"I hereby pledge allegiance ..."
That was my first thought when I saw this photo of an old mate of mine from my Rabaul days and his wife, dressed up to the nines and sitting rigidly to attention under a portrait of Indonesia's President Joko Widodo. "They've changed their nationality and now live in Indonesia", I thought.
However, the rest of his email explained that this was not their Plan B (yet!), "Hello Peter. We had the opportunity to go on board the KRI BIMA SUCI recently when visiting Cairns. She is an Indonesian training ship and was a sight to behold as she left with the sailors 'dressing the yard'."
With our new Labor Government handing out more money to the "needy" - so called because they think they don't need to work - and revealing their hidden agenda of changing the tax treatment of franking credits, self-managed superfunds, negative gearing on investment property, and the family home (in that order of priority and fiscal impact), emigrating to Indonesia - although not on board a KRI which stands for 'kapal perang Republik Indonesia' and is a prefix for Indonesian naval ships similar to our HMAS - no longer sounds like such a far-fetched Plan B.
