US and Island Bases
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
New (Labour) View of Our Allies
(From Our Canberra Correspondent) EARLY granting of island bases to the United States *was urged in the Senate by Senator Sampson (Lib, Tas.), during the second-reading debate on the Papua-New Guinea Provisional Administration Bill.
The Americans should be encouraged to establish bases in New Guinea, the Solomons, Admiralties and Marshalls, he said, and Australia should be only too pleased to have the bases there.
Due to the scarcity of our population, we would find it almost impossible to satisfactorily defend Australia and the Territories without the aid of the US.
Senator Grant (Lab., NSW), said if the Americans wanted Pacific bases they should have them. “But,” he added, ‘while the Americans are fighting in the Pacific they want all they can get, and there is no real desire on their part that the Australian soldiers should go in these islands. On the other hand, the English want all they can get and they do want the Australians to go in.
“We own the Netherlands East Indies indirectly. It is a question of oil so far as the Indies are concerned, and oil com panies there are largely formed on British shares. These Territories themselves mean nothing. It’s what’s in them that counts.”