6 - Uneasy Partners: New Zealand and Indonesia

Summary

Introduction

Despite its size and relative proximity to New Zealand, Indonesia has often seemed more distant and less influential than countries further afield. Early recognition of Indonesia's independence promoted positive, if shallow, political ties but bilateral relations remained less substantial than with Southeast Asian countries which shared New Zealand's British connections, though they achieved independence much later. Development assistance delivered through the Colombo Plan was the core of bilateral relations for the first decade. Until the mid-1970s, trade was negligible and defence contacts were rare. Well into the 1980s relations were conducted essentially by a small number of government officials on both sides.

Impressions of Sukarno's Indonesia were shaped by the presence of Colombo Plan trainees, by the influence of Indo-Dutch migrants no longer welcome there, and by press reports increasingly focused on Indonesia's political and economic turmoil and foreign policy adventurism. Australia's perspectives were important to policy-makers who, though not always accepting Australian interpretations, were reluctant to act in ways Canberra might construe as disregarding its strategic concerns about Indonesia. Official disillusionment grew with Sukarno's efforts to wrest control of West New Guinea from the Dutch, and was compounded by “Confrontation”, the campaign to destabilize the Federation of Malaysia.

The potential of the relationship was more fully realized in the Suharto era. The two governments forged a rounded relationship comprising political links, development assistance, trade and economic ties, diplomatic coordination on regional problems, defence cooperation and a range of people-to-people contacts. Persistent underlying tensions, reflecting New Zealanders’ discomfort with the authoritarian character of the Indonesian government, were generally held in check by realpolitik calculations of New Zealand's interests. Not until the 1990s did public disquiet about Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, and a sense that stagnation in Indonesia's leadership made engagement less productive, feed a new wave of disillusionment.

The Impact of Indonesia's Independence Struggle

Nationalist resistance to the resumption of Dutch administration of the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) after World War II drew the New Zealand government's attention to a territory in which it had previously shown little interest. Before the war New Zealand had received occasional British reports on NEI political and economic developments, and rare consular cases were dealt with on its behalf by British officials.