David T. Hill AM

‘I know of no other Western country where Bahasa Indonesia is widely taught in the school curriculum. I know of no other Western country with more Indonesianists in your governments, universities and think tanks’. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in his address to the Australian Parliament 10 March 2010 This highly favourable assessment by Indonesia's president of Australia's achievements and expertise in Indonesian language -- and Indonesian studies more generally -- appears based more on decades of growth last century than on downward trends over the past decade. In its ground-breaking 2002 report Maximising Australia's Asia Knowledge: Repositioning and Renewal of a National Asset, the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) pointed to what could have been a most encouraging development in Australia‟s strategic linguistic capacity: a four-fold increase in university enrolments in Indonesian between 1988 and 2001, when the number of tertiary institutions offering the language increased from 13 to 28.3 These simple statistics however disguised the beginning of an alarming trend from which we are yet to recover.

This Working Paper presents a preliminary survey of developments in the Press industry in Indonesia since 1965. It is intended for those who seek a brief introduction to, and analysis of, the Indonesian print media today. The focus is generally on national daily newspapers, although reference will be made to major news weeklies, periodicals and magazines, together with certain significant regional publications. It concentrates primarily on the rapid changes which have taken place over the past decade, locating these developments within the context of relations between the press and the state after the ascension from 1965 of Major-General Suharto and the government dubbed the ‘New Order’. After providing a brief account of the historical antecedents of the ‘New Order.’ press, the discussion will highlight key points of friction, and some of the controls within which the industry operates. Attention will be given also to expanding circulations and markets, and changing patterns of ownership and financial control, particularly the emergence of press empires. Four major metropolitan press conglomerates will be discussed in some depth: those centred on Kompas, Suara Pembantan, Tempo and the relative newcomer Media Indonesia. Various organisational press bodies, such as the Press Council, the Journalists Association and the Newspaper Publishers Association, are themselves significant regulatory structures which will then be examined. After raising some of the challenges which face the changing press in the 1990s, the Working Paper concludes with some brief comments on press-related aspects of Australian-Indonesian bi-lateral relations.