Ken Ward

Ken Ward worked for twenty-nine years in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Office of National Assessments, where he was Senior Indonesia Analyst. Since leaving government in 2005, he has carried out research on Indonesian terrorism and published book chapters and press articles on Indonesia. He was commissioned by the Lowy Institute to write a Penguin Special on the Australia-Indonesia relationship, which appeared as Condemned to Crisis? in 2015.

Ken Ward reviews 'A Narrative of Denial: Australia and the Indonesian violation of East Timor' by Peter Job

July 2021, no. 433 • 22 June 2021

Peter Job, a former East Timor activist, has written a careful, dispassionate account of the stance of Gough Whitlam’s and Malcolm Fraser’s successive governments in relation to Portuguese East Timor. He has consulted a commendably wide range of oral and written sources, interviewing, for example, several retired senior Australian officials formerly engaged in the design and implementation of ... (read more)

Ken Ward reviews 'Man of Contradictions: Joko Widodo and the struggle to remake Indonesia' by Ben Bland

November 2020, no. 426 • 19 October 2020

Ben Bland, a Financial Times correspondent in Indonesia in 2012–15 and currently director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute, had a ringside seat to watch the rise of Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (also known as Jokowi). By his own account, Bland has met him more than a dozen times. Jokowi was a furniture-maker and -exporter, mayor of Solo, and governor of Jakarta before b ... (read more)