Indentured Labour, the King's Cross Minister and

the Future of America in the Pacific

BECAUSE newspaper reporting of the present-day is unreliable, the purport of the statements made recently by Australian Ministers Beasley and Ward about indentured native labour is not clear.

Mr. Ward was reported to have said that indentured labour would be abolished in the Australian Territories, and the context suggested that this change would operate at once. But the “Sydney Morning Herald” report made Mr. Ward say, in New Guinea, on April 22, that Mr. Beasley had been authorised to support, at the International Labour Conference in USA, the abolition of the indentured labour system. One USA report was that Mr. Beasley had advocated the abolition of the system throughout the world, but the Conference gener ally was not favourable; another made Mr. Beasley say that Australia intended to abolish the system “as soon as possible”; while still another said “as soon as another policy be comes practicable.”

The Australian Territories of Papua and Mandated New Guinea are under military, and not civil administration, and the Australian Labour Govern ment is not, therefore, directly in control. The only private employers in the two Territories now usihg native labour are the few planters who have been returned to Papua— and they get their labour from ANGAU. Thousands of native labourers are employed by the armed services and by ANGAU; but the system of engagement used, while ensuring sufficient labour, does not appear to be the indenture system of civil administration. It is a tem porary measure, required by the time and the circumstances; it works quite well; and the military administration is not likely to allow Messrs. Ward

and Beasley, in developing the pet theories of the Trades and Labour - Council, to interfere with it.

If this change is to be enforced by Canberra, it will be attempted when civil administration is restored. If, between now and then, Territories interests sit quiet and say nothing, indentured labour may be wiped out.

But if, through the newspapers and by any other means available, they make it clear to the Australian public that the abolition of indentured labour will (a) finally destroy what ever commercial structure still re mains in the Territories, (b) render future commercial development and settlement there by private enterprise impossible, and (c) make it difficult for Australia to hold the Territories in the future, except at enormous expense to the Australian taxpayers— if this is done, the Ward-Beasley clique may hold their hands, and the indentured labour system may be allowed to continue until the inevit able removal of Australia’s weak and fumbling Labour Administration.

Mr. Ward and Mr. Beasley appear to have left open a way of retreat; but they will not retreat unless Territories interests yell loud enough to awaken Australian public opinion to the real character of what these politicians are trying to do.

STUPID, one-eyed and very mislead ing attacks upon the indentured labour system have been made by various odd people; and the place to defend it is in the Australian news papers, in an appeal to a public that now is both ignorant and indifferent.

It is unnecessary to defend the system here; because 99 per cent, of this journal’s readers are completely familiar with it. They know its de fects and its qualities; they know

that it was evolved by planters, traders, miners, Administration of ficials and missionaries through a long period of trial and they know that such a system, properly policed, is the most effective practical way of bringing these primitive Melanesians from their Stone-Age existence to a standard of living wherein they may become peasant farmers and survive the impact of “Europeanisation ” and some day, maybe, become capable of some mea sure of self-government. Above all, they know that, if Australia is to hold these Territories, there is only one alternative to indentured native labour and that is indentured Asiatic labour.

Everyone appears to have forgotten that the indentured labour system of New Guinea was examined by a Commission in 1938-39, and its com prehensive and valuable report was submitted to Canberra just before the Japanese invasion. There actually is no excuse for Canberra’s blundering ignorance.

BUT there really is far more to this particular issue than the opinions of class-conscious Australian Minis ters. It goes right to the root of post war reconstruction in the Pacific, and the future of Australia as a European nation. Unless men like Mr. Beasley and Mr. Ward-typical products of the now degenerate democratic sys tem, which gives us the queer things that masquerade as Governments— can see such matters as this against an Asiatic and Pan-Pacific back ground, and can get Australia’s present obligations into true focus in relation to Australia’s future, the outlook becomes very ugly and de pressing.

Why cannot these men read the plain indications of the map? Here are Australia and New Zealand, carrying between them a white popu lation of only 9,000,000. There, just

across the Indonesian land-bridge, only 18 hours’ air journey from North-west Australia, is South-east Asia, desperately over-crowded with one thousand million people—half the human race. Australia, New Zealand and the Islands south of the equator could provide a comfortable home for scores of millions of Asiatics.

For a century, while . we were leisurely settling and developing these South Pacific lands, ignorance, disunity, dirt and disease, plus a sea voyage of thirty days, kept those swarming millions in Asia. To-day, under the imperative demands of war, they are becoming united nations, capable of using every art and every machine of modern Europe. Is it too much to suppose—and to fear!—that when this war is over an awakened and powerful Asia will pointedly re mind us of the moral of our own Bible story of the unused talents— that if we do not make full use of the good things which have been given to us, we must make way for those who will? That is not mere preaching—that is a law of nature, as old as the jungle itself. If Aus tralia, NZ, and the South Pacific Territories are not adequately popu lated and protected, they cannot hope to survive as European nations.

AUSTRALIA and New Zealand are too lazy and indifferent, too pre occupied with the things of the present, to try to save themselves by (a) making their countries suitable for the settlement of tens of millions more Europeans, and (b) creating around their northern waters a de fensive arc of developed and Euro peanised Islands Territories. Their only hope of escaping engulfment lies in the future strength and good will of Britain and the United States.

They can depend always upon the goodwill of Britain; but heaven alone knows what dangers may arise in the Europe of the future, to engage fully the strength of their natural protector. They dare not forget the lesson of Singapore. In all this dis quieting prospect, there seems to be only one factor which can give us, the European communities of the South Pacific, a guarantee of security and survival, and that is the friend ship and protection of the United States, that mighty nation of 135,000,000 people.

