Capturing the Year Writings2008 from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific Edited by Barbara Nelson with Robin Jeffrey ANU COLLEGE OF ASIA & THE PACIFIC Capturing the year ISSN 1836-3784 (Print) ISSN 1836-3792 (Online) Published by ANU College of Asia and the Pacific The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/ Produced by Minnie Doron Printed in Canberra by The Australian National University Printing Service Contents Introduction vii People Geremie R. Barmé, Facing up to friendship 1 Hugh White, Australia’s Rudd awakening 5 Robert Ayson, Kevin Rudd and Asia’s security 11 Peter McCawley, Indonesia mourns economic visionary 14 Jamie Mackie, President Suharto: Cold War hard man who reshaped a nation 16 Robert Cribb, Enigmatic mastermind of change 25 Hal Hill, Suharto’s divided legacy 29 George Quinn, Mixed feelings about the president of paradoxes 33 Shakira Hussein, Bloodstained memorials to a life that failed to fulfil its promise 36 Rights, Ethics and Customs Hilary Charlesworth and Gabrielle MCKinnon, Amendment to ensure administration is brought to rights 39 Richard Mulgan, No minister: frank, fearless or just partisan? 42 Ruth Barraclough, I was one of Nelson’s nine academic victims 47 Shakira Hussein, Something borrowed, something blue 49 Shakira Hussein, High tea with a disgraced political dynasty 52 Shakira Hussein, Prejudice beyond belief 55 Hilary Charlesworth, Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights universal? 61 John Braithwaite, The risk shifting society 65 Food and Wellbeing Dai Qing, Thirsty dragon at the Olympics 69 Bryant Allen, Poor people are not lazy people 75 James J. Fox, From fuel to food subsidies in Indonesia 78 Raghbendra Jha, Investors punish the poor 80 Geremie R. Barmé, Painting over Mao 82 Environment Jeff Bennett, Beware a carbon theory of value 85 Frank Jotzo, Global climate policy: change in the air? 87 Clive Williams, Climate is right to tackle impacts of environmental change 92 Ross Garnaut, Too hot an issue to ignore 95 Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Anatomy of a flood: Kosi, India, 2008 97 International Relations Hugh White, Nixonian spirit is essential for US–China relations 102 Stuart Harris, Australia must tread carefully in Iran, US confrontation 105 Rikki Kersten, Big-picture thinking must prevail 108 Hugh White, PM flubs chance to fix Tokyo ties 111 Peter Van Ness, Adapting to a changing world 114 Jon Fraenkel, Fiji and the Pacific Islands Summit 117 Nuclear Power Ron Huisken, Rogue nuclear states fight change 119 Ron Huisken, Nuclear disarmament: from the loony left to the realist right 122 Robert Ayson, Will the world say no to nukes? 126 Sandy Gordon, Selling uranium to India 128 Robert Ayson, Status quo on uranium sales the safe course 131 Defence and Security Paul Dibb, Defence policy can’t be left to doomsayers 135 Paul Dibb, Razor gang must establish harsh discipline 138 Hugh White, Defence white paper: what do we want the ADF to be able to do? 142 Clive Williams, Rudd’s national security alert 144 Andrew MacIntyre, Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific community proposal quietly grows 148 Economics John Ravenhill, The turn to preferential trade in the Asia Pacific 152 Jenny Corbett and Evi Fitriani, Australian perspectives on the road map towards East Asian economic integration 155 Burma Trevor Wilson, Should Australians worry about donating to Burma? 160 Trevor Wilson, Election secrecy fails to instil vote of confidence 163 China John Powers, A place of their own 166 Ben Hillman, Rethinking China’s Tibet policy 170 Ligang Song, China’s new challenges after thirty years of reform 179 East Timor George Quinn, Dangers ahead for East Timor 183 Steven Sengstock, Reinado to live on as vivid figure in Timor folklore 186 George Quinn, Time to soothe East Timor’s wounds 189 Indonesia Jamie Mackie, ‘Recalibrating’ Australia–Indonesia relations 192 Ross H. McLeod, Pioneering public sector reform in Indonesia 196 Japan Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Why the senate should pass the comfort women motion 200 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Japan and North Korea: time for a new approach to the abduction issue 203 Korea Hyung-A Kim, A review of Roh Moo-hyun’s leadership 206 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The looming famine in our near north 208 Hyung-A Kim, Cyber-savvy Koreans take their beef to president 211 Pacific Katerina Teaiwa, Ignorance rife about Islander Australians 214 Cynthia Banham, Building a real rapport with Pacific Islanders 217 Jon Fraenkel, Bougainville: explosive mines 220 Jon Fraenkel, Tonga: unsteady as she goes 221 Brij V. Lal, The road from 1987 223 Jon Fraenkel, The pros and cons of political party integrity legislation 227 Jon Fraenkel, Tonga: thy kingdom gone 231 South and Central Asia William Maley, Help at grass roots will win over the people 233 Clive Williams, The numbers don’t add up 236 Thailand Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly, King and Thais on high alert in crucial poll 239 Andrew Walker, Let the electorate judge the Thai government’s fate 242 Peter Warr, Thailand’s