Featured Article - Indonesia at Melbourne

Beyond Febrie’s scandal: the historical roots of police-prosecutor rivalry

In a true rule of law system, checks and balances ensure that no single institution exercises power without restraint. Instead, institutions are expected to monitor, limit and correct one another to prevent abuses of authority. By contrast, under Indonesia’s legal and political system, state institutions are discouraged from interfering with one another’s functions to avoid conflict, embarrassment or public controversy.

Talking Indonesia: LGBTQI+ community under attack

Talking Indonesia

Last month, a series of attacks on transgender women in Bogor sent a chill through a community for whom this kind of violence is increasingly normal. The recent attacks have coincided with the release of the full text of Presidential Regulation No. 111 of 2025 concerning the 2025-2029 General Policy for National Defence, classifying the spread of LGBTQI+ culture as a ‘non-military’ threat to the state. In this week's episode, Jemma Purdey chats with Dania Joedo, a musician and human rights activist, about the renewed anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment in Indonesia.

Will Perry Warjiyo’s exit mark the end of a reformed Bank Indonesia?

Analysis, Economy

The real question here is not merely whether the next governor possesses technical credentials. It is whether the process results in the appointment of a governor able and willing to defend the rupiah, when doing so requires higher interest rates, tighter liquidity or resistance to government financing, and whether that governor can do so without jeopardising his or her tenure.

Why are more Indonesian university graduates jostling for menial jobs?

Analysis, Economy, Education, Labour

Indonesia now has two familiar images of graduate hardship, each with its own distinctive colour: the graduate in a green ojol (online motorcycle-taxi) jacket, and the graduate in an orange PPSU vest. They are usually told as separate stories. But both point to the same condition: graduates working in jobs that do not require the qualifications they spent years acquiring.

Selected, not shared: what Indonesia's limited dual citizenship proposal reveals about who counts as diaspora

Analysis, Policies, Society

The proposal for limited dual citizenship also appears ironic. It seeks to persuade highly skilled Indonesians overseas to return, yet President Prabowo has repeatedly urged those who are dissatisfied with the government to ‘look for another country’. Such mixed signals help explain why many members of the diaspora remain reluctant to formalise their ties to a state that seems ambivalent about their belonging.

Talking Indonesia: independent publishing and the making of alternative publics

Arts, Culture, Talking Indonesia

In this week's episode, Dr Clara Siagian speaks with Syarafina Vidyadhana, co-founder and commissioning editor of Cahyati Press, an independent publishing practice based in Bali.

All eyes on politicians: luxury brands and public scrutiny

Corruption, Politics, Society

This is about more than just luxury handbags, designer shoes, or expensive watches. It is about visibility and power in the digital age. Social media has fundamentally transformed the relationship between citizens and political elites by enabling ordinary people to scrutinise, archive, and interpret the everyday lives of those in authority.

Prabowo should not be paying for diplomacy (but he should stop travelling so much)

Analysis, Foreign Policy

There is something profoundly unsettling about the suggestion that Indonesia's president might personally pay for his official overseas travel. Not because it reflects generosity, but because it reflects institutional failure.

Military-cleric alliance may fuel new anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Indonesia

Analysis, Gender, Human Rights, Religion, Security

Whatever political games are at play on this issue, efforts to frame LGBTQ people as a non-military threat and efforts to criminalise sexuality will only open more avenues for persecution, mostly for the underprivileged. It will likely be used as a pretext for security forces to further encroach on people’s privacy. In this scenario, everyone, not just the LGBTQ community, is at risk.

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