AGAINST this background — which is so clear that it cannot be denied or challenged—let us look again at the absurd and fatuous posturings of the so-called leaders of Australia and New Zealand.

The armed forces of the United States came into the South Pacific in 1942, so swiftly and in such strength that all the British and French communities south of the equator, except those in primitive Melanesia, were saved from the in describable horrors of Japanese in vasion.

What was the Australian and New Zealand reaction to that? A national testimonial of gratitude and thanks?

No, sir! Mr. Curtin and Dr. Evatt,

as heads of the Australian Govern ment, and Mr. Fraser, as head of the New Zealand Government, got to gether late in 1943 and, without any consultation of London or Washing ton, framed the notorious Anzac Agreement, in which they virtually told the United States that not only must the Americans keep their hands off the titles of the Islands of the South Pacific, but also that, if the Americans desired to retain possession of the Japanese Mandated Islands (Caroline, Marshalls, etc.) they first must consult Australia and New Zealand.

American reaction was exceedingly bitter. Pro-British people were ap palled. The anti-British elements screamed. Here is typical comment, from the “New York Daily News”: The Netherlands reassumption of control of Hollandia after American conquest is only part of a larger picture developing in the Pacific.

Our Marines took Tarawa at terrible cost, and our Government at once handed over the atoll’s civil confirol to Britain, which owned the place before the Japs took it.

We gave back civilian control of Guadalcanal to the British after our men recaptured it from Japan.

In short, our men and materials have fought by far the most of the Pacific war to date, and seem fated to go on doing so. But we seem scheduled to get nothing tangible from it for ourselves.

Indeed, Mr. Curtin visiting this country, said bluntly that of course Australia expects to get back all Island Territories it held to the north before the Japanese arrived.

All this appears to be contemplated by the Atlantic Charter in the phrase, “their countries (Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s) seek no aggrandise ment, territorial or othpr.”

The catch in this statement is easy to spot.

If the British regain Burma, Malaya, or Hong kong as a partial result of our fighting they will say it isn’t aggrandisement for them because they used to hold those places. But if we get any new territory anywhere it will be aggrandise ment for us and contrary to the Atlantic Charter. The same applies to Dutch, French, or Portuguese possessions recovered from Japan wholly or partly by our efforts.

Is all this in keeping with commonsense and essential justice, especially since we are bleeding ourselves of enormous quantities of irreplaceable natural resources to fight this war?

It is vicious stuff; but it shows the importance of studying and under standing the public opinion of the great friendly United States.

The Anzac Agreement, and the Curtin utterances in America, are typical of the short-sighted, blunder ing people who now control the af fairs of the little nations of the South Pacific. Australia and New Zealand, instead of making ridiculous suggestions regarding American in terest in the South Seas Islands, and antagonising American public opinion, should rather be seeking Washing ton’s goodwill, and moving heaven and earth to induce the United States to completely and permanently occupy some of these empty and undeveloped groups near their vulnerable shores.

Thus, they could ensure for our future generations at least some neighbourly interest and perhaps the formal pro tection of the United States.

NEXT to happen was that Mr.

Beasley, with the status of a senior Minister, carried the Trades and Labour Council’s half-baked economic theories of colonial adminis tration and industrial relationships to the International Labour Conference in America, where he got completely

across the necks of the British and United States representatives. The latter, also were Labour men; but, unlike the Australians, they were realists, recognising their world-wide obligations and facing up squarely to the immediate problems of a pretty grim world.

If ever we had, in the realm of international politics, an example of a precocious child trying to teach its grandmother to suck eggs, it is here, in the attempts of the Australian and NZ Labour Governments to show two great Powers how to deal with inter national problems.

“I do not agree with a word you say—but I will fight to the death for your right to say it,” said Voltaire.

That is the basis of democracy, A member of a Conference, no matter how insignificant, has a right to offer his opinions, no matter how ridiculous.

But the democratic system is far off the rails when it permits men like Mr. Beasley and Mr. Ward to take their uninformed and class-coloured ideas to other countries, and present them as the considered opinions of Australia—which, emphatically, they are not.

That is why we say that the attitude of the Curtin Labour Government towards indentured native labour is not a thing that stands out by itself. It is part of the whole Australian Labour Government set-up, and that set-up will re main while Australian Labour holds power.

It is a dismal outlook for the people of Australia’s Pacific Territories. They clearly are regarded in Canberra as social excresences—as the agents of exploitation—as the head and front of individualistic offending—and Mr.

Ward and his henchmen probably would cheer like anything to see all of them, big firms and gold com panies and planters and small traders alike, emptied out of Papua and New Guinea.

On the facts, no other reading of the situation -is possible. We have, as Ministers, a King’s Cross gentle man* who weeps publicly over the wrongs of the “Fuzzy-Wuzzies”; but not one high official, from the Aus tralian Prime Minister downwards, has expressed one word of sympathy for the thousands of men and women, European pioneers of the Territories, who have been economically ruined by the Jap invasion and thrown broken and hopeless upon a world that is quite indifferent to their fate.

Nothing better could happen for the European and native people of the Territories in Melanesia (British Solomons, Bismarck Archipelago, and Eastern New Guinea) than that these Islands should be taken over and per manently occupied by the United States. And, if they only could see it, that would be the best possible thing for the people of Australia, too.

* Mr. Ward is Australia’s Federal member for East Sydney, which includes famous King’s Cross.