democratic dilemma 245 Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly, Lèse majesté and Harry Nicolaides 248 Contributors 251 Introduction It was the year Suharto died; China held Olympics; Japan again changed prime ministers; Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking Australian, led a new government; the US elected a president who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia; world financial systems shuddered; and ‘nuclear power’, ‘clean energy’, ‘climate change’ and snow-deprived polar bears peppered news bulletins. Members of the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific interpreted these events and processes in newspapers and periodicals ranging from our city’s Canberra Times to The Economist and The New York Review of Books. This is the third year that the college has published a selection of popular writing produced by its members. From more than 100 articles published by college members in the past year,* we have selected 73, written by 49 of the college’s members. The College of Asia and the Pacific has more than 150 academic members whose duties are to research, publish, teach—and communicate with Australians and Australia’s global neighbours. College members fulfil their obligation to communicate by maintaining blogs, doing radio and television interviews and writing for newspapers and magazines. This popular writing, which represents the distillation of years of research, is represented in Capturing the Year. * For purposes of Capturing, we take an elastic view of ‘the year’: it extends from about November of one calendar year to October of the next. viii Capturing the Year — 2008 Themes and issues change, but the fascination that people have with the stories of other people remains constant. We chose again to begin Capturing the Year with a focus on people—Australia’s new prime minister, the former president of Indonesia, an influential Indonesian economist and an assassinated former prime minister of Pakistan. For Australians, the arrival of a new prime minister, able to converse in Mandarin, inspired cartoonists* and occasioned pride in the College of Asia and the Pacific: Kevin Rudd studied Mandarin here and graduated from ANU. In this collection, Geremie R. Barmé examines the careful use of language in Rudd’s speech in Mandarin at Peking University in April. Robert Ayson and Hugh White reflect on the prime minister’s foreign policy. The college has a long-standing commitment to studying and working with Indonesia. When ex-President Suharto died in January at the age of 86, members of the college were called on to write about the former dictator and his legacy. We publish four accounts, ranging from Jamie Mackie’s detailed obituary to George Quinn’s personal memoir. Less noticed, but perhaps almost as influential as Suharto himself, Sadli, the economist, also died in January. An architect of Indonesia’s economy from the 1970s, Sadli and his legacy are considered by Peter McCawley. And Shakira Hussein reflects on Benazir Bhutto whose murder in December 2007 cast still graver doubts over the future of Pakistan. The College of Asia and the Pacific acts as a hinge: it connects scholars with deep knowledge of specific cultures and histories to others whose interests are in important, world-spanning themes. At their best, these collaborations ensure that nuance and fine detail are captured in Big Pictures and, in turn, that scholars who work on the local are in constant conversation with the global. Thus the concerns with human rights and ethical government, reflected in the writing of John Braithwaite, Hilary Charlesworth and Gabrielle McKinnon, sit easily with ‘Something borrowed, something blue’ by Shakira Hussein, which sensitively analyses aspects of * ‘Was that the Mandarin version?’ cartoonist Peter Nicholson has a figure ask a neighbour in a hall full of snoring people after the new PM has given a complicated speech on ‘emissions trading’. The Australian, 19–20 July 2008. Introduction ix marriage in Pakistan, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s ‘Why the senate should pass the comfort women motion’. Climate change, environment and energy—particularly nuclear energy— were at the forefront of public concern. Ross Garnaut published The Garnaut Climate Change Review (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), a landmark report on the need to reduce fossil-fuel emissions. ‘A revolution in humanity’s fossil fuel-based energy’, Garnaut writes in Capturing the Year, ‘would be necessary sooner or later to sustain and to extend modern standards of living. It will be required sooner if we are to hold the risks of climate change to acceptable levels’. Immense economic growth generates immense environmental pressures, as Dai Qing vividly illustrates in ‘Thirsty dragon at the Olympics’, her analysis of the water-guzzling Games held in Beijing in August. In the same month in India, too much water—or water in the wrong places—saw the Kosi (the ‘river of sorrow’) change its course, flood thousands of hectares and leave millions of people homeless, as Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt describes in ‘Anatomy of a flood’.