The Decline Of Angau

By Bryan Kenwood

ANGAU started out in life as the Papuan Administrative Unit, in February, 1942.

From its inception, it created a record for ability and the economical working of its administrative, native labour, and pioneering activities.

The work of the former civil adminis tration was continued, native welfare being a paramount consideration. The Native Labour organisation shared in the world’s acclaim when our jungle fighters triumphed in the Owen Stanleys cam paign.

Prior to the advent of the Production Control Board, ANGAU field staff played a big part in the rehabilitation of neg lected plantations. ANGAU Marine Section battled up and down the coast with essential supplies and vital produce, m nondescript, impressed small craft.

For upwards of the first eighteen months of its operation, ANGAU maintained a high standard of efficiency in each of its departments.

BUT, to-day, all that is changed.

ANGAU has become a top-heavy bureaucracy, having no less than four complete headquarters. These are largely staffed with ex-civil servants of the Territories, who are decked out in carefully pressed uniforms studded with crowns and pips. Complacency is well in evidence; but an acquaintance with AMR & O is distant. “Soldia Gammon ” says the natives.

Then there are the newcomers to the Territories, transferred from other units and full of zeal to make ANGAU con

form to military tradition. A month or so is sufficient to frustrate them.

But, despite this surfeit of adminis trative officers and staffs, ANGAU does not “administrate” to the extent which it did previously. It has sacrificed many of its powers to outside formations, and can be called to account over trifles by Ist Australian Army at all times.

Native labour staff is no longer much concerned with operational duties. Major ranks are concerned mainly with the spare-time welfare of nursing sisters from the general hospitals. Intermediate ranks are labouring to produce moun tainous quantities of obscure records which will never again be referred to.

The natives under indenture are vir tually conscripted into near slavery. Their villages are denuded of active manpower, and their dependents consequently de prived of essential garden produce. The young men are set to work beautifying useless base areas, to the everlasting glory of Ist Australian Army.

PIONEERING, even in the less developed districts, is a thing of the past. A mighty Districts “Field” Staff spends its days poring over involved Army forms and Governmental returns.

Although these “field” staffs are re quired to carry out periodical patrols, thousands of sheets of paper must be appeased first; native welfare is a matter of secondary importance.

The District Officer who possesses initiative enough to remedy this state of affairs is powerless to put his ideas into effect. He must refer any proposals up. and further up, the heirarchic staircase of a/DAD’s, DAD’S, etc.; and if he lives to be a very old man, he may eventually receive the inevitable negative in reply.

Obviously, the recipe for success in ANGAU is to anchor one’s base firmly to a chair, and to tread on the corns of nobody—except, perhaps, the native.

Yes, ordinances notwithstanding, “boong bashing” is still prevalent. Unprotesting, submissive natives of both sexes are third degreed—sometimes in camera—for tri vialities. What is worse, these summary punishments are meted out by parties who have access to legal action, or who could themselves convene a Court.

Even the little Marine Section—or “ANGAU Navy,” as its critics call it—has lost face. The impressed craft, now scarcely seaworthy, have been replaced only by such small ships as other units are willing to give away. Vessels are laid up, parts fall off in transit, and a pinnace is lost for four days in the middle of a gulf clustered with shipping ANGAU Ms one exceptional depart ment: the rapidly expanded Medical Service is a most efficient undertaking.

It has to be. It is ANGAU’s trump pro paganda weapon—“ See how the white man looks after you!” But the fact re mains that the native has done more for the comfort of ANGAU’s fat staff than the resources of the Australian taxpayer are likely to repay.

A military unit in Territories under complete military occupation, ANGAU is too often able to hide its shortcomings, is quite impervious to criticism, and Is beyond the reach of any democratic form of control.

The time for reintroduction of civil government in Papua and New Guinea Is ripe. ANGAU itself is over-ripe.