Public Officers’ Conditions

Papua and N. Guinea

Special Inquiry Being

Made

From Our Canberra Correspondent Canberra, Sept. 15.

AMONG the passengers on the s.s.

Montoro on her last trip to the Islands were Mr. P. E. Walcott, Commonwealth Public Service Inspector in Queensland, and Mr. J. L. Mulrooney, of the Prime Minister’s Department, Canberra.

Mr. Walcott has been appointed a Special Commissioner to investigate conditions and salaries in the Public Service of New Guinea, and Mr. Mulrooney accompanies him as secretary.

They are now at Rabaul.

A good deal of dissatisfaction prevails in the Territory, it being contended that the pay and allowances, and service conditions generally, are not as liberal as they might be. It is recognised, of course, that life in New Guinea has a good many disadvantages compared with the conditions obtaining in Australia, and it is the aim of the Government to make the public servants there as contented as possible, having due regard to the straitened condition of the finances.

Papua has been getting a Federal grant of £50,000 a year (recently reduced to £42,000), and New Guinea £10,000 a year. The latter grant, however, is not a subsidy, as in the case of Papua, for administrative purposes, but an amount set aside for use in the interests of the natives. New Guinea, in fact, has been standing on its own feet —paying its own way. .