Daniel Hurst, Canberra – Australia wants to move on from past disputes over spying, asylum-seeker policies and live-cattle exports to focus on building trade links with Indonesia under the new president, Joko Widodo.
The former Jakarta governor leader, widely known as Jokowi, was due to be sworn into the role on Monday and is expected to take less personal interest in foreign affairs than his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, affirmed his desire to strengthen the relationship with "our most important neighbour". Before leaving Australia to attend the inauguration ceremony in Jakarta, Abbott said: "Australia wants the new president to succeed – because a strong, prospering, democratic Indonesia has so much to offer the world."
Professor Andrew MacIntyre, who is RMIT University's deputy vice-chancellor for international matters and has published widely on the Asia Pacific region, said Jokowi was likely to bring a greater domestic focus to the presidential role.
"I think what we should expect is at a fundamental level a 'steady as she goes' approach with the qualification that this president will be less activist in international affairs than his predecessor," he said. "I don't see any significant departure in direction as far as relations with Australia go."
MacIntyre said the president's focus reflected his background but also current political priorities for the Indonesian public.
"In the broad I would say there's deep frustration with corruption, there's a deep frustration with government that seems not to be able to make much headway tackling national issues and there's growing concern about economic inequality," he said.
One of Yudhoyono's final diplomatic acts was to oversee the formal settlement of the dispute that arose after disclosures of Australia's past attempts to spy on the Indonesian president, his wife and his inner circle.
Indonesia recalled its ambassador to Australia after Guardian Australia and the ABC published the revelations in November 2013. Abbott refused to apologise, saying every country gathered information and Australia should not have to apologise for steps taken to protect the nation.
Australia's foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, and her Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, finally signed a memorandum of understanding in August this year. The deal promoted intelligence cooperation and committed each country not to use surveillance capacities in ways that would "harm" the other country.
Yudhoyono said at the time that he hoped military cooperation and other elements of the relationship could be restored.
MacIntyre said the spying dispute was resolved "in formal terms" but the brief document the two countries had endorsed was widely regarded as a "fig-leaf that allowed Yudhoyono to declare the matter closed".
Professor Tim Lindsey, director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the Melbourne Law School, said Yudhoyono had a "strong personal enthusiasm for Australia" but the phone tapping was seen as a personal betrayal.
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in the east Asia program at the Lowy Institute, said Yudhoyono "never gave Australia a free pass" but did have "an active interest in the relationship and sought positive working ties with his Australian counterparts".
"Jokowi is no stranger to Australia, having travelled to Indonesia's southern neighbour for business, holidays, and to visit his son when he was in school in Sydney; nor is he ill-disposed to the country," Connelly said in an analysis piece for the Lowy Institute.
"Yet precisely because the bilateral relationship lacks ballast, when crises emerge it takes a greater effort at the political level to bridge the differences between the two... This is particularly the case with issues that impinge on Indonesia's sovereignty or dignity and capture the imagination of Indonesian nationalists in the legislature and foreign ministry, such as the espionage scandal that damaged ties between Australia and Indonesia in 2013. Any repeat of the latter, for example, could be more difficult to resolve under Jokowi than it was under [Yudhoyono]."
Refugee policy presented another strain on the relationship, with Australia admitting that its patrol vessels had "inadvertently" entered Indonesian waters six times between December 2013 and January 2014 during operations to turn back asylum-seeker boats.
In this case, however, government ministers apologised to Indonesia, saying such incursions were never Australian policy.
Jokowi was quoted by Fairfax Media on Saturday as saying he would take a tough approach to preserving Indonesia's sovereignty. "We will give a warning that this is not acceptable," the incoming president said during the interview. "We have international law, you must respect international law."
MacIntyre interpreted the comment as one of "continuity" – restating Indonesia's pre-existing stance on the need for Australia to respect its sovereignty.
Lindsey said Indonesia was "not happy" about Australia's asylum-seeker policies, which it viewed as unilateral, "and the way it became a political football during our long nine-month election campaign".
Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, said it was "a very big deal for Indonesia that the government is making announcements about what happens on Indonesian soil and in Indonesian waters without ever talking to the Indonesian government".
"I think the navy has been put in an extremely difficult position by the government and the cost of that is to our very important strategic and economic relationship with one of our closest neighbours," she told the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday.
Abbott is looking to the future, making a pitch for closer trade links. He said the countries had moved on from the suspension of live animal exports under the former Labor government, saying the cattle trade was "now back to its pre-cancellation peak".
Describing Indonesia as "the emerging democratic superpower of Asia", Abbott said almost one million Australians visited the country each year, while more than 17,000 Indonesian students studied here each year.
"On present trends, Indonesia will be the fourth biggest economy in the world by mid-century. Yet despite this, two-way trade with Indonesia is only $15bn," he said.
"In fact, our two-way trade with New Zealand, with just four million people, exceeds our current two-way trade with Indonesia and its 250 million people. This is why I have often said that our foreign policy needs a 'Jakarta' focus rather than a 'Geneva' one."
Abbott pointed to his government's New Colombo Plan, designed to allow more young Australians study in Indonesia, and the new Australia Indonesia Centre at Monash University promoting greater understanding of Indonesia's importance.
He described Yudhoyono as "a great friend of Australia" but said Jokowi would take office with "enormous goodwill" in both countries. The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Labor similarly looked forward to working closely with the new president.
MacIntyre and Lindsey said it was positive that Abbott would attend the inauguration and seek to increase trade between the two countries. Lindsey said the arrival of the new president was a chance to "reset" the relationship.
MacIntyre noted, however, that the trade ambition was "easier said than done" and there were some obstacles on the Indonesian side. Australia also needed to to make an effort in focusing on the market of its northern neighbour, he said.
MacIntyre said the countries should start a dialogue about the role of China, suggesting over the long term there was potential for shared Australian and Indonesian interest on regional security issues.
"They should be asking the Indonesians their views about wider regional security and their views about developments in north-east Asia," he said. "Australia should be having discussions with Indonesia about regional security that includes discussions about China."