Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo wants more Australians to learn the Indonesian language. 

Jokowi hosted Australian Governor-General David Hurley for some talks at the Bogor Palace on Friday. The discussions mainly talked about, among other things, a language teaching program as a way to boost people-to-people contact. In other words, both governments are hoping that Australians can learn Indonesian. The same goes for Indonesians with English. 

“The president and the governor-general discussed how we can step up language teaching. So Indonesians can learn English, while we have Australians learning Indonesian. They are already teaching Indonesian in Australia, but I think we still need to boost [the language learning],” Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi spoke to reporters, shortly after the meeting.

“We believe that language can be a great bridge to enhance our people-to-people contact,” the minister said.

Retno said the bilateral meeting briefly touched upon the economic side of cooperation, although she did not get into details of what was being discussed. In a social media post, Jokowi said that his meeting with Hurley was to celebrate the 75th year of bilateral diplomatic ties.

“This formal meeting also bolstered Indonesia’s friendship with Australia, while also strengthening our bilateral cooperation,” Jokowi wrote on social media platform X.

Australia is already teaching its students Indonesian. However, Indonesian language learning in the close neighbor has been on a decline. In 2020, about 828 twelfth-graders in Australia enrolled in Indonesian language classes, marking a 28.7 percent decline from the 2010 figures. There were 1,161 Year 12 students studying the Indonesian language in 2010, according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority. They were mostly interested in Japanese, with 4,554 students studying the language in 2020.

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