Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's visit to Indonesia will not focus on the more apparent Australia-Indonesia issue on asylum-seekers. Instead, Mr Rudd puts improving Australia-Indonesia economic relations in the top most priority of his agenda.

Mr. Rudd left for Indonesia on Friday with the primary goal in hand - if re-elected as prime Minister, he will be spearheading a delegation of Australia's top 100 businesses to Indonesia by the end of 2013.

He might have evaded talks on the more evident issue between the countries he had expressed good intentions as to why he was doing this.

He said that rather for Australians to think of Indonesians as burden because of its asylum seekers arriving in boats, he aimed for Indonesia to be perceived as "one of the fastest growing economies in the region and the world."

"We need to do more to engage with one of our most important neighbors. I want Australia's best and brightest business minds engaging directly with their counterparts and making sure we fully unlock the potential of what is on offer."

In a report from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Rudd Government has the following plans for the Australia-Indonesia economic relations:

  • A new beef industry in Indonesia using Australian genetic material aiming to move past the live-export deadlock.

Indonesia will benefit from this agreement because with Australia supplying beef for the country, there will be no more scarcity for red meat for its people. In return, Australia can possibly earn export income through the intellectual property embedded in the meat export.

  • To reinvigorate negotiations towards a Free Trade Agreement with Jakarta that has taken its toll for long period of time.
  • Announcement of government funding for 400 Australian students for "study experiences" in Indonesia as part of the AsiaBound program through which Indonesia contingent will be part of a move to allow 3700 Australian students to study in Asia. The government envisioned a total cost of $10.6 million in the first year of operation.
  • Government funding on specialized research on the bilateral relationship
  • Holding of Australian culture festival, Ozfest Indonesia, in Indonesia's key cities from January to April of 2014.

Obstruction against Concentrated Efforts on Asylum-seekers

Foeriegn Minister Bob Carr reacted on Mr Rudd's behaviour on the issue saying that Mr Rudd's reluctance to tackle the issue gave economic migrants leeway to disguise themselves as asylum-seekers.

In an interview with ABC radio, Mr carr said, "Now, one of the things very specifically we need to look at is the practice of people-smuggling-people-smugglers bringing into Australian waters, people on vessels who destroy their travel documents and who've rehearsed a story - each of them an identical memorized story. Now that is a challenge from Australian practice and it's got to be responded to."

There is 90 per cent of asylum seekers who pretend to arrive without travel documents even if they actually used valid passport to enter Indonesia or Malaysia.

It was to be recalled that the Opposition had wanted to sit on the problem since June of 2012 proposing assessors to "draw an unfavourable inference about a person claiming to be a refugee IF there is an apparent reason to suspect that the person might just have destroyed his or her travel documents.

But Labor until today dodged tackling the issue head-on.