So… can Australians have sex in Bali anymore?

New laws could mean Australian travellers are thrown in prison for having pre-marital sex in Indonesia. Here’s what you need to know.

Travellers to Indonesia could in rare instances fall prey to new rules outlawing sex outside of marriage, leaving many Australians longing for a cheap trip to Bali feeling “very nervous”.

New laws passed this week criminalise having sex outside of marriage or the cohabitation of unmarried partners. Insulting the president has also been criminalised – a provision which, in a previous version of the Criminal Code from a few days ago, applied to both citizens and foreigners.

Here’s what you need to know

If you and your unmarried partner holiday in Bali or Indonesia, it’s unlikely you will fall victim to the no-sex-before-marriage laws. 

You cannot be prosecuted unless a report is made to the police by a spouse, parent, or child. If that report is withdrawn before trial, then the police have to stop prosecuting as well.

The only exception is if an Australian person has a relationship with an Indonesian person, and they are not married. In that case, it’s conceivable the family of that Indonesian person could report them to the police.

“If you have an Australian move to Bali as a digital nomad and they set up a relationship there. Then, I suppose they are exposed, if the family of the Indonesian is unhappy with it,” University of Melbourne Indonesian law professor Tim Lindsey said. “So it does potentially affect (Australian travellers) in very limited circumstances.”

It comes as the Indonesian government tries to attract more digital nomads. 

The Australian tourism industry are on edge

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Tourism Chair John Hart said “anyone looking to go to Indonesia would be nervous about somebody monitoring what’s going on in their bedroom”.

“It would make potential visitors very nervous. And then to that extent, it also makes tourism nervous. I mean, we need to have traffic going both ways in order for the routes to stack up. We want to continue to be attractive to Indonesians and we don’t have the flight capacity because we don’t have Australians travelling to Bali then that’s gonna make it difficult for us,” he said.

Bali Tourism Board chairman Ida Bagus Agung Partha Adnyana told The Australian they were not consulted over the new laws which was a concern as it could potentially affect the industry. He said they would appeal for “special treatment for Bali because it is a tourist area”.

The information is vague

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said they were seeking further clarity on the Indonesian Parliament’s revisions to the Criminal Code and monitoring the situation closely.

A DFAT spokesperson said, “We understand these revisions will not come into force for three years, and we await further information on how the revisions will be interpreted as implementing regulations are drafted and finalised.”

While the Indonesian Government made a vague statement about phasing in the new Criminal Code over three years, Professor Lindsey said it is unclear what exactly that means.

“How do you phase in a law that’s been passed?” he said.

“Exactly which (amendments) will be phased in and when is quite unclear. So I think this is politicians giving themselves a bit of wiggle room in case they need to call back anything.”

The President still has to sign the laws, but he cannot veto them.

These laws are not made for tourists

The real travesty of the new Criminal Code is that it is peeling back personal and democratic freedoms for Indonesian people, critics say. 

MPs quickly pushed through the changes to the country’s ­colonial-era penal code on Tuesday after there were mass protests the last time they tried to do it. Many expect protests and Constitutional Court challenges to follow once again following the controversial law changes.

“It’s not really about tourists. What’s really bad about this provision is that lesbian and gay people in Indonesia, because they can’t marry … if they’re involved sexually or are living together, they are committing a criminal offence,” Professor Lindsey said.

“If a member of their family chooses or doesn’t approve of chooses to report them to the police in jail. Homosexuality is not a crime in Indonesia, except for the Province of Aceh in far North Sumatra. And this is the danger of being stealth in the criminalization of homosexual people.”

Those caught breaching the controversial article on premarital sex and cohabitation could now be punished with up to a year in prison. Extra-­marital sex is already an offence but is now governed under the same law.

Albert Aries, a spokesman for the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s criminal code Bill dissemination team, said the changes “aim to protect the institution of marriage and Indonesian values”, but the restricted reporting by a family member limited its scope.

If a person was to disseminate teachings or criticise a policy contrary to the state’s official ideology, they would also be committing a criminal offence. The new code also allows more lenient sentences for those who commit corruption offences.