Inside Indonesia: Taking on Australia’s disinterest, ignorance and isolationism

In April 2016, a digital archive of the 89 printed quarterly issues of the now online magazine were launched in Jakarta with the assistance of the Australian Embassy, the Australia Indonesia Institute and the University of Indonesia. The digitisation project with the National Library of Australia was made possible in part by the availability of government funding.
This article will examine the role of II, as an Australian publication on Indonesia,
within the Australia–Indonesia relationship. First, it will describe its origins in Melbourne in the early 1980s when, on the one hand, the government-to- government relationship was becoming stronger while, on the other, public sentiment in Australia towards Indonesia was
overwhelmingly hostile. As will be shown, II was established in response to Australian government policy on Indonesia in the late 1970s and early 1980s and its engagement with Asia more generally. Initially the magazine sought explicitly to contribute to the debate on policy and influence Australians’ opinions about Indonesia. The second part of the article will focus on the magazine’s evolution over more than three decades, charting shifts in editorial
emphasis in response to both external and internal influences, including Indonesia’s political situation, Australian policy, and its own organisational decisions. These shifts, over three decades, lessened the magazine’s focus on the Australia–Indonesia relationship.