This is all about appearing tough and standing up to Western countries to their domestic audience. Indonesians will lap this up - giving it to the arrogant Australians. SBY and his foreign minister will probably get a big boost in the polls after this.
It will no doubt drag on further as they will want to make Tony Abbott squirm a bit for not giving an apology. I expect we will not be getting much cooperation with asylum seekers for a while.
But we will not cut foreign aid to them. Yes we may have a larger GDP than them now but at the end of the day they are the country with a population of 250,000 million and growing and the largest and arguably most important member of the Asean block just to our north. We need them more than they need us and that will only increase in years to come as their population and overall economy and GDP continues to expand.
