COMMENT Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad may have got a lot of things wrong, but he was pretty well on the mark when he labelled Australia the ‘deputy sheriff’ to the United States.

Tony Abbott Over the last few weeks more and more allegations of Australia’s spying on its neighbours have emerged, the most serious of which is the recent information that Australian intelligence services hacked the mobile phone of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and those of many of his close aides in 2009.

Indonesia isn’t Australia’s only so called ‘ally’ that has been spied on. Information earlier this month emerged that Australia used its embassy in Kuala Lumpur to hack phones and collect data on behalf of the US.

A belligerent Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott ( right ) has stood defiant and asserted that it is Australia’s entitlement to spy on its neighbours and has refused to apologise, explain the allegations or guarantee the hacking won’t happen again.

Instead Abbott has talked down to the Indonesian government like children, assuring them they don’t have to worry because the purpose of spying is to “help our friend and allies, not to harm them”.

NONE Susilo ( left ) has responded angrily by recalling the country’s ambassador to Australia and suspending all military cooperation and intelligence sharing between the two countries.

Australia’s foreign policy and sense of regional entitlement is so self-centred that the notion of another nation asserting a level of sovereignty that doesn’t agree with Australia’s national interest is immediately an ‘outrage’.

Much of the local media in Australia has applauded Abbott for ‘standing tall’ and ‘refusing to back down’ and former foreign ministers have come out to stand behind the government’s stance of no apologies.   

While there is some legitimacy to the government’s argument it won’t confirm or deny intelligence matters, the US managed to appease anger in Germany over similar phone hacking by apologising for the allegations and promising that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone wouldn’t be hacked in the future.

There is the rhetoric of patronisation in Australia and the diplomatic attitude is that the child (Indonesia) will stop throwing its tantrum once more aid is dished out.

Meanwhile images of protesters burning Australian flags in Jakarta are being used by the media to show the ‘fanatic’ nature of the Indonesians.

So as Australian-Indonesian relations slump to their lowest point in more than a decade, the deputy sheriff has one hand caught in the cookie jar and is still managing to use the other hand to thump its chest and hold tight to its ego.

After all the deputy sheriff answers only to the sheriff.

JARNI BLAKKARLY is an Australian with half-Malaysian parentage. He has previously interned with Malaysiakini .