Tropical Cinderellas

How Australia's Pacific Territories Are Governed

rUS Mr. F. W. Eggleston (a well known Melbourne barrister) in an article in the December “Austral- Asiatic Bulletin”, entitled “Australia and the Territories”:— “It can hardly be suggested that con ditions in Canberra are satisfactory. The Territories Section is a section of the Prime Minister’s Department, invariably put in charge of an Assistant Minister who is looking for promotion. Whenever the vacancy occurs he is promoted, and there is a change . . . The worst feature of the system is the lack of interest and apparent sense of responsibility shown by members of the Federal Parliament in regard to New Guinea problems . . .

“It seems clear that the status of the Territorial Section should be elevated, and have a department head of profes sional standing, capable of advising the Government in the problems, economic, social, ethnological and educational, involved in the government of a tropical dependency.”

“I do not agree with this statement,” says a Papuan correspondent. “It would mean that some academic ass would strut about in Canberra throwing his weight around, while his decisions would torment us further.”

But there is much to be said for Mr.

Eggleston’s argument. It is a fact that, for long years, the affairs of Australia’s great tropical territories have been nobody’s business, and that there has been a complete absence of any nolicy that could be described as intelligent, constructive, far-sighted or continuing.