Judicial System
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
New Guinea's Juryless Court Urgent Need for Revision of Judicial System
TT is to be hoped that persons and insti tutions who have an important stake in New Guinea will take the present opportunity of insisting that the Aus tralian Commonwealth authorities should revise the judicial system in the Man dated Territory.
Judge Wanliss has retired from the chief court in the Territory and a suc cessor has not yet been appointed. Only one judge—Mr. F. B. Phillips—remains in the Territory. The way, therefore, is clear for consideration of the whole position.
The chief court of New Guinea has been under unfavourable notice during the past year on account of the number of its decisions which have been upset on appeal to the High Court of Australia.
This aspect becomes the more serious when it is remembered that practically every decision which was upset was in the criminal jurisdiction. In other words, men who have been committed to prison by the New Guinea court have been re leased by the High Court. The most recent case was reported on September 1. Details are published elsewhere in this issue. Expressed in a sentence, the High Court said that a man convicted at Wau of gold-stealing should not have
been convicted, and he was released by the High Court after serving seven •months of the twenty-one months’ im prisonment imposed.
These several reversals of New Guinea decisions by the High Court are serious in themselves; but they become more serious when it is remembered that they give colour and justification to the many protests that have been made during several years past by New Guinea resi dents against the character of their principal court. The comments of plant ers and traders especially, concerning the quality of the punishment imposed by the court in cases involving ill-treatment of natives, have been particularly bitter.
Responsible residents, again and again, have insisted that the minds of the learned judges unconsciously were pre judiced by certain aspects of the native policy pursued in New Guinea.
We have heard so much concerning this subject, for and against the New Guinea judicial system, that we hesitate to give an opinion. The issues involved in any case are far too important to be merely the subject of a journalistic debate. In stead, we would strongly urge that the time has come when the responsible authorities should decide whether New Guinea has the best possible judicial system.
We would say, however, that the New Guinea European population probably is too small to permit of the proper work ing of the jury system in connection with criminal trials. On the other hand, it is apparent that we cannot leave the judges of this court in their present difficult and vulnerable position. Prob
ably the simplest solution of the problem would be to provide a simple and easy channel of appeal against the decisions of New Guinea’s juryless court. An appeal to the High Court of Australia is a tremepdously cumbersome, slow, and expensive business.—R.W.R.
Mr. H. A. Gregory, of the District Services Department of the N.G. Ad ministration, is relieving Mr. J. I.
Merrylees at Kieta, Bougainville, while the latter is on recreation leave.
Dr. V. W. T. McGusty, Secretary for Indian Affairs in Fiji, and Dr. Sylvester M. Lambert, director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s medical work in the South Seas, arrived in Sydney by the Nieuw Zeeland early in September, after attend ing a conference of International Rural Hygiene at Java.
Mr. J. Kruttschnitt, chairman of direc tors of New Guinea Goldfields Ltd., visited the Company’s properties in New Guinea, early in September. He will return to Australia by the next Macdhui.