AIYA Links: 2 August

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. Don’t forget: you can keep up to date with news and events from AIYA by liking our Facebook page or following us on Twitter @AIYA_National.

In the news

• One of Indonesia’s most closely-watched foreign investments, the acquisition of Bank Danamon by Singapore’s DBS, is kaput after the Singaporeans walked away from the A$7.9 billion deal.
• The end of Ramadhan is approaching, and this week Indonesians will return en masse to their hometowns for Eid al-Fitr. To give a sense of the scale of this, the Central Java police chief says that his officers are preparing for an extra one million motorists to enter the province during the holiday.
• File under ‘boom watch’: Indonesia’s automotive industry is still on a roll, with Suzuki announcing that it will invest US$611 million in a new car factory there. This comes after last week’s announcement from Toyota that it would spend US$231 million to build a new engine plant in Karawang, West Java.
• File under ‘reality check’: Garuda Indonesia has had to delay its plans for non-stop flights from Jakarta to London, as the ageing runways at Soekarno-Hatta Airport aren’t strong enough to safely support the weight of Garuda’s new Boeing 777 aircraft when filled with passengers and fuel for the long flight to Europe.
• The FT‘s Ben Bland (@benjaminbland) reports on how the ‘popularity of Japanese youth culture, and resurgent investment from its companies, has propelled the number of young Indonesians studying Japanese to record levels.’
• Fairfax’s Michael Bachelard (@mbachelard) has a fascinating story about the hunt for evidence of an advanced prehistoric civilisation in West Java, where ‘[p]roving the authenticity of these ancient ruins among the banana palms and tea plantations…has taken on the aura of a nationalistic quest.’
• Some creative young professionals are getting together to build simple DIY blocks of flats so they can live close to work at an affordable price, as land values in downtown Jakarta skyrocket.
• ANU PhD candidate Iain Henry has a great post over at the Lowy Interpreter blog about what we can learn about the Australia-Indonesia relationship from the East Timor independence saga.

 Events

• Canberra: the National Film and Sound Archive is now 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.
• Canberra: the Australian Institute for International Affairs will host former Lt Gen (Ret) Hotmangaradja Pandjaitan on Tuesday 6 August, who will speak on the topic ‘Law and Democracy in Indonesia since the 1998 Reformation: Aspiration v Reality’. More details here.
• 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.

Jobs

• The Office of National Assessments (ONA) is advertising an expected vacancy for an Indonesia/Timor Leste Analyst (APS5 to EL1) based in Canberra. Only open to Australian citizens, and requires successful completion of a rigorous security vetting process before employment can commence. More details on the AIYA Job Board.
• The Indonesia office of LGT-VP, the ‘venture philanthropy’ fund of the monarchy of Leichtenstein, is seeking to recruit an Investment Manager (to be based in Jakarta) with experience in private equity, venture capital and/or management consulting to shape and implement the fund’s philanthropic strategies in Indonesia. More details on the AIYA Job Board.