Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb warmly welcomed yesterday's announcement by President Joko Widodo that -Indonesia wished to join the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. 
"Importantly, this demonstrates a disposition to open their country up further and to pursue new levels of liberalisation," Mr Robb told The Australian.
Mr Joko's move would make Indonesia the second-biggest member of the TPP by population and it is expected to challenge others in the region, including China and The Philippines, to seek membership.
Mr Joko said after meeting President Barack Obama in the White House: "We are the largest economy in Southeast Asia, and Indonesia intends to join." Indonesia's move, while bulking up the membership, is unlikely to boost the chances of the TPP passing the US congress, where the debate is overwhelmingly domestic.
But it is a huge boost for Canberra, which has been negotiating a free-trade agreement with Indonesia, Australia's 10th-largest trading partner, for three years.
To join the pact, which was concluded on   October 5, Indonesia will have to negotiate with the 12 founder members individually, including Australia.
Although the Australian FTA talks had been on the backburner, Mr Robb said that during a recent visit there, the two sides agreed to re-engage on the trade pact.
"We are putting a lot of energy into building trust in the relationship with Indonesia and taking a most significant business delegation there next month is central to this," he said, adding about 350 firms had signed up.
Indonesia has only negotiated two bilateral FTAs, with Japan and Pakistan - which are well short of being comprehensive. Its other six FTAs are as part of the 10-member ASEAN grouping.
The TPP announcement came out of an unpromising context. Mr Joko is cutting short his visit to the US, cancelling meetings with fund managers and Silicon Valley executives, because of the anger - domestic and international - over the haze covering Indonesia's region due to the organised burning of forests, whose greenhouse gas emissions exceed those from all US economic activity.
And Indonesia had in mid-year introduced 1000 new protectionist measures - although since a cabinet reshuffle in -  August, after 10 months in office, the administration has started to take reformist steps to revive economic growth, which fell to 4.7 per cent in the second quarter, its slowest rate in six years.
"Indonesia is open for investment," Mr Joko said before meeting Mr Obama. Thomas Lembong, Indonesia's new Trade Minister, had previously anticipated that it might take the country two years to be ready to join the TPP. The personal connection with the US President, who is also 54 years old and also came to power as an outsider, appears to have played a role in reinforcing Mr Joko's -accelerated bid for TPP membership.
Mr Obama said: "Obviously I have a very personal interest in Indonesia, given the fact that I spent a bit of time there (almost five years) as a child and have relatives who are Indonesian."Now Mr Joko is returning, to grapple with not only the annual nightmare of forest fires but also now the economic nationalists who have insisted that with a 250 million population, Indonesia doesn't need to encourage trade with or investment from -foreigners.