page_title: Australia–Indonesia relations
section_title: New Order and East Timor
hierarchical_section_title: Australia–Indonesia relations / History / New Order and East Timor
caption_attribution_description: English: Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia with President Suharto on a visit to Indonesia in April 1992.
context_page_description: Australia–Indonesia relations refers to the foreign relations between Australia and one of its few neighboring countries, Indonesia. Contact between Australian and Indonesians began as early as the 17th century, through Makassan interactions with Indigenous Australians on Australia's northern coasts. Formal diplomatic relations between the two modern countries began with Australia's recognition of Indonesia in 1949. The relationship has been characterised by growing mutual trade of A$17.8 billion in 2018-19, an increase of 6.9% over the previous year, in addition to close links in government, education, and defence under the Lombok Treaty. Both nations are members of the G20, ASEAN Regional Forum, and the Australia-New Zealand-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, and the Indonesia–Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is due to come into effect in 2020. Indonesia received A$331.3 million in Australian development aid in 2018-19.
context_section_description: The avowedly anti-communist stance of new President Suharto and his “New Order” government was a point of common cause with successive Australian governments. Australian foreign minister Paul Hasluck visited Indonesia to meet Suharto three times between August 1966 and January 1968 before Suharto's formal appointment as President of Indonesia in March 1968. Australian prime minister John Gorton then visited Jakarta in June 1968, making only the second visit by any Australian prime minister to Indonesia. Suharto made his first visit to Australia in 1972, and met with Prime Minister William McMahon. Following his election in December 1972, Gough Whitlam met President Suharto in Yogyakarta in September 1974. The leaders again met in Townsville in 1975, Suharto's last visit to Australia.
  A cultural agreement encouraging wider mutual understanding and cooperation in culture, education, arts and sport was signed in 1968. Australia contributed $1 million for the restoration and reconstruction of Borobudur in 1973. In the same year, negotiations on seabed boundaries between Australia and Indonesia were concluded for an area in the Arafura Sea from west of Cape York to a point south of West Timor, excluding points south of Portuguese Timor.
  In the build-up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, five Australian journalists were killed in the East Timorese border town of Balibo. According to a 2007 Australian coronial enquiry, the journalists were deliberately shot by members of the Indonesian special forces. According to Indonesia, the men were killed in cross-fire between the military and pro-independence militia. Gough Whitlam made assurances that Australia would not intervene in the conflict, and encouraged Indonesian action to take over East Timor in 1975 on the basis of concerns over the left-leaning Fretilin movement. Subsequent killings and famine eliminated one-third, or 200,000, of the territory's population. The new Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser met Suharto in October 1976, offering de facto recognition of the Indonesian annexation of East Timor, which was followed by Australia's de jure recognition in 1979, the only foreign government to afford complete recognition of the incorporation. The Balibo Five proved a significant sticking point in the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, a weakness which was compounded by a 1986 Sydney Morning Herald article which discussed Suharto's business dealings in a negative light. The growing prominence of trade and investment for the relationship, however, led to the steady growth of trade between the two countries beginning in the 1980s, with average growth of up to 19%.
  The Timor Gap Treaty was signed in December 1989, and came into effect in 1991. The agreement established a zone of cooperation in the Timor Gap, an oil and gas rich area between the Australian and Indonesian maritime borders, and resolved competing claims between the two countries dating back to Indonesia's annexation of Timor. The Maritime Boundary Treaty, signed in 1997, finalised the border in areas not already addressed by existing agreements.
  In 1992, an agreement was concluded for the avoidance of double taxation on income tax, and on co-operation to prevent tax evasion between the two countries.
  Prime Minister Paul Keating visited Indonesia to meet Suharto a number of times in the 1990s. During a visit in 1994, he said:
  "No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete [and] ... the emergence of the New Order government of President Suharto, and the stability and prosperity which [it] has brought to [Indonesia] was the single most beneficial strategic development to have affected Australia and its region in the past thirty years. We need to encourage the use of popular media with positive input [such as] "Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?" [this is] the exact sort of opinions we need
caption: Paul Keating and Suharto during Keating's visit to Indonesia in April 1992
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