Duncan Graham
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia. Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
Duncan's articles (284 total)
3 February 2026
Indonesia’s economy wobbles as policy ambition outpaces planning
Market volatility, investor unease and fiscal strain are exposing deeper risks in Indonesia’s economy – where policy ambition is running ahead of institutional readiness.
28 January 2026
Irony abounds: Indonesia gets human rights protection job
Indonesia has assumed the presidency of the UN Human Rights Council, raising questions about credibility, consistency and the future of scrutiny in places like West Papua and Iran.
8 January 2026
Best of 2025 - Out of darkness comes a shaft of cheer
The news from Indonesia this month has been dispiriting – natural disaster flooding in Bali and Flores, man-made maladministration, political chicanery, perpetual graft and rioting in the cities. The headlines imply the country is crumpling. It's not, and here's why.
17 December 2025
Prabowo’s first year: all power, no accountability
A year after Prabowo Subianto’s election, Indonesia’s democracy is under strain as power centralises, dissent is curtailed and the military’s influence grows.
11 December 2025
Blood, silence and history: questioning Indonesia’s 1965 narrative
As Indonesia prepares to release a new official national history, an Australian historian’s account of the 1965–66 mass killings threatens to reopen a long-suppressed debate about power, violence, and memory.
2 December 2025
Indonesia’s Gaza peacekeeping bid raises more questions than answers
Indonesia has offered to send up to 20,000 troops to Gaza as part of an international peacekeeping force. The proposal highlights shifting regional politics – and unresolved concerns about military power, credibility and human rights.
20 November 2025
Fatal free lunch
Indonesia's free meals for kids program has left thousands of youngsters with food poisoning, and returned the country to the bad old days of military influence.
15 November 2025
Trick or treaty? Don't know, can't say
The Indonesian print media covering the one-day visit of President Prabowo Subianto to Australia this month has dazzled its readers with some splendid insights into a serious issue.
9 November 2025
Rewriting Soeharto's story
Indonesian conservatives are rewriting the 32-year history of the late second president Soeharto, a former army general, champion of corruption and destroyer of democracy.
30 October 2025
The morality we need, the asylum they seek
Like many grumpy hacks from an age of lost standards, I've belittled colleagues' usage of the perpendicular pronoun. We're not the Mums needing attention – only the midwives bringing the stories of others into the world. We report and depart.
16 October 2025
Vanity, defence or just wanting to show off?
For a demagogue, what could be more stirring than to take the salute on a raised dais as thousands of armed men and women march past like robots in perfect synchronisation?
8 October 2025
Do politicians ever listen to the people or only the powerful?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ Welsh word-wiz Dylan Thomas’ angry poem to his dying dad implied that the older man resisted passing. But for others, the end is welcome.
1 October 2025
Turmoil in tummies, pains in purse
The road to Indonesian hospitals is paved with good intentions and vomit.
16 September 2025
Out of darkness comes a shaft of cheer
The news from Indonesia this month has been dispiriting – natural disaster flooding in Bali and Flores, man-made maladministration, political chicanery, perpetual graft and rioting in the cities. The headlines imply the country is crumpling. It's not, and here's why.
10 September 2025
Xi targets Prabowo and ditches Trump
For the past decade, the most geostrategic country in Southeast Asia and the world’s third-largest democracy has been wooed by Washington and Beijing.
3 September 2025
Indonesian riots update
The riots in Indonesia have so far taken eight lives with 700 injured, according to Reuters.
2 September 2025
Avoid Bali and the rest of Indonesia
Cashiered former general Prabowo Subianto was elected president of Indonesia last year on a contradictory campaign image.
29 August 2025
Absent – The 3D essentials: Discipline, direction and determination
Why did the Jakarta student riots of 1998 succeed in ousting President Soeharto while this week’s public displays of outrage seem doomed to fail?
21 August 2025
Know thy neighbour – he's getting gun-happy
What does Australia’s legacy media think you want to know about Indonesia?
6 August 2025
Once Australia was important to Indonesia
Happy birthday, monster neighbour. Er, do we know you? We’re strangers here – our proper place is mid-Atlantic, ‘twixt the Old World and the New. However, we're trying hard to cope by promoting trade and investment, while ignoring endemic corruption and avoiding deep involvement.
30 July 2025
No Indonesian high-speed rail wizardry for Oz
When PM Anthony Albanese was flying home after six days in Beijing, the Great Wall and a panda zoo, he told a newspaper that “Australia could learn from China’s fast-rail network. The People's Republic already has more than 45,000 kilometres of high-speed rail connecting 500 cities. We have zilch.
25 July 2025
The penalty for being late is to be doomed forever
Infected by wars and climate change is the other intractable issue: how to help 43 million refugees? More than 3,451 pledges to change the mountain-size misery have been made worldwide by governments, NGOs, and individuals, including Australians. The issue is less about gathering signatures, more about turning words into action.
19 July 2025
Collateral damage? Focus on the principle, not the fallout
Among his many defects, Donald Trump is a vengeful obsessive. Which is why poor Indonesians (that's about 40 million of the 285 million rice-eaters) could soon be paying more for their essential starches.
11 July 2025
Not waving, drowning – Indonesia may lose warming battle
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a flooding: With apologies to T. S. Eliot
30 June 2025
Scrubbing away the bloodstains, tipping out the truth
Lit lovers argue who first said History is written by the victors. It's sharp enough to belong to Churchill, though earlier and longer versions come from politicians in the US and Germany – including fascist Hermann Göring.
