Value Of N. Guinea

Trade

Should Australian Exporters Have Preference?

RECENTLY the New Guinea Adminis tration invited tenders for the sup ply of 1,000 cases of tinned meat —a sec tion of trade which in the circumstances was expected to go to Australian ex porters.

The order, however, went to two over seas companies—the Administration has bought 500 cases of Hellaby’s meat (New Zealand) and 500 cases of Libby, McNeill and Libby’s meat (believed to be Argen tine). This is an extraordinary develop ment. Just at a time when the Com monwealth Government has carried to an extreme point its argument with the Bri tish Government on the question of amending Australia’s meat export quota to Britain, it permits its subsidiary, the New Guinea Administration, to purchase meat that is apparently from another country, and apparently foreign grown.

Certainly, the quantity is comparatively small, but it does not affect the prin ciple: and from that point of view the development is extraordinary.

In the same connection, we are advised that the two German ships, which con tinue to run between New Guinea ports and Hongkong, have been issued with pedlar’s licenses, which means that they have now received official permission to trade aboard the ships at the various outports of the Mandated Territory.

There is much to be said in favour of this —the New Guinea planter is entitled to purchase goods as cheaply as they may be supplied—but again an important

principle obtrudes.

It is difficult to calculate the cost of New Guinea to Australia. The Terri tory, thanks to the booming gold indus try, is self-supporting; but the inability of the Australian planters to pay to the Commonwealth the interest due on the expropriated plantations for which they were financed, represents a very heavy annual cost to the Commonwealth. It is quite clear that the planters are not able to pay interest —nor will they be able to do so until copra returns to some thing like £17 per ton —but Australia at least should try to secure some compen sating advantage in New Guinea by re taining for Australian traders and manufacturers as large a portion as possible of the New Guinea trade.

In other words, it surely is time that

the Commonwealth Government looked into this question of imposing f in New Guinea a tariff that will give a prefer ence to Australian goods. Something of the kind would put an end to the ten dency to buy meat in other countries, and tend to discourage the enterprising and industrious Germans from distri buting Asiatic goods in New Guinea.

It is said that the Mandates System does not permit a preferential tariff.

That is not so. New Zealand goods have a preference in Samoa; and nothing but Japanese goods can enter the Marshall and Caroline Islands. Why then should Australia maintain an open door in New Guinea? If the thing suggested cannot be achieved by a tariff there are half-a dozen other ways in which it can be done.

New Guinea, under the stimulus of the gold industry, is “booming”—its trade is steadily increasing—and Australia should look into this matter seriously.