The Tropical Corps.

Still Under Consideration.

NOTHING has been heard for some time of the Federal Government’s suggestion that an amalgamation of the Administrative services of Papua and New Guinea may be possible in the future —such an amalgamation to be under one control and direction and to be known as the Australian Tropical Service Corps.

Several practical difficulties in the way of such a scheme had been put for ward since it was first mooted and, as a result, the impression gained ground that the Federal Government had dropped the idea for the present.

A statement made by the Minister representing the Government, Sir George Pearce, when the New Guinea Bill was under consideration on November 16, in dicates that the matter is not by any means finished with.

A Senator moved an amendment to the Bill which meant that the Adminis trator would be under instructions to appoint Judges in the Territory for cer tain terms and under strictly defined conditions. Sir George Pearce said that the Government could not accept the amendment and he appealed to the Min ister to withdraw it.

Sir George Pearce continued: “There is another and a much stronger reason why the amendment should not be ac cepted; that is, that the establishment of a judiciary ought to be dealt with in a separate measure. For some time the Government has considered that the whole system under which our territorial services are dealt with needs recasting.

At the present time matters concerning them are dealt with piecemeal. We now have the Administration of the Northern Territory, Papua, New Guinea, Norfolk Island, and, temporarily, Nauru. Obvi ously, what we should aim at is a Terri torial service in which the officers are interchangeable.

“In no section of the service is that more commendable than in respect of the judiciary. It is not desirable that we shoud ask a man to spend the whole of his life in one of these tropical coun tries. If the services were interchange able, there is no reason why a judge who on appointment to the territorial judiciary should not spend part of his life in New Guinea, and the latter por tion of it in, say, the Federal Capital Territory.

“The Minister has been studying the whole question with a view to reorgan ising the system, but the proposals of the Government have not yet taken shape—in fact, they are still in process of being incubated.”