navy. Through effective scheduling of patrols and exchange of surveillance information, we will be better able to assist each other to combat maritime security threats.

Through Australia’s Border Protection Command, our countries are working together to prevent illegal fishing from damaging fish stocks.

This cooperation is achieved in real practical ways, including joint fisheries patrols. Australia and Indonesia also share information about vessel movements in our contiguous border with communications between Australia’s Northern Command and Indonesian regional commands.

Like Australia, Indonesia also has a long and proud history of contributing to global security through participation in peace operations, from the first Garuda deployment to the Sinai in 1957 through to Indonesia’s deployment of forces to Lebanon today.

Australia is pleased to be supporting TNI’s new Peacekeeping Centre with seminars and training activities. Later this year, we will work together to determine key areas for cooperation through a needs analysis. Cooperation between Australia and Indonesia in this field allows us to share lessons learned from our extensive experience in peacekeeping operations.

Australia and Indonesia’s disaster relief cooperation really needs no explanation. The ADF’s largest humanitarian deployment in its history was in support of TNI’s disaster relief operations, following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

That tragedy brought our forces together in a stunning example of cooperation, which so clearly demonstrated the value of our long investment in the defence relationship.

The ADF also provided assistance to the people of Nias Island in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of March 2005. It was during this relief effort that nine ADF members were killed in a helicopter crash on Nias. The ADF will never forget the honour shown by the Indonesian Government and the people of Nias to those who lost their lives.

These relief efforts have resulted in a deepening of cooperation between Indonesia and Australia on the military aspects of disaster management.

Most recently, in May 2008, we co-hosted an ASEAN Regional Forum disaster relief desktop exercise here in Jakarta, in the hope that we will be even more prepared to respond and save lives when we are called upon again.

The procedures discussed during this exercise have developed into a set of strategic guidelines which aim to assist in coordinating regional disaster relief efforts among ARF members. Importantly, the US and the Philippines are seeking to host a practical disaster relief activity to build on this work through the ARF next year.

Australia and Indonesia will look to further cooperate in this area through medical training for disaster situations, disaster response management courses, enhanced logistics cooperation and planning toward a bilateral disaster relief exercise in future years.

As I noted earlier, a critical area in which we can sustain and build our bilateral relationship is through education and training. This is a key cooperative endeavour between our two countries, which will strengthen our ability to understand each other and learn together, and to deal as partners with the challenges we face ahead.

Education and training doesn’t just benefit those who undertake courses. It exposes our respective defence personnel to different perspectives on regional security issues, and builds personnel linkages that can serve the relationship further into the future. 

Governance is a particularly important area of cooperation, as Australia is still learning lessons on reform, and we can share these lessons with Indonesia. Reform is an ongoing process, and indeed the Department of Defence has continued to seek improvement over the past 30 years and more.

While the Australian public is justifiably proud of the achievements of the men and women of the ADF in their deployments over the years, the public is also strongly critical of how we manage what is one of the largest businesses in Australia.

This includes managing acquisitions of new capability, personnel numbers and financial issues. But governance issues also include the development of strategic policy, effective military law and justice, and leadership development.

Defence forces with strong governance functions and accountability are better equipped to deal with security challenges and support their own government institutions, as well as better able to contribute effectively to coalitions in addressing regional security issues.

Defence engages closely with Dephan and TNI across a range of governance initiatives to assist Indonesia’s reform process.

In recent years, we have jointly run seminars on strategic policy development, law of military operations, capability development and financial management. We have also offered scholarships for TNI and Dephan staff to study for Masters’ Degrees at Australian Universities in a range of defence-related subjects.

As you can see, the defence relationship between Australia is extensive. The Lombok Treaty represents a new maturity for the relationship.

And Australia and Indonesia are finalising a Statement of Joint Understandings which identifies a shared set of priorities for engagement over the next few years.

I am pleased to see that the Australia-Indonesia defence relationship continues to evolve in this cooperative and productive way.

During our discussions this morning, Minister Sudarsono and I noted the progress in the relationship, including new opportunities for cooperation.

We want to pursue cooperation in key areas that will enhance TNI’s capabilities and support the increasingly important role Dephan plays in key decision-making areas such as capability and acquisition planning, financial management and strategic policy development.

Both Australia and Indonesia have finite resources, so it is important that we have a clear understanding of our priorities and goals for the relationship, in order to maximise our investments.

Dr Sudarsono best described the relationship when he said, “We want Australian assistance to be ‘on tap’ for Indonesia, not coming from ‘on top’”. We’re not experts on how to position Dephan and TNI for the future, but Indonesia is. But we hope that by sharing our experiences, we can help Dephan and TNI achieve their aims and objectives.

Another particular area of cooperation that we are looking to expand is acquisition planning and capability development, especially in terms of relations with local defence industry.

Like Indonesia, Australia seeks to have a healthy local defence industry that is capable of supporting defence requirements. But these industries must be capable of sustaining themselves.

Australia’s Defence Material Organisation is the largest manager of projects in Australia and this requires a high level of skill in managing the development of capability proposals and developing acquisition plans to support new capabilities throughout their operating life, in terms of personnel, spare parts and operating expenses.

These are efforts that take Defence a number of years. And each major project provides us with even more lessons to continuously improve our processes. When I say Australia’s experiences are ‘on tap’ for Indonesia, for Defence industry cooperation, we can really offer a raging waterfall!

Our co-operation with Lemhannas through the MOU is another example of how the defence relationship will develop into the future. Australian and Indonesian course members will be able to share insights on strategic developments through visits and guest lecturers.

I have invited Governor Muladi to visit Australia next year to be guest lecturer for Indonesia week – the Australian and foreign students on our Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies course will be able to learn about Indonesian perspectives on strategic developments.

And Australia’s first participant on the Lemhannas Regular Course will be able to understand these issues from a different perspective, while also sharing views on Australian security interests. Not to mention the personal relationships that they will be able to build during their time in Indonesia.

In the short time available today, I’ve only scratched the surface about the nature of the defence relationship between Australia and Indonesia and about the shared vision that Minister Sudarsono and I have for the direction of the relationship.

We have new opportunities to enhance our cooperation and partnership in a way that addresses both our interests.

The Lombok Treaty and the Statement of Joint Understandings represent a plan for the future that will allow us to undertake that transformation together.

Thank you.