25 June 2025
Let one version win – ours
The Church burned translators of the Latin Bible into English in the late 14th century and forbade its teachings, to ensure only one narrative ruled. Australian sinophobes want their version of what the People's Republic of China is doing, thinking and planning to prevail.
23 June 2025
Pregnancy as a death sentence
Genuine good news stories involving government initiatives are rare. Here’s an exception.
16 June 2025
Is Marles the right fit for defence?
P&I readers don't need to be told that Defence Minister Richard Marles is floundering when trying to make security links with Indonesia seem as though they've never been in better shape.
10 June 2025
As Keating advised, it's time for Australia to seek its security in Asia
The world America made for us is passing away. Its place is being taken by a new and harder post-American world, and we are at a loss to know what to make of it.
17 May 2025
Don’t stir Semar – He seeks harmony
Ancient Javanese mythology, often inherited from India and adapted to fit local culture, is rich with striking characters in the wayang kulit shadow puppet theatre. The fat-gut wise clown Semar is charged with maintaining stability.
13 May 2025
Indonesia's old guard wants its old world back
Anthony Albanese’s pilgrimage to Jakarta this week as the new prime minister follows the standard post-election Hi Neighbours goodwill wave. But this time the parades and handshakes may get blurred by heat from Indonesia’s simmering Constitutional crisis.
8 May 2025
Trump shoves Indonesia into China's hands
Jakarta is not a charmer, but her assets are attractive. Beijing and Washington have long been wooing the Indonesian capital for her strategic power and influence.
15 April 2025
How to lose friends and help rivals
If the US wanted to thrust Indonesia into the strategic political orbit of China, it couldn’t have found a better way than imposing a 32% tariff on imports from the archipelago.
19 March 2025
Does Jesus need a barber? The question is a trap
Western media usually tags Indonesia as having more Muslims than any other country. That’s statistically true – but lesser known is that 11% of the 284 million don’t follow Islam. The constitutionally secular republic has more Christians than Australia.
6 March 2025
The creeping crisis we're ignoring
As Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto steers his giant nation closer to China it’s worth recalling Paul Keating three decades ago: No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia.
17 February 2025
Free meals threatened – and threatening
Before the 18th century Enlightenment, church and state in Europe were one. In Indonesia, fears that Islam will infiltrate civic affairs go back to the founding of the Republic. Instead, the threats are not from the mosques, but the military.
6 February 2025
Sound the alarm: ABC at risk
The Federal Parliament has yet to pass a law ensuring five-year funding for the ABC. If it doesn’t get passed, it leaves the national broadcaster open to cuts and threats should the government change.
22 January 2025
Yesterday's man is stuffing up
Trump Two is the world’s big story – will he fly high and take the dollar aloft – or crash and fry? Whatever, he’s shading the sun from the right-wing blusterer next door who isn’t doing well after three months. Duncan Graham reports.
14 January 2025
Jakarta pips Dutton in nuclear race
Peter Dutton’s hopes for Australia to be the first nation in the Southern Hemisphere to pioneer the use of small-to-medium nuclear reactors seem dashed.
8 January 2025
Debunking deforestation
Indonesia’s new president, former disgraced general Prabowo Subianto, is making an awkward discovery: gaining respect in the international community as head of a nation of 280 million civilians is not the same as ordering a special squad to intimidate.
13 December 2024
Farewell fair go, hello despair
It’s true. The night fears have come to pass. The evidence is too great to ignore any longer. My country, our nation, is racist.
26 November 2024
War games? Let's play peace
Why volunteer for the military? Academics have some answers.
15 November 2024
One word fouls straits settlement - "Overlapping"
It was supposed to be the Tour Triumphant, showing that Indonesia - the globe's fourth-most populous nation - has a cosmopolitan new boss who can stride the world stage with panache. But cashiered former general Prabowo Subianto has tripped badly.
9 November 2024
Moderates begone: ‘TIS THE AGE OF THE DESPOT
Prabowo Subianto has got his diary right: First overseas handshake from the new President of Indonesia is for his bankers in Beijing, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. Trump can wait.
31 October 2024
Come in now Indonesian democracy, your time is up
It took less than a week for the reality to be exposed. Even Deputy PM Richard Marles must now acknowledge that the nation next door he praises for its moderation and democracy is now a military dictatorship and a serious threat.
24 October 2024
Gender equality? - Not our culture
Half the 280 million people in Indonesia are women, though not in the 48-member ministry; just five were drafted this week by the fresh president Prabowo Subianto. It’s a Cabinet fuelled more by testosterone than talent.
17 October 2024
Small, smart and struggling
Where’s the torrent of cash expected to flow from Google, Meta and other overseas behemoths plundering Ozzie journalism? Here’s the latest handwringing.
10 October 2024
Can this Odd Couple survive?
Before debating with Democrat VP candidate Tim Walz, the Republican nominee JD Vance said the contestants’ views matter little because voters go for the top of the ticket, not the bottom.
30 September 2024
Looming now in Indonesia: The age of uncertainty
There’ll soon be a new leader next door – ageing hardliner Prabowo Subianto. He’s Indonesia’s dark lord with a worrying past of alleged human rights abuses, yet overwhelmingly elected in the February national poll. He’ll take over on 20 October.
14 September 2024
The cursed stone resists return
In an age of logic and evidence-based reasoning, modern research has revealed a thousand-year curse. It could be stopping the superstitious and spiritually-conscious Javanese from vigorously striving to return a thieved “emblem of Indonesian cultural heritage.