Gareth Evans once said that 'no two neighbours anywhere in the world are as comprehensively unlike' as Australia and Indonesia. It sometimes seems that the gulf between Australian perceptions of Indonesia and the reality of that country is just as wide.
To be sure, much of the old hostility is gone. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, coming as it did soon after the Bali bombings and the East Timor transition, was a circuit breaker for the relationship. The Howard Government responded quickly, effectively and with Opposition support. Australian people gave generously. Australian aid workers and experts were well represented in the massive, multinational recovery effort which followed.
But the old stereotypes still break through. Take a Liberal campaign ad that this year attempted to rekindle old fears of invasion from the north. In it, a red arrow labelled 'Indonesia' points menacingly at the heart of Australia, together with other arrows labeled 'Sri Lanka', 'Iran', 'Iraq' and 'Afghanistan'. The voiceover from Tony Abbott: 'We've got to take stronger measures now' to 'stop illegal immigration'.
Crass, puerile but also telling. How many other nations could Australia's alternative government so offensively depict? How many foreign heads of state could be depicted in a cartoon in an Australian newspaper, as Indonesian President Yudhoyono was, in an act of sodomy?
And for all the decent reporting that's regularly done, Indonesia tends to appear in the tabloid press and on commercial TV in the most unflattering of lights: as a source of a 'flood' of asylum seekers arriving by boat; as a hotbed of Islamic extremism and terrorism; and as a state which imposes heavy sentences, including the death penalty, on Australians convicted of drugs charges.
It creates an unbalanced impression. Australians will know about the bombing tragedies but probably not about the sustained success of Indonesia's counter-terrorism program. Nor the fact that violent extremists are a small, shunned minority.
One Indonesian, a professional in his 30s, told me how much he hates terrorism, because it wrecks lives in Indonesia and shames his country. Does anyone seriously believe this is not the view of the vast majority? The reality is that Indonesia is no better represented by a grinning zealot like Amrozi than America would be by Timothy McVeigh (tellingly, both killers at war with their own government).
In addition to being unbalanced, the standard fare on Indonesia is too narrow. In focusing on a set of problems of obvious Australian concern, serious effort to understand Australia's most important neighbour is foregone. Contrast this to reporting on China or the US, where usually there is no Australian angle.
This is a misjudgment, not only because of Indonesia's importance to Australia but because positive things are happening there quickly.
Take the campaign to end the widespread practice of pasung — confinement of people with mental illnesses — as a revealing example. Such people are often literally tied down and can be kept immobile for years on end. In June the Sydney Morning Herald reported on a social affairs institution in which pasung is practised and where conditions were particularly awful.
After reading the article, a psychiatrist from the Directorate of Mental Health, Dr Eka Viora, contacted the institution's director. What followed was a delicate negotiation to improve the patients' lot.
The director, Suhartono, stressed that his centre had a 'special treatment' for mental illness and that he did not want a hospital to 'interfere' with it. Suhartono was nevertheless persuaded to let a hospital team inspect the physical health of his charges, who were found to be suffering from malnourishment, skin problems and other complaints.
Eventually the centre agreed to let the hospital treat the patients' physical problems. Dr Viora's work with the centre continues.
And it's not an isolated case. The government of Aceh province is well advanced in locating people in pasung and providing treatment and support. The goal there is to eliminate the practice by 2011.
Doctors across the archipelago are working to free people from restraints. Nurses work with communities to identify cases of pasung. The national government has set a deadline of 2014 to eradicate pasung. The Human Rights Commission, newly invigorated, is working on the issue.
It is one case among many which shows how Indonesia is changing, developing and making the difficult progress toward better conditions for its people.
Achieving a deeper, wider understanding of Australia's complex neighbour would take genuine effort. It's an effort worth making. Indonesia's ambassador in Washington, Dino Djalal, recently set out the reasons why America should care about his country. They are also good reasons for Australians:
Indonesia is the third largest democracy in the world ... Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in the entire Middle East ... Much of the air that you breathe now comes from Indonesia because we have 30 per cent of the world's tropical rainforests, and we have been providing free environmental service to America and to humanity.
Perceptions in Australia lag behind the reality of today's Indonesia. There are many reasons to catch up.
Stephen Minas, a journalist, was recently on assignment in Indonesia. Minas has written on Asian affairs for The Diplomat, the Canberra Times, the Pacific Basin Law Journal and others. Twitter @StephenMinas