Editorial: Smarten up on defence

The Government's anaemic defence policy cannot survive the weekend's murderous bomb blasts on Bali. The implications for regional stability are too obvious for skimping on defence spending to remain an option. Indonesia is simply too potentially combustible, too strategically important and too close to Australia and New Zealand. Continuing to reduce this country's Defence Force to a peacekeeping role is nonsensical given the increasing volatility of that country and of the Asia-Pacific region.

Indonesia is often described as a powder-keg, so insecure is its makeup. If the fuse is yet to be lit, the bombing of the Bali nightclubs shows the match is too close for comfort. Islamic fundamentalists and separatist rebels in Aceh and Western Papua present problems that would vex a leader of far greater experience than Megawati Sukarnoputri.

It is a measure of her ineffectiveness, and the forces underpinning her Administration, that Indonesia has been singled out by the United States and Singapore for failing to act decisively against terrorism. If, as seems likely, the Bali blasts are found to be the work of fundamentalist militants trained by al Qaeda soldiers, it will be far from their first strike. Last month, for example, a grenade exploded in a car near a house belonging to the US Embassy. And on the same day as the Bali blasts, a small bomb exploded at the Philippines consulate in the central city of Manado.

Clearly, there is sympathy for the fundamentalist movement in the upper reaches of the Indonesian Government. Why else would it have resisted international pressure to arrest Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al Qaeda-linked regional network? Jakarta's claim of a lack of evidence indicates a taste for legal nicety that sits oddly with its penchant for suppression. Equally clearly, there is fertile ground for fundamentalism in the world's most populous Muslim nation, especially when that country is afflicted by economic paralysis. For many among the poverty-stricken, Jemaah Islamiyah's vision of a powerful pan-Islamic state embracing Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the southern Philippines holds strong appeal.

Australia, in particular, has long been wary of Indonesia. A quick look at a map of the region is sufficient to show why. Australia's wariness was ignited in the first instance by the rampant nationalism of Sukarno. Now, the expansionist vision of Islamic fundamentalists offers a potentially greater threat.

Were that force to take power in Jakarta, the threats would be many. What, for example, would happen to key shipping routes, such as the Straits of Sumatra? And what would be the future of states that border Indonesia? Papua New Guinea, a country with the closest of links to Australia, is one of those. Another is the newly independent and mainly Christian state of East Timor. Were Indonesia to seek to reclaim it, New Zealand would surely be bound to come to its aid.

As of now there could be little in the way of New Zealand military assistance. So serene was the Government's view of the Asia-Pacific region that it saw no need for a flexible, well-equipped and strike-capable Defence Force. The Bali blasts bring home the folly of that rose-tinted idea. Australia has never suffered from any illusions. Confronted by successive Indonesian Administrations dominated by the armed forces and enfeebled by corruption, it has maintained, and strengthened, its arsenal.

Australia, for the sake of its security, cannot countenance a fundamentalist Indonesia. Nor can New Zealand. On issues of regional stability, it must go where Australia goes. And be able to back it to the hilt.