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The Vice-President of the Republic of Indonesia, Professor Dr Boediono, was special guest lecturer at a function organised by The University of Western Australia today.

Held at the State Reception Centre, Fraser’s Kings Park, the University’s 52nd Shann Memorial Lecture was attended by an invited audience of Perth business leaders and a big Indonesian delegation.

Professor Dr Boediono – who graduated from UWA in 1967 with a Bachelor Degree in Economics and received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Economics from the University in 2011 – is second in charge of the world’s third-largest democracy.

In the lecture, he said education was “the golden key to improvements in all aspects of national life”.

He discussed the challenges of policy-making in a developing country with a young democracy and said high-quality policy-making was more likely if there were anchors of rationality and common sense across institutions, as well as improvements in the standards of political, legal and bureaucratic institutions.

“While the practice of democracy might eventually raise the standards of governance through better transparency of processes and the operations of checks and balances, it may be much too long and too risky to rely on such ‘natural’ processes,” Professor Dr Boediono said.

“The process could and should be synchronised and accelerated through the implementation of purposeful and systematic plans to improve governance in all relevant institutions.

“The dilemma is the difficulty of finding a balance between rationalism and populism in the formation of policy; between an effective government and a representational government; and between technocracy and democracy. There is no single model appropriate for all countries and for all time.”

The Shann Lecture honours the 1913 founding professor of Economics, Edward Shann who worked at the University for 22 years and was Vice-Chancellor from 1921 to 1923.

Professor Dr Boediono’s speech (MS Word doc 55 KB) is available online.

Media references

Aleta Johnston (UWA Public Affairs) (+61 8) 6488 7797 / (+61 4) 31 514 677