of Territories'
p. 12 · Read in the full issue
A Personal Impression of Territories' New Administrator
ON September 28, I visited the School of Civil Affairs, at Duntroon Military College, Canberra, where some 50 selected young men are being trained in some of the duties of tropical administra tion.
There, quite unexpectedly, I met the newly-appointed Provisional Administra tor of Papua-New Guinea, Colonel J. K.
Murray, who has been the chief instruc tor at the school—unexpectedly, because Colonel Murray, on September 14, had undergone an operation for appendicitis, and normally should still have been in his hospital bed. I got the impression that Colonel Murray would be a difficult man to keep in bed. .
Territorians will be interested in the personality of this gentleman, because they now can look only to him for relief from the bureaucratic tyranny and Social istic lunacy from which they have suf fered for some three years—and still are suffering. If Colonel Murray is “just another of the Canberra-Conlon set-up,” then the Territories will be no place for the type of healthy Australian indivi dualist who was in control there from 1920 to 1940.
I SHOULD describe Colonel Murray as a strong, capable, well-balanced man who, if left alone, probably will bring order fairly quickly out of the chaos which now exists in the Territories. As a colonel, he carries the red tabs of the General Staff. As a professor, and head of the Queensland College of Agriculture, he is a person of no mean academic authority. In the latter respect, his Queensland record is excellent.
He is bustling and energetic. Although he was just out of hospital, he set a walking pace that, for me, was little short of a run.
He has a strong sense of discipline. I found him, personally, to be very much the colonel and very much the profes sor—almost formidably correct, courteous and formal. He is a spare, middle-sized, very well set up man in his early fifties, his speech is quick and alert, and his opinions unhesitating and definite. He is not the kind of person with whom one would take liberties; on the other hand, I think one could most confidently appeal to his sense of humanity and justice, if his record means what it seems to mean, he will be the first to recognise that his greatest disadvantage in his new job is his lack of practical experience of the prob lems of tropical administration and tropical settlers, and he will proceed accordingly.
BUT will Colonel Murray really have a chance of proving his value as Ad ministrator? Long before his appointment, the ineffable Mr, Ward had produced the Provisional Government, the new and revolutionary Native Labour Regulations (which Crucify and cripple the European settlers), and the Produc tion Control Board, which puts private enterprise into shackles.
The new Administrator comes in with both policy and administrative machinery already created for him —little appears to have been left to his judgment and capa city. Whatever he may think of the set up, it seems that little remains for him to do except operate the machine created by the combined genius of E. C. Ward, J R Halligan, Colonel Cordon and a sparkling array of eager anthropologists Sooner or later, that machine wil. break down. The absurd creation carries within itself the instruments of its own
destruction. I shall venture a prophecy.
Having met Colonel Murray, and formed certain opinions in relation to his charac ter I am of the opinion that he win either reTire from the Administratorship at an early date, or he will play an im portant part in getting nd of Mr. Wards monstrous creation, and re-establishing Australian settlement and private enter prise in the Territories. I somehow can not see J. K. Murray dancing to the tune that Canberra has been piping during the
past two years.-