Ati Nurbaiti, Canberra – The visit of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, capped with a standing ovation in parliament here Wednesday, highlighted a mutual willingness to push harder for better relations between Australia and Indonesia.

While both governments have stepped up cooperation in many fields, the President said himself that among today's challenges was how to ditch the "preposterous caricatures", the "persisting age-old stereotypes", of the ancient image of "White Australia" on the part of the Indonesians, and the image of Indonesia as a military-ruled regime and "hotbed of Islamic extremism" on the part of Australians. Headlines here trumpeted the "new spirit" of bilateral ties.

In reality, that picture is rosier than the results of a recent poll by Australian think-tank the Lowy Institute. Researchers at Lowy said the results of similar polls gauging the perception of Indonesians and Australians toward each other had remained more or less consistent over the past five years.

The more positive picture in terms of people-to-people relationships includes the high number of Indonesian students studying in Australia over past decades, as Yu-dhoyono also pointed out, citing his own ministers and son Ibas.

But the above stereotypes are part of that reality, said Stephen Grenville, a fellow at Lowy. Among other issues, he said that Australians found it hard to understand that drug offenses could lead to imprisonment, let alone the death sentence because in Australia, similar offenses were reprimanded with a mere "slap on the wrist", he said.

A journalist also said that while Australians loved holidaying in Bali, they struggled to understand the threat of terrorism in the country, after the attacks in 2002 that killed 88 Australians in Bali, as well as sharia laws in Aceh and sharia-inspired bylaws across the country. Not to mention the niggling question of the journalists killed in 1975 in the East Timor town of Balibo.

Researchers, officials and journalists themselves blame the media for much of the ignorance, they say that with the little available news on Indonesia devoted mainly to people smuggling and other incidents or issues of little relevance, most of the public failed to notice, for instance, that in the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, most affluent Indonesians headed up north, to places such as to Singapore, to save their fortunes – and not to Australia.

Here's a look at a few of those puzzling issues for Australians, starting with the least-discussed issue of sharia. This is not all that clear for Indonesians themselves, though for many, the Constitution is clearly against discrimination. The National Commission for Violence against Women identified 154 bylaws across the country that it found to be discriminatory against women and non-Muslims, such as the dress code in state institutions in a number of those bylaws.

The Commission filed for a review of these bylaws at the Supreme Court but they lost. Thus citizens did not get a clear message about whether such bylaws, many inspired by what is claimed to be an understanding of Islamic law or sharia, are legally permissible in a secular state.

Not surprisingly this has been confusing to the outside world, as many hope to see in Indonesia a moderate force of Islam. Opposition leader Tony Abbott described to visiting Indonesian journalists how the late president Abdurrahman Wahid, in his visit to Australia, astonished his audience with his wit and laid-back attitude toward religion, representing "a great antidote to radical Islam", dispelling the myth that all Muslims are fundamentalists in Indonesia.

Gus Dur, as Abdurrahman is fondly called, has passed away. Yet Australians only need to look at the last election figures to see an indication of his legacy. The stagnant vote for Islamic parties indicates that while no Muslim would say he is against sharia, which only means Islamic law, choosing sharia over state law is not a preference.

So while today's Indonesian Muslims like to more clearly express their religious devotion, it does not mean they would turn away in large numbers from the current secular state.

While women activists still strive to abolish discriminatory bylaws, we will be able to see from the upcoming local elections whether such bylaws claiming to ensure morality will still attract votes, or whether voters will look more to the deliverance of public services this time round.

Another glaring issue is human rights and justice. Few Indonesians relate to Balibo, for it is just one of many skeletons in the closet, and one of the least remembered, that is, if it wasn't for reactive officials that banned the film Balibo last year.

We have had, for instance, trials for the 1984 killings in Tanjung Priok and the conviction of low-ranking soldiers for the shooting of students in 1998, both in Jakarta, in events spanning different generations.

Even with these trials the parties most accountable remain mysterious, let alone the parties responsible for the mass murders of the communist purge in 1965, the rape and killings of women, mostly Indonesian Chinese, in the 1998 riots and the test case of Yudhoyono's administration – the murder of the human rights activist Munir in 2004.

The East Timor violence of 1999 has seen the historic recognition of wrongdoing on the part of the Indonesian government following the report of the Reconciliation and Friendship Commission – though following up the commission's work is another question.

Indonesians like to remind critical friends and neighbors that everyone has dark pages in their history, and that outsiders including Australians, fail to recognize our dramatic post "reformasi" achievements.

What Indonesians tend to forget is that our younger generation could walk with their heads high in the world if we could rid our beloved country of its legacy of impunity.

While playing down human rights issues is the business of our diplomats, citizens still have post "reformasi" work to do in demonstrating our own expectations of a government that is able to make criminals accountable. The drive against corruption is a major start. The next step would be the assurance that perpetrators of killings and rape have no place to hide.

It is precisely our own achievements that have led to higher expectations. We can't exactly go about boasting of free elections while some are allowed to get off scot-free on the pretext they were in "covert operations" for the sake of "national stability".

It also remains difficult for us, let alone outsiders, to understand why our state, which is based on the humanitarian values of the Pancasila ideology, and a Constitution ensuring equality, would turn a blind eye to the potential dangers of religious interpretations that are being enshrined in laws and regulations on the pretext of "public order".

We have passed the 10-year mark of the New Order, under which we learned to play safe or risk jail, or worse. We would now like to move freely in the knowledge that no one takes it into their own hands to determine what we can or can not do.

[The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.]