Latest headlines from Indonesia at Melbourne, covering world, local, business, with clear attribution and direct links to the original publisher.
Indonesia’s regional engagement means very little: the agreement asks for cooperation without giving ASEAN a strong mechanism to evaluate domestic implementation. That may explain why regional engagement deepens while the domestic conditions that cause haze persist.
Dr Mitha Eka and Professor Linda Rae Bennett, with colleagues at the Centre for Reproductive Health at Universitas Gadjah Mada, spent a year co-designing the first patient education materials of their kind in Indonesia. Funded by the Australia-Indonesia Institute, the project brought together survivors, clinicians, four hospitals in Yogyakarta, community organisations, and government at both provincial and national levels.
This alarming trend suggests greater engagement from NU’s grassroots forces is needed to pressure NU elites to maintain the organisation’s past role as a defender of democratic norms and a promoter of civil Islam.
The central government cannot manage every aspect of government from Jakarta. The closer government is to citizens, the better positioned it is to understand and respond to their everyday needs. Local governments know better than Jakarta whether a particular village needs better roads, clean water, waste management, schools, health services, or other forms of basic infrastructure.
There is no question that the military, especially the army, is expanding fast, building hundreds of battalions across Indonesia and recruiting tens of thousands. What is less obvious is the major role that complicit local media have played in justifying this remilitarisation project.
In this week's episode, Tito Ambyo chats with Imam Ardhianto, Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Universitas Indonesia, about the changing human-tiger relations in Sumatra.
The question is not whether the government understands the importance of peat restoration as a key measure to prevent fires. It does. The question is whether it is investing enough — and maintaining what it has already built — to make restoration work.
Indonesia’s decision to conduct military exercises with China therefore shows political insensitivity that may create an unnecessary provocation in the region. It also raises even more fundamental questions about Indonesia’s foreign policy under President Prabowo Subianto.
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.
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 activ
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
