TNG and Papua

New Regulations for TNG and Papua

NEW Regulations, published in Can berra on January 10, 1945, amended the original National Security (War Damage to Property) Regulations so as to give effect to the Australian Govern ments recent decision that war damage compensation shall be paid to residents of Papua and New Guinea for indirect as well as direct war damage.

The chief amendments nrovide for the change in definition of war damage.

Compensation is to be paid “in relation to abandoned property in an evacuated area, and shall be paid in respect of depreciation in value as a direct result of its having been abandoned; damage by fire;_ or disappearance or loss in cir cumstances in respect of which it cannot be traced into the possession of any person, “OKOIS pro ji dec l that P r °P er ty is deemed abandoned when possession or control was relinquished owing directly to the existence of the war, and is deemed to remain abandoned” so long as the owner is prevented by war conditions from resuming possession or control. But if any of the Commonwealth Services has had possession of the property, it can n(™, be deemed to be abandoned.

There are many more pages of Regula tions, representing consequential amendand providing machinery for giv ing effect to the greatly enlarged field of compensation.

The amount now standing in the War Damage Fund is about £14,000,000. Claims l°* nnn°^P en^ tion , alrea dy total over £15,000,000. There will be a vast weeding

out• wa tering-down, however.

Officials say that the practice generally followed by property-owners, in lodging claims, has been to start with the high est possible figure, so as to leave ample margin for reduction—rather than that the claim should represent fair valua tions. “Everyone assumes that official dom is going to knock back their claims as a matter of fixed routine, so they start as high as they dare,” was how one New Guinea man explained it.