As two neighboring countries, Indonesia and Australia have a complicated relationship, characterized by numerous ups and downs. And, as revealed by the results of a new survey, Indonesians and Australians have starkly differing views about each other’s countries.
The Australia Indonesia Perceptions Report 2016, conducted by Monash University’s Australia-Indonesia Centre and compiled by market-research group EY Sweeney, is presented in a way to emphasize the commonalities between the citizens of the two countries, arguing “Indonesians and Australians not so different after all” in terms of their perception of certain issues like trade and business.
But while they may hold similar views on a few points, the survey results also show that Indonesians, by and large, view Australia in a strongly favorable light, whereas Australians mainly associate Indonesia with being unclean, unsafe and untrustworthy.
In the section of the survey in which Indonesians were asked if they agree or disagree with certain words being associated with Australia, 89% strongly agreed that the Land Down Under is progressive, 86% agreed that it was beautiful and 73% agreed that it was safe, open minded and wonderful.
The results were quite different when Australians were asked to agree or disagree with those same phrases in regards to Indonesia. While 45% agreed that Indonesia was beautiful, only 9% agreed it was clean with 54% disagreeing, only 12% agreed it was safe with 53% disagreeing and only 13% agreed that it was trustworthy, with 44% disagreeing.
Overall, 87% of Indonesians said they had a very or somewhat favourable view of Australia, compared to 47% of Australians who had a somewhat or very unfavourable view of Indonesia.
The report puts much of the blame for Australians’ negative perceptions of Indonesia on the media and its focus on issues such as the death penalty, migrants and terrorism when it came to Indonesia. “The weight of this negative media coverage (without a counterpoint) means that Indonesia can be seen in Australia as having a hard edge.”
The survey also notes that the negative perception of Indonesia amongst Australians is tempered by signs that Australians think more should be done towards improving ties between the two countries, with large percentages of Ozzie respondents saying they wanted to learn more about Indonesia and that education about Indonesia should be improved in Australian schools.
The survey’s research involved 24 focus groups as well as 2000 face-to-face interviews in Indonesia and 2000 online interviews in Australia covering a wide range of issues between the two countries. You can check out the full results of the survey here.
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