Measuring or Creating Attitudes? Seventy Years of Australian Public Opinion Polling about Indonesia

Abstract

This article critically evaluates the relationship between public opinion polling and foreign affairs. It plots key trends in public opinion polls of Australian attitudes towards Indonesia from the 1940s to the present day. Despite variations in polling companies and questions, Australian attitudes to Indonesia appear surprisingly stable, especially since the 1970s. Reading across multiple polls over this period reveals that, both as a mass and among individuals, Australians held complex views in which positive appraisals of Indonesian people and culture co-existed with an underlying fear of Indonesia as a potential military threat. Yet rather than accepting these findings at face value, this article calls for nuanced scrutiny of the role played by polling companies and the media in the construction and representation of so-called “public” opinion. Sensitive to recent developments in the historiography of public opinion polling, it suggests that public opinion polls not only attempted to measure Australian attitudes towards Indonesia, but also helped construct Indonesia as an object of popular and political concern.

Keywords:

• Australia-Indonesia relations
• popular opinion
• opinion polls
• Australia-Asia
• cultural history

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Jemma Purdey, Murray Goot, Julia Martinez and Asian Studies Review’s anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. The Australia-Indonesia Centre funded research contributing to this article in recognition that contemporary analyses need to be informed by historical perspectives.

2. Figures have been rounded to the nearest percentage point throughout this article. Question wording: “What government do you favour for Java and the other islands of the Dutch East Indies?” (The APOP report does not provide wording of awareness question.) Note: A subsequent poll in 1947 found that interest had risen to 81 per cent of men and 64 per cent of women.

3. Full wording: “Indonesian politicians, of course, are continually claiming that the Western (Dutch) part of New Guinea was and should now be part of Indonesia. To see how Australians are reacting to that propaganda, the Gallup Poll collected a cross-section of public opinion on the subject”. The term “Dutch New Guinea” was still in use during the 1950s; however, the more neutral term “West New Guinea” was more favoured (NLA Trove statistics show that “West New Guinea” featured 52,141 times in Australian newspapers during the decade 1950–59; “Dutch New Guinea” featured 14,696 times).

4. Question wording: “Who do you think should govern Dutch New Guinea – the Dutch, the Indonesians, Australia, or the United Nations?”

5. Question wording: “If the Dutch seem likely to hand over Dutch New Guinea to Indonesia, which of the suggestions printed below the map would you favour Australia adopting?”

6. Question wording: “If the Dutch leave, who do you think should govern Western New Guinea – the United Nations or Indonesia?”

7. Question wording: “If the Dutch leave, who do you think should govern West New Guinea – the United Nations, Indonesia or someone else?”

8. In 2005, the question was: “When you think about the following countries, groups or regions of the world, do you have positive or negative feelings about them?”; in 2006, the wording was: “Please rate your feelings towards various countries and peoples, using a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 meaning a very warm, favourable feeling, 0 meaning a very cold, unfavourable feeling, and 50 meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from 0 to 100; the higher the number the more favourable your feelings are towards that country or those people. If you have no opinion or have never heard of that country or those people, please say so”. With minor changes, this phrasing was also used in 2007. From 2008, the question referred to feelings towards countries (rather than countries and peoples). The phrasing was: “Please rate your feelings towards some countries, with one hundred meaning a very warm, favourable feeling, zero meaning a very cold, unfavourable feeling, and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from zero to one hundred: the higher the number the more favourable your feelings are toward that country. If you have no opinion or have never heard of that country, please say so”.

9. Question and results: “I am going to read out a number of statements about Indonesia. Please say how much you agree or disagree with each one, using a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means you strongly disagree and 10 means you strongly agree”. Qs: “Indonesia is an emerging democracy”: Mean 5.1; Median 5; Don’t Know 5 per cent. “Indonesia is essentially controlled by the military”: Mean 6.8; Median 7; Don’t Know 6 per cent. “Indonesia is a dangerous source of Islamic terrorism”: Mean 6.5; Median 7; Don’t Know 6 per cent. “Australia is right to worry about Indonesia as a military threat”: Mean 6.2; Median 6; Don’t Know 1 per cent.