Albo didn't make it to the Indonesian inauguration. Does it matter?

Despite its status as the world's third-largest democracy and an ever-growing giant in the Asia Pacific, few world leaders make the haul to Jakarta for presidential inaugurations. Other Southeast Asian leaders descend on the capital and those from the West or elsewhere in Asia typically send high-ranking representatives.

For Australia, however, it had become a norm and something successive governments have rightly been proud of dating back to John Howard's attendance at the 2004 inauguration of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Tony Abbott fronted up in Jakarta in 2014 for the first inauguration of Prabowo's predecessor, the wildly popular Joko Widodo. It came amid a particularly trying time for Australia and Indonesia. We'd just been busted spying on the outgoing president, Yudhoyono, and the spectre of the Bali Nine was looming as Jokowi, as he's universally known, prepared to execute Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Still, Abbott went. Five years later, Jokowi was returned to the post with an even broader mandate and Scott Morrison tagged along.

So one can only imagine genuine heartache from Albo - who is, too, known as such in Indonesia. Preferring nicknames for political leaders could well be the truest thing we all have in common. Instead of being politely welcomed by members of Indonesia's political elite, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spent the weekend trailing King Charles while Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles took his place. Albo had been the first world leader to place a call of congrats following the February vote, a move also firming into a norm.

The choice of Marles is larger than just his second place on the docket. As defence ministers, Prabowo and Marles have shared a significant journey recently with the formation of the still-guarded defence alliance. Neither country has made too much of a fuss about what it's all about, presumably to avoid the respective domestic hair-triggers around sovereignty. But for Marles, it has given him a remarkable opportunity to cultivate a meaningful relationship with the man who was all but guaranteed to be the next president. How Prabowo feels about Marles is unknown, but Marles often looks near-ecstatic when meeting with him. Unlucky, Albo.

The response among watchers to this change in seating arrangements has been intriguingly broad. The foreign policy establishment in Australia responded immediately that it was not a sign of the end times. Despite this history of enthusiastic appearances, Albo had a pretty good reason and Marles is more than able. That's probably correct. Neither Jakarta nor Canberra are interested in anything other than keeping things stable and productive.

But I love a bit of drama, so conducted my own very unscientifically-sound polling. Australians outside of government but "in the space" - the euphemism for high nerddom - responded with mortification. Albo had a choice and for the country trying endlessly to woo Indonesia deeper, it was the wrong one. It gives the impression of choosing Empire over our future in Asia, and while we Australians know Albo probably would prefer not to host royals at the best of times that's a hard hair to split for Indonesia.

The response from the Indonesian cohort of this WhatsApp-driven survey is more critical. 'Who?' said one. But beyond my outlier, it appears to be key evidence in deeply-held views that Australia's intentions with Indonesia are impure. Multiple colleagues claimed to be unbothered before launching into tirades about wider policy issues like unreciprocated visa arrangements, the treatment of Indonesian students and workers in Australia and our government's overly gentle response to the war in Gaza - a key foreign policy issue for Indonesia and mentioned repeatedly during Prabowo's inauguration speech.

This comes alongside the release of, unlike mine, a very scientifically sound survey from the esteemed Jakarta-based pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia. It dug into beliefs around Indonesia's place in the world and split results between elite respondents and regular Indonesians. When asked which country represents the biggest threat to Indonesia, Australia appears fourth on the list among the public. We're only picked 4 per cent of the time, but it is jarring to see us sit below only China, the United States and Israel. We're a bigger problem for the elites. They're less worried about Israel and we run third as the choice of 7.8 per cent of respondents.

Still, there may be some good news. Good-ish news. Among the public, we also booked 4 per cent nominating us as Indonesia's best friend. We're miles behind culturally closer countries like Malaysia or even the Americans, but at least we're beating the Brits.