How Red Tape Tied up a Costly

Lathe

AN example of the kind of official “red tape”, that is driving a large sec tion of the Australian people to a kind of frenzy, has been reported by a Papuan evacuee to the Brisbane “Courier- Mail”:— Mr. Norman Izod, owner of an engin eering workshop at Samarai, brought out with him a £5OO lathe and other precision tools, hoping he would be able to set them up in Australia and do useful munitions work.

He had lost all his other assets and had little ready money.

Customs authorities quoted an import duty of £3OO. Later this was reduced to £lOO, a bank bond of £lOO against the lathe's re-export after the war also being required.

Mr. Izod then wrote direct to the Cus toms Minister (Senator Keane), who finally smoothed out the red tape; but meanwhile Mr. Izod had offered the lathe to the RAAF free of charge for the duration of the war.

The lathe was taken over by the Air Force after it had been six weeks in bond.

Mr. Wilfred Buckhurst, Assistant Dir ector of Surveys in Fiji, is at present on three months’ furlough in New Zealand.

Miss Ella Small has resigned from the office of hon. treasurer of the Pacific Islands Society, Sydney. Her position has been filled by Mr. J. T. Bensted, a former Papuan official.

Seaton Corfield, well known in Papua and New Guinea—he was at one time an inspector in the Department of Agriculture, Rabaul—is the subject of this snapshot, taken outside the Old City, Jerusalem, in 1940. Invalided back on account of fever, he now is doing home duty, in Australia.