Quick Legislation

Sydney Journal is Caustic

The following appeared in Sydney “Bulletin” of September 11: J>ABAUL’S Legislative Council put up records in its fifth session, the busi ness portion of which was shoved through in one short sitting day- Although it has I an ornate chamber to meet in, and prints “Hansard” on an imposing scale, it is I pleasing to learn that “no ceremonial was I observed” at the opening.

In the first hour, laws relating to birth- I and-death registration, cemeteries, cele bration of marriages, legal appeals, ap- I propriations for a few months and some I other small matters were tossed off. By I lunch-time 13 new enactments had been I approved of, and the Treasurer had I presented the estimates and announced an accumulated surplus of £46,000, So it j was possible to take things easily in the afternoon in dealing with the remaining • 12 ordinances up for consideration.

All the bills were presented by officials, who form the majority of the Council; I but an hour or so was reserved at a second day’s sitting to allow the tax payer-representatives to have their say.

They had nothing to bring forward except a motion which the President said lay I "‘outside the province of New Guinea ad- I ministration.” They have learned from I experience that it is useless to initiate business.

If legislation can be disposed of at the rate of about 10 minutes per bill, it seems 1 an expensive waste of time to take private j honorables from their plantations and offices to do little more than have their names recorded in “Hansard” after those of a list of public servants whose wages they pay.

Government enterprise has not done much for this territory. Before the gold days, when the main industry was ex propriation and most of the plantations were under official control, the place was a dilapidation and a muddle which justly earned the scorn of visitors. It became self-supporting only with the entry of . private enterprise, which finds most of the £200,000 in taxation, plus another £170,000 in rentals, fees and payments for services. Private enterprise dis covered the goldfields, and made their working possible by the development of aerial services. Private enterprise built up the New Guinea trade from £1,670,000 —imports and exports—in 1925-26 to £2,700,000 in 1933-34—this in spite of the depression, of the low price of copra and of steadily increasing taxes, which are to be mitigated for the first time by the removal of about £20,000 in native-labour tax.

Gold production will make New Guinea revenues highly buoyant within the next year or two- If there is to be local gov ernment, it should be responsible govern ment. And while a system is being framed there might be a Federation of Papua, the Mandated Territory and the Solomons. It is absurd that three sets of official heads with three Councils should nave to be maintained for adjacent territories with so much in common.

Rev. G. H. D. Voss, formerly attached to the staff of St. Peter’s, Broken Hill New South Wales, has been appointed by the Bishop of Melanesia to the Mandated Territory. He left for Rabaul by the Montoro on August 27, and will be sta tioned at Arawe, on the south coast of New Britain, where he will assist Rev.

“■ Thompson.