AIYA Links: 26 July

Selamat siang! Here is AIYA’s selection of the best reading on Indonesia and the Australia-Indonesia relationship to keep you informed and entertained over the weekend.

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In the news

• Congratulations to the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK; Corruption Eradication Commission) are in order, as the respected anti-graft agency is one of the winners of the 2013 Ramon Magsaysay Awards—often referred to as ‘Asia’s Nobel Prize’.
• The University of Melbourne’s Professor Tim Lindsey and PhD candidate Rheny Pulangan argue in this Fairfax opinion piece that Indonesian authorities feel they have better things to do with their scarce resources than help Australia ‘stop the boats’.
• File under ‘boom watch’: the CEO of the Mantra Group, Australia’s largest hotels company, spoke to The Australian about how his firm ‘plans to open 20 hotels in Indonesia by the end of next year, banking on the continued growth of the archipelago’s booming middle class to fuel demand.’
• You’ve heard of the glass ceiling, but how about the ‘sticky floor’? The Jakarta Globe reports on the challenges that Indonesian women face in getting ahead in the workplace.
• The Wall Street Journal reports on the boom in Foreign Direct Investment in Indonesia, which has slowed recently as global commodity prices hurt the mining industry.
• A recent Nielsen survey of consumer confidence in 58 countries suggests that the Indonesian middle class is the most optimistic in the world.

Longer reads

• The new edition of Inside Indonesia is focused on the theme of ‘Incarceration in Indonesia’. From squalid prison wards crowded with petty criminals to the luxury cells bought by corrupt businessmen, the profound problems of Indonesia’s prison system are rarely out of the media there. As usual, II has put together a terrific collection of articles exploring the topic.
• Also at Inside Indonesia, the US political scientist Michael Beuhler reports on his research about one of the uglier aspects of Indonesia’s democracy: the rise of predatory family dynasties in local politics.

Events

There are some unmissable events for Indonesia enthusiasts coming up soon:

• Melbourne: on 1 August at 6:00pm, Monash University’s Prof. Greg Barton will speak at the Australian Institute of International Affairs on the topic of ‘Indonesia After SBY’.
• Canberra: beginning 1 August, the National Film and Sound Archive will be showing the acclaimed and controversial documentary The Act of Killing, and will host a post-film discussion panel with noted Indonesia experts, ‘Confronting the Act of Killing’, after a 2pm screening on Saturday 3 August.
• The Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University is currently looking for young, up-and-coming leaders from Muslim communities in Australia and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and The Philippines) to participate in this year’s Muslim Leadership Program in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. Deadline for applications for the month-long course (Oct 6 – Nov 3) is August 31.
• Applications to be part of the inaugural Conference of Australian and Indonesian Youth (CAUSINDY) in Canberra on 17-20 October are still open. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet with academics, business leaders and other young people at the forefront of building people-to-people relationships between Australia and Indonesia.