The Blathering of Politicians New Caledonia’s Condition

Politicians New Caledonia’s Condition

of people who know Islands conditions thoroughly pass through Sydney in the course of a year; yet the newspaper reporters consistently ignore them, and as consistently “inter view” every inconspicuous member of Australia’s innumerable Parliaments, who uses part of his expenses allowance on a winter cruise to the “Isles of Sunshine.”

It would appear that newspaper folk, in this respect, are living still in the Vic torian era, when members of Parliament usually were men of intelligence, educa tion and vision, whose opinions were worth having. To-day, and since pro fessionalism has dominated politics, mem bers of Parliament are about the last men who should be allowed into the journalistic limelight, which they so eagerly seek.

Many M.P.’s, M’s.L.A., etc., have been tripping around the Islands lately, and the Press has been giving prominence to some particularly asinine opinions. This, for instance: “Noumea was in the doldrums. Butter was 3/- a lb., and was of poor quality.

New Caledonia had considerable natural resources, but it was the Cinderella of French possessions. Cheap but inefficient Tonkinese labourers were taken there to work the mines and plantations. In other hands New Caledonia would have great possibilities.”

This from an inconspicuous member of the N.S.W. Parliament, who seemed to think —Heaven knows why!—he was an authority on New Caledonia. Actually, the French have a far better record of colonisation and development in New Caledonia than Australia has in the Northern Territory, for instance; and the colony is not in the doldrums. It suffered severely from slump, as we all suffered, but it has made a good recovery in the last two years, in which it has been as sisted by the increasing activity and pros perity of the nickel and chrome mines, and smelting works. This is a good mar ket for Australian products, and, if only the politicians would give some attention to the tariff relationship between Aus tralia and New Caledonia instead of pas sing ill-informed nonsense along to the newspapers, the market would be a much better one.

Other politicians have given the re porters their delightful impressions of Papua and New Guinea; with the result that quite a number of earnest gentlemen have been writing to the newspapers to correct the politicians’ misstatements. One of the travellers, for instance, said that the Papuan police spoke the Port Mores by native dialect, which was Motuan, and that the Administration was trying to introduce Motuan as a lingua franca.

Actually, the police, being drawn from many districts, speak a hotch-potch of all dialects —a kind of Motuan-Pidgin— and the Administration’s definite policy is to steadily increase the use of English.

Mr. George Farwell, who arrived in Sydney recently after a lengthy sojourn in Tahiti, has been seriously ill. Mr. Far well was one of the treasure-seekers in the Tuamotu Group last year. Soon after his arrival in Australia he contracted pneumonia, and had to enter hospital.