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Territorians Give Welcome to "The Future Prime Minister of Australia"!

EXILED residents of Papua and New Guinea have known so much of tragedy in the past four years that, probably, they will welcome a little comedy, as a change. If so, it has been provided for them by their new Administrator, Colonel J K. Murray, lately a Queensland professor, who has taken the trouble to inform his new staff that his Minister. Mr. Eddie Ward, is regarded by some people as “the future Prime Minister of Australia.”

It is a comic forecast, of course, but it is by no means impossible. Even stranger things are happening every day, in this mad, post-war world. All conventional ideas-including the assumption that a Prime Minister shall think as a statesman, and be a welleducated, broad-visioned man of balanced judgment have been swept away.

Mr, Ward’s career is well-known in New South Wales. He never has achieved anything in commerce or the professions—he has been a political hanger-on around the Trades Hall, most of his life. His most notable performance is a frequent appearance on a soap-box in Springfield Avenue, King’s Cross, Sydney, where he babbles the glib phrases of extreme Socialism, and snarls savagely at all who would cross verbal swords with him, in approved soapbox manner. But this is the type that is rising to power among the war-torn nations—and will continue

to make mischief until the political pendulum swings again, a few years hence.

But even the comic forecast voiced by Col. Murray has its tragic side.

By what queer freak of mind should he seek to present a defence of Mr.

Ward, in the hearing of people who have suffered so much at the hands of Mr. Ward and Mr. Ward’s associ ates? Is Colonel Murray blind—or does he deliberately ignore the mon strous cruelties which have been heaped upon Territorians by this Communist-controlled Canberra Gov ernment?

Let us remind Colonel Murray of some of the things he is defending, when he defends Mr. Ward, and the blundering and stupid Government which Mr. Ward represents.

UNTIL it can prove, otherwise, the Australian Socialist Government is held responsible for the murder of 300 civilians, abandoned to the Japanese when Rabaul was invaded in January, 1942. Responsible people —and especially since Rabaul was re taken and the few surviving civilians released—have said positively that the 300 civilians could have been got away on the available ships before the Japs arrived; but that, although the Deputy-Administrator appealed for instructions, “Canberra” ordered them to remain.

Mr. Ward always is ready to attack powerful private interests and high authority, if he thinks he thereby

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But has he said one word > as Minis ter for Territories, to support the now

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civilians, would like to do something. ward in hi* fnmmic nf Jy| ‘ p , , f TT ,

dot”-has ’efnouled the cause o'f

wuzzv He has the cause of Npw Gmnea a Hannv Homefor Hich twn ™ er more N agains’t that 0 piOlier, tflG WilllG ITlciri. oO fIG iI&S brought in a new set of native labour laws—the effect of which (see news reports in this issue) has been to throw the already dislocated economy of the two Territories into utter, h( >P eless confusion, But has Mr - Ward shown the slight est concern for the thousands of Territorians who were forced out of their homes and livelihood in 1941-42, an d who have been consistently re fused re-admission? He has not. He has turned a deaf ear to every ap peal that has been made to him— as the records of the Pacific Tern tories Association prove, Fuzzy-wuzzy gets all possible Minis terial attention—and publicity, of course!—but the claims of the unfor tunate Europeans are determinedly and systematically ignored, m .. . , , rpHE Territories, between 1920 and A 1940, developed settlements and industries which provided a fine market for Australian goods. Private

enterprise pioneered those Terri tories. There would have been little settlement and few industries there if large numbers of Australian indi vidualists had not gone into those tropical jungles after coconuts, and gold, and rubber, and been supported by large institutions like Burns Philp & Co., W. R. Carpenter & Co., Steam ships Trading Co., Collyer Watson, Ltd., which provided necessary trans port, foodstuffs, and finance.

But, in the opinion of Mr. Ward, and soap-box thinkers of his kidney, these people are “exploiters,” and due for the axe. So he is keeping them out of the Territories, and has put into their place his Government financed Production Control Board, which does all the trading, transport, etc.

Large numbers of men, of the finest individualist and pioneer types, are kept kicking their heels in Australia, while Mr. Ward plays happily with his Socialistic toy in New Guinea.

IN pre-war days, the Territories, prudently administered, with pri vate enterprise encouraged to develop their great natural resources, were largely self-supporting. They asked Australia for little in the way of pub lic funds; and they provided Austra lia with a very good market for her foodstuffs and manufactured goods.

Now, under the rule of this Trades Hall genius from King’s Cross, the Territories are absorbing hundreds of thousands of pounds in money torn from Australian taxpayers in the guise of war taxation, and giving us in return nothing except this delight ful picture of Eddie Ward being cooed over by happy anthropologists, and being presented as “the next Prime Minister of Australia.”