Appearing on ABC’s The Drum on Thursday night, Professor Tim Lindsey described Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s meeting with President Joko Widodo as “the make-up after the break-up”.
Professor Lindsey said that such visits are now a pretty familiar set piece in the Australia-Indonesia relationship, and there’s little doubt that we will see a resumption of warm relations. Australia has been in this position before, he said, for example after the spying scandal in 2013, or going back even further to Prime Minister John Howard’s granting of tsunami aid to repair the rift over East Timor.
Turnbull has a huge advantage in Indonesian eyes, Professor Lindsey added, simply by not being Tony Abbott. But the challenge will be introducing more substance to the relationship, beyond high level government to government meetings.
View the full interview on The Drum website here.
