Aussie Journo Keeps Coming Back to RI Homeland

Ulma Haryanto | May 10, 2012

Auskar Surbakti interviewed Pope Benedict XVI on the latter's visit to Australia in 2008. (Photo courtesy of Auskar Surbakti)
Indonesia will always hold a special place in the heart of award-winning Australian reporter Auskar Surbakti. It’s not just because of his heritage — both his parents are Indonesian — but because the 27-year-old has become the Australian media’s go-to guy for news from the archipelago.

It was his series “Rebuilding Aceh” that netted Surbakti, now an anchor at ABC Australia Network in Melbourne, the UN Media Peace Prize in 2008.

Last December, he won the Elizabeth O’Neill Journalism Award, which earned him a three-week visit to Indonesia to meet government officials, academics, NGOs and media representatives, including a tour of the Jakarta Globe newsroom.

The award was named after a public affairs counselor at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta who died in a plane crash in Yogyakarta in 2007. Sponsored by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australia-Indonesia Institute, the award is aimed at forging stronger understanding and appreciation of the issues facing Indonesia and Australia.

The Globe spoke to Surbakti about a range of issues.

What motivated you to apply for the award?

Not only because of the obvious reason that my family’s Indonesian, but because I’ve always maintained an interest in the country. When I was at SBS [an Australian television network], I think Indonesia was seen as my specialty because I knew the language and understood the country more. So I was often sent to Indonesia to cover stories.

I covered things like the West Sumatran earthquakes, the tsunami recovery in Aceh and President Obama’s visit to Indonesia, and thankfully those experiences helped me with my application for the award.

The second part was that even though I’ve been to Indonesia several times, I think I have only scratched the surface of the media, the people and the issues here. And I told them that I thought I would benefit from this award because I’ll be able to meet more of the officials, more of the decision-makers, more of the key people that I wouldn’t have met before.

What does your visit here cover?

In the application I identified areas of interest to me. So I mentioned the environment, counterterrorism, the areas that I reported on in the past and areas that I wanted to develop. I also said that I wanted to go to parts of Indonesia that I hadn’t been to before.

The Australian Embassy here came up with this program that would meet my needs. They have me going to Bali, Lombok, Semarang and Kalimantan.

Kalimantan was the highlight so far. It’s a whole side of Indonesia I’ve never seen before. I’ve heard of it and I knew what it was about but I’ve never seen it myself. It was just in the most remote part of the world.

What do you plan to do in Bali?

Bali is more a rest stop but I’m actually hoping to go out to the villages in eastern Bali to look at the situation there because it’s not as prosperous as the rest of Bali.

I’ll be seeing an AusAID education program in the villages of Lombok. We all know about the tourist side, but not far away there’s this whole other side.

And that’s what I find Indonesia is all about, these contrasts. You’ve got extremely wealthy, affluent, developed [areas] and then not far away is the opposite.

What do you think are the main differences between the Indonesian and Australian media?

Once upon a time, I think the differences were vast. Particularly under [former president] Suharto, there was no free media here. But now, increasingly, I think the media are getting quite similar.

It’s diverse here, I think it’s largely democratic, no restrictions. One of the differences, I guess, is I still hear of things like ‘envelopes,’ where journalists could potentially receive money for coverage. In Australia that would be unspeakable.

But we face the same problem with media ownership. We’ve got the [Rupert] Murdoch press, which is very prevalent. I think just looking at the situation in Indonesia, there are more media owners [here] than there are in Australia.

Why did you become a journalist?

I guess it’s why we all want to be journalists. We all want to make some change, expose stories and let people know what’s happening in the world.