Ausdag explains why learning Indonesian is not popular in Australia.
Why Aren't Australians Learning Indonesian - A Response to "Bahasa Indonesia - Australians Don't Want to Learn Indonesian" (Indonesia Matters November 19th, 2007).
Having studied Indonesian at university level, then in-country and then teaching the language for five and a half years in an Australian primary school I've been exposed to much of the attitudes of many Australians towards Indonesia and Indonesian (mistakenly called 'Bahasa Indonesia' by English speakers; 'Indonesian' is the English term for the language). The particular school I taught Indonesian in had a high representation of Air Force and Army children; the parents of some had served in East Timor. Surprisingly at first, but then encouragingly, it was these parents who most supported the teaching of Indonesian in Australian schools.
However, it is true that since the late 1970s, numbers of tertiary students enrolled in Indonesian language studies has dramatically dropped. Several close friends of mine have taught Indonesian at the tertiary level for the past 20 or so years. We often talk about the perceptions of Australians towards Indonesia.
Contrary to what is claimed in the 'Bahasa Indonesia' article, many of us in the language 'business' firmly believe that perceptions of the general Australian public towards Indonesia are a prime factor in the decline of interest in Indonesian. Almost everything that is reported on Indonesia in the Australian media is 'bad press'; negative publicity on everything from terrorism, corruption, seeming inconsitiencies in the treatent of Australians in the Indonesian courts compared to Indonesian citizens, and that ever-present but more or less simmering below the surface belief, particularly among older generations, that Indonesia will one day attempt to invade Australia (well, we defeated the Japanese, defeated Communism - supposedly, so now we need something else to fear - how about an Indonesian invasion?).
Indonesia doesn't figure very prominently in people's perceptions of economic opportunities. Think foreign investment in Asia and people immediately think of China, Korea and perhaps India. The slow but steady struggle of Indonesia out of the monetary crisis that other countries seemed to recover from far more quickly doesn't help.
For school students - primary and secondary - they just don't have the same level of exposure to Indonesia as they do for Japan, China or Europe. Every Australian student has been a fan of of least one Japanese cartoon on saturday morning TV, they all know about Judo and Karate, they are probably driven around in Japanese cars, and those shops that are popping up here and there that sell Japanese and Korean kitsch items from erasers to Evangelion figurines are very popular. As a primary school teacher of Indonesian, I am constantly asked by my students why they can't learn Japanese instead.
Migration may have something, but not a lot, to do with the language learning situation in Australia. Migrants such as Vietnamese, Lebanese, Greeks, Taiwanese and others feature prominently in Australian society. They tend to form fairly visible communities that colour our cities and add a unique cosmopolitian feel to life.
Indonesian migrants tend to blend more with the wider community. That is also a good thing. They at least avoid Hansonist accusations of forming 'ghettoes' and not wanting to integrate with Australian society. They are less prominent, do not live in certain areas of the city, but when events occur such as Halal-bi-halal and food markets, they all come out of the wood work.
Nevertheless, the teaching of languages of prominent migrant groups such as Vietnamese, Arabic and Greek is also still very limited. Chinese on the other hand is taking off, particularly in schools located in and around the Taiwanese and Hong-Kong 'pockets'.
From the perspective of teachers and language programs, the implementation of travel bans by the Federal Government in the wake of the Bali and Jakarta bombings did not help. Suddenly universities and schools were no longer allowed to send students or teachers to Indonesia for in-country training or professional development. Exchange programs were halted or reduced in terms of time and quality. Indonesian teachers watched as their Japanese and Chinese teaching colleagues were sent overseas for language training, while we had to make do with the odd in-service session here in Australia.
This is not to say that all Australians have negative perceptions of Indonesia. In fact, most Australians, like most Indonesians, have more important issues of putting food on the table and paying the bills to worry about, than worrying about what the news has to say about our nearest neighbour. Most Australians still rate Bali as high-on-the-list holiday destination and most Australians, if given the opportunity, will gladly attend an Indonesian event to enjoy the food and entertainment.
Perhaps it is also up to the Indonesian communities living in Australia to try and increase public awareness of who they are and what they represent. Cultural events are good. Restaurants are also a good thing. Unfortunatly, in my city at least, Indonesian restaurants tend to have a dismal track record. They open up, change management, are expensive, and close down again. In the meantime, the Vietnamese continue to serve up high-quality food, cheaply, under the same management, resulting in long-lasting small-scale restaurants that see their customers coming back again and again. In a city of two million, I can think of only one Indonesian restaurant and two smaller 'snack-bar' operations, compared to 30 or so Vietnamese restaurants. In fact, as a student of Indonesian in the late 1980s, our class usually had to resort to going to a Malaysian restaurant for a bit of cultural exposure as there were no Indonesian restaurants available.
Having said all that it should also be noted that Australians in general have a very low interest in a serious study of any foreign language. As an island nation, we tend to be somewhat insular, detached from the wider world. We have no bordering neighbours. We do not have a history of foreign occupation, nor do we have a history that demands fluency in a second or third language as is the case in countries such as Switzerland. If we do not have a deeply ingrained perception of the need for a second language, we will not make it a high priority to learn one.