Notwithstanding
pp. 33-34 · Read in the full issue
Bishop Strong Wants Return Of
Murray Regime
Proposed Word-Methodist Reforms Notwithstanding
THE perennial subject of indentured labour still receives an occasional airing in the Australian press. As the position now stands, Mr. Ward (re presenting the Australian Government), the Methodist Overseas Mission and cer tain anthropologists are for abolition of the system; while, generally, the rest of New Guinea individuals and bodies are for the retention of what is loosely called the “Murray regime,” which includes the contract system of labour.
Individual members of the influential Anglican mission, who remained silent in last year’s controversy, have lately ex pressed support of the pre-war set-up, at least as far as it applied to Papua.
There are obvious reasons for this sudden sponsoring of the old order. Missionaries at the beginning of the evacuation period, no doubt, were anxious to see which way the cat was going to jump, and to judge how that jump was going to affect them and their native charges before they stated their feelings in the matter. They naturally were anxious, also, to see im provements and reforms, if such were go ing to be of practical value to the natives.
The events of the past year have in dicated nothing either in ANGAU practice or Canberra proposals likely to create a new heaven and earth for the natives.
When Mr. Ward announced that civil Government would be restored in Papua and south of the Markham River in New Guinea, he promised a further announce ment shortly regarding Government policy
affecting Europeans and natives. Nothing more has been heard.
A week after Mr. Ward’s announce ment, a long article urging the re-estab lishment of the Murray regime in Papua, by the Rt. Rev. P. N. W. Strong, Bishop of New Guinea, appeared in the “Sydney Morning Herald.” The following are ex tracts : rEDOM is a Christian principle, but the right exercise of freedom by the individual needs preparation and training. Children or adolescents are not given either in the home or in school the freedom of an adult, but if they are being rightly brought up they are all the time being trained and developed to use the gift of freedom aright when they at length come to a full measure of self-realisation in their maturity. The same principle applies to races and to countries strug gling to emerge to nationhood. It has been the backbone of all that is best in colonial rule in the British Empire.
“The present period in Papua is one of great abnormality, and this is becoming more and more apparent in native life.
The great need, if native life is not to be injured beyond repair, is an immediate return to stability such as is being done in other countries when hostilities have passed from them.
“I feel that this could be best effected by the re-establishment of the ‘Murray regime,’ which the natives understand and in which they have confidence —and with
it the Murray laws and system.
“As far as labour is concerned this would mean the immediate cessation of compulsory labour and of Government re cruiting, which under the military regime has been necessary for war purposes.
“The only constructive proposal I have seen expressed, as an alternative to the labour system which' existed before the war, is that,, under a system of free labour, the recruiting should be done by the Gov ernment. Those who know native life
best know that under such a system there would be no free labour. It would be as it has been in the war days, and as, in deed, it had to be—‘compulsory labour.’
“If a Government officer enters a vil lage and says that ten boys are needed for a nearby plantation, and asks, how ever gently, if any from that village would wish to go—it is immediately looked upon as an order. What the Government
merely suggests becomes at once in the native mind a command. And this will be more than ever so after three years of military rule. ‘The Papuan Labour Ordinance which provided for and supervised a system of contract labour, and which also protected village life by strictly limiting the number of men that might be taken from each village, had been most carefully drawn up
down the years, always more with an eye to the welfare of the natives than to the interests of trade, and it was administered in a wise and humane spirit.
“The late Sir Hubert Murray himself made it clear that contract labour was but a stage in the development of the Papuan, but a very necessary stage, be cause of the Papuan’s notorious irresponsi bility (which is improving, but is still very pronounced), and Sir Hubert looked for ward to the day when that sense of re sponsibility would be so developed that contract labour would be no longer neces sary. The question is—has the time come yet? And the answer of those of us who are on the spot is: ‘Definitely no.’ And the war, with its reactions on the Papuans, and with its restricting of free dom and narrowing of responsibility, so far from hastening the day, has retarded it.
“To the Papuan in his present state of development, the labour ordinance was like his Magna Charta. In it he saw the guarantee of his rights and of a fair deal.
He had absolute confidence that if he kept his word the Government would pro tect him and see that he was honourably dealt with. Consequently, it both en hanced his sense of justice and also his self-respect. The Government safe guarded its native labourers’ rights as well as the employers’, and the natives knew it and valued it.
AS far as Europeans are concerned, one would like to see also at the same time the return to the Terri tory of those whose homes are here, and who have been exiled now for some three years or more, and have suffered and lost much. There may well be, however, a limit set on the number of new settlers, so that due opportunity may be given for the development of native enterprise.”