Again

Rarotonga Settles Down Again Aftermath of N.Z. Members’

Visit

From Our Own Correspondent.

Rarotonga, Sept. 6.

VOW that Rarotonga is again settling into the even tenor of its normal life, one is better able to form an estimate of the possible value of the Parliamentary visit and investigation into local affairs.

For a month everything revolved around the three visiting Members —cabals, con spiracies, false rumours and true reports, feastings, and public entertainment.

One result of the rather excessive hos pitality on the part of the natives must have been to create among the visitors an erroneous impression of the domestic conditions of people whose ordinary standard of living is very different from that seen during the Committee’s visit.

One cannot help deploring the official attitude which countenances, if not actu ally encourages, these displays of Olym pian prodigality, which have, it must be borne in mind, to be counterbalanced later on by a corresponding tightening of local belts.

On the other hand it is to be admitted that as a practical demonstration of “everything in the garden being beauti ful” they have a distinct value.

Despite a discreet but nonetheless constant escort of officials, Government quarters, and a carefully selected visiting list, the Members succeeded in obtaining a fair insight into general conditions, al though in some quarters it was regretted that they were not more accessible for those “heart to heart” conversations and recitals with which certain residents would have liked to entertain them.

Control Of Fruit Industry

The Fruit Control Board proposed by a large number of growers and which formed the basis of their recent petition to the N.Z. Parliament, was fully dis cussed during a four-day session. It became evident that whatever advantages such a scheme might possess there was none among the petitioners qualified to conduct the operations of such a Board.

An impression that the Government had already decided on the broad prin ciple of its intentions regarding the Islands fruit-trade was also strengthened as a result of the Member’s insistence on determining the attitude of local growers towards the establishment of full Government control of the industry. A large quantity of evidence was tendered, a great deal of which was neither very helpful nor illuminating. Speaking as representative of the Exporters’ Associa tion, Mr. Robert McKegg, submitted what might almost be described as the only constructive and detailed report on con ditions as viewed from the commercial angle.

On the credit side of this rather costly visitation there must definitely be set the psychological value of its contact with the Cook Islanders and the feeling there by generated among the latter that the new Government apparently wants and means to better local conditions.

During the Committee’s visits to the various districts the schools were in spected and exhibitions given by their respective pupils. The prominence thus accorded to this branch of the Admini stration was no doubt responsible for the

somewhat extravagant praise bestowed upon it in the farewell speeches made by the Members, and also for the partial eclipse of the less spectacular work of the medical authorities, to whom, on the same occasion, no public reference was made.

In any assessment of the relative utility of these two departments (the educational and the medical) it should be remembered that during the past four years expenditure on the former has ex ceeded that on the latter by over £6,000 — an excess of £3,572 being spent in 1935 alone —a distribution by no means unani mously endorsed in all quarters.

Mr. Alfred Dow, who was born in Aus tralia of a Melanesian father and an Aus tralian aboriginal mother, will leave Sydney shortly by the Morinda to com mence mission work on Pentecost Island, New Hebrides, for the Church of Christ.

Mr. Lars Halvorsen, of Neutral Bay, Sydney, died at a private hospital on October 5, after a brief illness. A Nor wegian, he was well-known in Australia, where he had lived since 1924, as a skilled designer and builder of motor-boats, yachts, and other water craft. Mr, Hal vorsen constructed many Islands boats, and last year made a trip through the Western Pacific to meet his clients. The boatbuilding business will be carried on in future by his sons.