"Sick Papua.”

N. G. Officials Do Not Like Idea of Amalgamation.

THE suggestion that the administra tive personnel of Papua and New Guinea shall be brought together in a new “Australian tropical service corps” is being discussed with anima tion, and a certain amount of bitter ness, by representatives of both ser vices aboard the “Macdhui,” en route to the north.

The Papuans are indifferent. So long as their present liberal superannuation rights and other similar privileges are preserved, they do not care whether they are thrown in with New Guinea or not. They like the idea of a wider field of promotion.

But New Guinea appears actively hostile. The officials are inclined to think that the New Guinea service is keener, bigger and better, and possesses more “pep” than the Papuan service.

New Guinea, they say, is being actively organised and developed, and pays its way, while Papua is languishing, and making little developmental progress, and costs Australia £50,000 per annum.

New Guinea men are frankly sus picious of the tropical service idea.

They argue that it is a first step towards amalgamation, and is only part of a policy of “bringing Papua in out of the wet,” to share in the good times

which New Guinea hopes to enjoy shortly, as the result of receiving £20,000 or £30,000 per annum, from the five per cent, gold royalties. “We do not want sick Papua clinging to our coat tails,” says New Guinea. “Papua is Australia’s responsibility—not ours.”

One can appreciate New Guinea’s point of view. But one can also see the point of view of the Australian government. Why, asks the latter, should Papua not receive some of the developmental stimulus from the Bu lolo goldfield? New Britain and New Ireland are no more entitled to enjoy these gold royalties than is Papua—it was just their luck that they should have been in the same administrative area.

It is going to be an interesting con troversy—if it comes to that. So far, we have only the proposal for the formation of a tropical service corps— and only discussion and argument will show whether it is practicable.

Many of the officials say emphatically that it is not—that the laws and regu lations and general administrative con ditions in New Guinea and Papua are so widely different that it would be im possible to transfer trained officials freely from one to the other. In other words, they argue that there cannot be a merging of the personnel of the two Territories without amalgamation of the Territories, so that they are under the same laws.

The question affects the whole basis of the training of the officials—a mat ter of fundamental importance to the future of these Territories.—R.W.R.