Marian Wilkinson and Minh Bui – While the Indonesian economy continues to shudder and Western diplomats debate how to dismantle the country's unique style of crony capitalism, a select group of Australia's farmers and businessmen is locked into the vast financial empire of President Soeharto's family and close friends.
Over the past decade they have quietly signed up deals with his inner circle, which was, until the Asian crash, one of the wealthiest elites in the world.
Mr Soeharto's five eldest children – popularly known as Tutut, Sigit, Bambang, Titiek and Tommy – have all joined with Australian businessmen in a range of deals from oil fields and power stations to farm chemicals and outdoor advertising.
The Soeharto children, now approaching middle age, have become some of Asia's most successful and wealthiest entrepreneurs, controlling hundreds of companies with assets worth billions of dollars.
Their success, however, has been marred by international criticism over the favoured treatment their interests often receive from their father's Government.
Among their most vocal critics have been the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation, and the United States Congress, which have attacked their access to government contracts and business tax breaks which have at times frozen out competitors and cost the country dearly.
But for the Australians who decided to join Mr Soeharto's children and close friends in business, the benefits appear to have outweighed any such criticisms.
Mr Maurice Brand, who heads the big West Australian public company Energy Equity Corporation, linked with the President's eldest daughter, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (Tutut), nearly eight years ago.
Tutut is the new Minister for Social Welfare but in 1990 she was carving out a business empire built in part on lucrative government contracts to construct private toll roads across the country.
At the time, Mr Brand was working up an adventurous project to build a $300 million power station in South Sulawesi and supply it with gas from a massive field linked by pipeline.
The idea was hatched as Indonesia was looking at privately built power stations to meet the demands of its then booming economy. Mr Brand went to the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce asking for help to find a suitable Indonesian partner for the project. The chamber in turn introduced him to a company owned by Tutut and some of her schoolfriends.
According to Mr Brand, their relationship was "excellent" and, as he put it: "They provide you with a ring fence around your projects and keep the system moving forward."
Over the next few years, Tutut's company set up numerous meetings with the government electricity company, PLN, which eventually signed a 20-year power supply agreement with Mr Brand's consortium running the new Sengkang power station.
By then Mr Brand's company had sold a stake of the power station to the US giant El Paso Energy, while 5 per cent went to Tutut's company and his own group kept nearly 50 per cent. Sengkang was hailed by the market at the time as a great success.
While the share price of his company has since taken a bit of a hit in the crash, Mr Brand says Indonesia has closed seven insolvent banks in a move to show it is serious about reforming its crisis-ridden economy.
Another seven banks with major problems will stay open, but only under a government-appointed restructuring agency.
The announcement on the weekend came just days before the IMF and Indonesia were expected to sign new terms for a $US43 billion ($65.8 billion) economic rescue package.
Meanwhile, the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Hashimoto, speaking at the Asia-Europe Meeting in London, said Japan's economy was in bad shape. "We will take drastic measures as necessary," he said.
These will include an additional 2 trillion yen ($A22.5 billion) in special income tax cuts from January 1999, government officials said.
His comments come after Sony's chairman, Mr Norio Ohga, last week took a rare step for a Japanese businessman and lashed out at Mr Hashimoto, warning that Japan's sliding economy could trigger a world recession.
This was followed by the US President, Mr Clinton, on Friday who said: "I think we need to be both respectful but firm in urging the Japanese to take a bold course."