National Australia Indonesia Language Awards
Andrew Leigh
Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury
Assistant Minister for Employment
Australian National University
Canberra
7 December 2024
I acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, on whose lands we meet, and all First Nations people present.
Salamat sore. Welcome to the National Australia Indonesia Language Awards (NAILA). A special welcome to those of you who have come from outside Canberra for these awards. I recognise NAILA Director Jade Lee, NAILA founder Maighdlin Doyle, Indonesian Ambassador Siswo Pramono and organiser Andaleeb Akhand.
When I was five years old, our family moved to Indonesia. My father was a political scientist who had written his PhD on Malaysia. When an opportunity came up to work in Banda Aceh at Syiah Kuala University, he decided to move there. In preparation, my father did his Indonesian language training at Point Cook, an Air Force base in Victoria, where he was assigned the notional rank of Squadron Leader and told that he not to go anywhere near a plane. He got full immersion training, and studied Indonesian language diligently.
When we arrived in Indonesia, my mother developed her own expertise. She researched Acehnese handicrafts, and wrote Tangan-Tangan Trampil (The Hands of Time). She also developed an interest in how Acehnese schools were used to convey a sense of national identity (Pancasila), which ultimately turned into a PhD. Perhaps watching a five-year-old son attending the local Acehnese school and singing patriotic Indonesian songs had something to do with this.
I picked up a reasonable grasp of Indonesian, and hung out a lot with my Indonesian friend Niko, who grew up and joined the Indonesian military. Three years later, we returned to Australia.
Aged in their eighties, my parents still remain deeply engaged with the region. Indeed, my father is currently on a plane flying back from Malaysia, where he's been doing research for a book. My mother worked in the International Studies Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, managing students in several countries, including Indonesia. They gave out tote bags with the words ‘Bilingualism is Liberation’ – a lovely reminder of the value of knowing another language.
Indonesian is taught in many Australian schools, but not as widely spoken as it should be. In the 1990s it was the third most common language in Australian schools. Now it's slipped down to be the seventh most common. In the most recent figures I could find, there were around 580 students studying Indonesian in year 12.
That’s too few, given the importance of Indonesia. This is, after all, a country of 280 million people, the largest Muslim country in the world, a nation with deep ties to Australia. Ambassador Pramono, who studied at the Australian National University, is just one of many talented Indonesians who have chosen to study in Australia.
In a roomful of talented linguists, I must confess that my Bahasa was at its best when I was aged eight. It has ebbed away since then, and is now nowhere near that of my parliamentary colleagues Chris Bowen, Luke Gosling, Stephen Jones and Gordon Reid, who speak Bahasa; and Sam Lim and Penny Wong, who speak Malay. As my Bahasa diminished, it got to the stage where my parents delighted in being able to use Indonesian as the code language when they wanted to say something which their children wouldn't pick up. In the most recent Australian Census, there were 73,000 Australians who say that they speak Indonesian at home. And that doesn’t include those who use it to communicate in code around their children.
Nonetheless, Indonesian shapes how I communicate with my children. English only has one word for hot, but Indonesian has ‘panas’ (temperature hot) and ‘pedas’ (chilli hot). So in my household, when children say that something is hot, I'll say: ‘do you mean panas or pedas?’ We call prawn crackers ‘krupuk’, a much more evocative name.
Then there’s those Indonesian words that have made their way into English. Amok. Cockatoo. Gong. All with a touch of onomatopoeia.
Indonesia has shaped Australia. Indonesian has shaped English. Congratulations to tonight’s winners and thank you for all you do to connect us with our extraordinary neighbour to the north. Terimah kasih.