Less than A$10 million a year—roughly £5.2 million—could avert the “extinction” of domestic Indonesian expertise in Australia, a forum has heard, a fraction of the cost of most foreign-relations programmes.
The figure comes from Michele Ford, an Asian studies professor at the University of Sydney, who told the Asia Capability Forum in Sydney that plunging student demand has turned Indonesian into a “loss-making game” for universities. Barely 500 domestic university students now study the language of a country with the world’s fourth-largest population, and a June report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education warned that teaching of Indonesian would be “functionally extinct” by 2031 without government intervention.
Ten Million Dollars and a Hub in Every State
Ford’s proposal centres on a “hubs and spokes” mechanism designed to sustain national coverage despite collapsing enrolments. Under the model, one university in each state would employ a cadre of academics with expertise spanning Indonesian language, economics, politics and society. Students at spoke institutions would attend those hub universities’ lectures remotely before gathering in classes arranged by local tutors to ensure a group learning experience.
“Having a hub in each state would be fundamentally transformative,” Ford said. “We need…government intervention and we need it to be smart… This is not much money for the government, and the payoff would be incredible.”
The proposal addresses a brutal sustainability problem. The “very few” universities still teaching Indonesian have either come under “a lot of pressure” to justify the programme or survive on the commitment of academics who learned the language “in the 70s.” “Unless a university is wealthy, and increasingly universities are not, that is not sustainable,” Ford said.
Five Hundred Students and Counting Down to 2031
The decline becomes starker at the secondary level. Tim Watts, an MP who chaired the parliamentary committee, said Queensland was on track to have just one student taking Indonesian in next year’s final school exams. The committee’s June report observed that while it is “often said that there is no country more important to Australia than Indonesia,” that reality means “there is no country more important for Australia to understand than Indonesia”—a gap that widens as domestic expertise evaporates toward the 2031 deadline.
The committee recommended establishing a network of “Asian language hubs” to guarantee national teaching of “priority” languages and provide “cross-institutional access.” Watts warned that Australia faces a growing assumption that its Indonesian diaspora will compensate for the loss of domestic expertise, but he called this unlikely because language skills in migrant communities tend to dissipate over a generation or two in Australia’s “open” multicultural society. “Unless we act now,” he said, “Australia will have nobody with deep Asia expertise in two decades’ time.”
The Diaspora Myth and the Tourist Paradox
Indonesian ambassador Siswo Pramono offered a blunt assessment of the cultural disconnect. As “rich” people, Australians had “all the facility” to learn the language of their northern neighbour, he told the forum. “If you reach out to Indonesia, which is the largest economy in South-east Asia, then you get the benefit,” Pramono said. Yet he was mystified that despite Indonesia being Australia’s most popular overseas tourist destination, it attracted relatively few Australian students. “Tourists have interest, but the young people…do not have that interest. It’s something that we need to resolve.”
Collaboration Without Breaking Competition Law
David Turvey, CEO of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, signalled institutional openness to the hubs concept while noting the government had not yet formally responded to the committee’s report. “I can’t pre-empt…the government’s response but I like the hubs idea,” Turvey told the forum. Atec plans to talk to universities next year about collaborating, including “joining up for delivery in courses where they are struggling for demand,” and will undertake analysis this year on ways institutions could band together without breaching competition law.
Turvey also flagged a possible reorganisation of the A$44 million Outreach Program, which is currently allocated to universities based on their shares of students from under-represented groups. “Next year [we will be] looking at whether…there’s other ways to target that kind of effort,” he said.
Watts characterised the crisis as “a complex system problem” requiring investment in teacher capability, curriculum reform, and partnerships between higher and secondary education. “There are no quick fixes here,” he said. But at less than A$10 million annually, the hubs model offers a targeted, state-by-state intervention.
