This year's Boyer Lecture series explores the opportunities and challenges of Australia's engagement with Asia in the 21st century.
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Dr Mari Elka Pangestu is an Indonesian economist and former managing director of development policy and partnerships, and minister of trade in Indonesia.
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This is an edited extract of her lecture.
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In 1966, when I was nine years old, my family moved from Jakarta to Canberra.
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My father, Panglaykim, was an economist recruited to the new Australia–Indonesia Project at the Australian National University (ANU).
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We arrived in a small, orderly city that felt nothing like Jakarta.
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The air was dry, and in my grade 3 class, there were only two Asian faces.
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I witnessed that policy end in high school, when the Whitlam government removed race from immigration criteria in 1973.
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I remember serving as the MC for an Indonesian cultural event in Canberra, paying tribute to the guest of honour, Immigration Minister Al Grassby.
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I grew up in an Australia deciding what kind of country it wanted to be.
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A teacher asked me to tell the class about Jakarta; a neighbour who reminded my father to mow the lawn became a lifelong friend.
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Both impulses — insularity and curiosity — remain part of Australia's character today.
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What made Canberra vital then was the extraordinary community of scholars building the intellectual foundations for Australia's engagement with Asia.
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Figures like Sir John Crawford argued as early as 1938 that Australia's economic future lay with its Asian neighbours.
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Later, as director of the Research School of Pacific Studies at ANU, Crawford built the academic machinery for this vision.
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He backed the university's Australia–Indonesia Project in 1965 during the turbulent end of the Sukarno era.
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My father worked alongside Heinz Arndt, Jamie Mackie, and Herb Feith — scholars who learned Indonesian, lived in Java and Sulawesi, and built deep relationships over dinner tables and in fieldwork.
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This dedicated group played a major role in keeping the relationship steady during political storms, even when labelled as "apologists".
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Australia did not stumble into Asia.
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It was a deliberate, sustained effort by Australians and their Asian counterparts to imagine a new regional order.
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I was shaped by that effort, studying economics at ANU before completing my doctorate in the United States.
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When I returned to Indonesia, I carried a conviction born in Australia: that ideas about openness and cooperation can change how countries relate.
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countries → return → openness
International relationships are not made or broken solely by prime ministers.
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They are built across generations by diplomats, scholars, teachers and students.
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That is how ties become real.
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When Australia chose Asia
The intellectual work of that early generation eventually met political leadership.
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Under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, Australia made a historic political commitment to Asia.
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ANU became a hub for thought leadership, birthing the Australia–Japan Research Centre under Peter Drysdale, where I worked as a young research assistant.
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In 1980, Crawford convened the Pacific Community Seminar in Canberra, charting the course toward APEC.
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In January 1989, Bob Hawke proposed that regional forum, changing our economic landscape forever.
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If there was a golden age of engagement, it was under Paul Keating.
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He made Indonesia his first overseas visit in 1992, elevating it to the first rank of priorities.
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Keating pushed APEC to a leaders' summit, resulting in the historic 1994 Bogor Goals for free and open trade.
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Most remarkably, in 1995, our nations signed the Agreement on Maintaining Security — Indonesia's first bilateral security pact with any country.
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Watching from Jakarta as a young economist, the change was tangible.
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Indonesian was taught in hundreds of Australian schools, academic exchanges flourished, and business links deepened.
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links → teach → schools
A record 25,000 Indonesian students are studying in Australia in 2026, and more than 200,000 Indonesians have studied in Australia over the years.
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But the relationship must also work in the other direction.
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We need more Australians to study in Indonesia, learn Bahasa Indonesia, and experience Indonesia beyond Bali.
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The New Colombo Plan scholarship program has been an important step, and the Albanese government has rightly expanded it, with a record number of Australian scholars going to Indonesia in 2026 and a stronger focus on language and longer-term immersion.
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…and 89 more, not listed.
The Aporia