School program generates goodwill in Indonesia

Aug 12, 2008

School room diplomacy - that's what the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith is engaged in in Indonesia as he and his Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirajuda today embark on a day long trip to south Sulawesi.

They'll open an Australian supported school - one of one thousand either built or under construction. Mr Smith believes the program is a way to make ambassadors for Australia out of Indonesian children and says it's all part of strengthening an already very strong relationship.

SMITH: You can have good relations between ministers and governments but what in the end really solidifies a relationship between nation states is people-to-people contact. And in very many respects education is the best way of people-to-people contacts. So having young Indonesians educated knowing that Australia played a role in that, the prospect that in their later years they can go to Australia on a scholarship, when we take part in the education of young Indonesians they end up being ambassadors for Australia for life.

CURTIS: And is stopping any radical Muslim schools being set up is that part of the thinking behind it?

SMITH: Well no, the program applies to both state schools and to Islamic schools and of the 2000 the split's effectively 15-hundred state schools and about 500 Islamic schools, but to qualify the Islamic school has to effectively teach the national curriculum. It's not dissimilar to religious schools in Australia teaching the national curriculum or the state curriculum as approved by the various state educational bodies. So we don't have that as if you like our objective. We pursue that in a very robust way with our very strong support for inter-faith dialogue, which we do on a regional basis with Indonesia and which we've indicated we'd like to do globally.

If you want to make friends, maybe you should fund self-defence lessons for Christian schools.