A Question of Ethics

By “Taravatu”

'T'O understand and appreciate official Papua’s attitude to Mr. J. G. Hides and his gold-seeking venture, it seems necessary to delve beneath the surface of things, to seek a motive other than mere bureaucratic obstructiveness tainted, it may be, with jealousy and spite.

This writer trusts that, in what follows, he will be acquitted of any desire to dis parage Mr. Hides or to belittle his achievements. Jack Hides’s courage, his fortitude, his tact; his qualities of leader ship, of good-fellowship; his engaging personality—these things are familiar to the man in the street of three continents.

His fame has spread as has that of few young Australians of our time. The wonders of his explorations have been emblazoned across the skies in every corner of Australia and beyond. He has become the modern Stanley, the Sanders

of real life, and, as such, is a challenge to the virile blood of the nation’s youth.

But, leaving these facts to the popular press (and repressing an almost irre sistible impulse to make comparisons which may well be thought invidious) one is forcibly reminded that Papua’s best-advertised young man is (or was) a public official; and that every penny spent in equipping his expedition, in pay ing its wages, buying its tucker, trans porting its personnel and impedimenta, came out of the pockets of the taxpayer.

It follows, therefore, that any discoveries of commercial importance made by the expedition belong, not to its leader and his friends, but to the Crown.

Happily for Papua, the Colonial Office tradition lives on and triumphs in the Territory to-day. Never harsh, never aggressive, never tyrannical, it yet enacts strict laws for the conduct of public affairs. And its one inflexible doctrine is that no official shall be permitted, how ever indirectly, to employ his public office for private gain.

It must have come hard to the Adminis tration publicly to declare any part of the Territory “uncontrolled”; neverthe less, it was the only effective means of checking an abuse which, if allowed to g-o on, might mean the end of good Government as Papua knows it.

It is Inevitable that the discovery of new gold-bearing country (about which,

by the way, the Administration appears to have been told little or nothing) should offer rare and glowing opportunities for stay-at-home speculators. The men behind Investors Limited are, indeed, people to be reckoned with. Many of them have held public office; their photo graphs appear in the illustrated weeklies labelled “Eminent This” or “Prominent That.” Their favours are sought by poli

ticians; they ooze wealth and bristle with genuine importance. In the commercial, sporting and financial worlds they are the supreme arbiters. Docility is not one of their virtues, nor is a readiness to acknowledge defeat one of their weak nesses. Nevertheless, that the “higher authorities” in Canberra will attempt to thwart the Legislative Council’s efforts to keep its party clean may well be doubted.

As to whether those authorities should be allowed to do so, there can be no doubt whatever. The thing would be a crime.