"Yes—We Have No Copra!"

Australian Bureaucrats ' Indifference to Trade

rE indifference towards commerce and trade of the Australian military and quasi-military administrations which ru i e the Australian Pacific Territories is almost beyond belief. xhe world is hungry for vegetable oil.

So is Australia. There is a report current that Australia lately has anpealed to the Allied authority which controls world food distribution for permission to import a ve rv large quantity of copra—otherwise various Australian' industries (especially soap-making) will be crippled.

Yet—believe it or not—many thousands of tons of copra have been Ivmg detenorating in the wharf sheds in New Guinea, once the biggest copra-nroducing group in the SoUth Pacific—and still capable of big production. The muddled Australian « controls >- which cannot provide ships to carry this Australian copra to Australia are stm trying to buy overseas copra, for wb i cb overseas exchange and ships must h nrnv idPd ** . , ' .. .. ... ... *t is fantastic but on all-fours with the action of the Brass-hats in Rabaul.

Tbey have seized a large number of the bes t coconu t plantations in the Gazelle Peninsula as self-supporting camps for the 100,000 or more Jap prisoners now concentrated there.

The Japs are being made to grow their own food, as far as possible. The net result is that the valuable coconut trees are being destroyed in thousands Instead of trying to save the plantations for urgently needed copra production, the military gentlemen took the easy way, and “nicked the eyes out of the plantations.” They could have found plenty of non-coconut land where the Japs could have been made to establish food gardens but that was much more difficult. mERRITORIANS generally are com- X plaining bitterly about lost oppor tunities. The world is crying out for copra, rubber, gold, shell — practically all the products of the tronical Territories are at high price levels—but the authorities have been much more concerned

about Fuzzy-wuzzy than about the re establishment of industries, Trocas shell now is abundant—the reefs have had a wonderful chance to recover.

Despite the fact that the industries which use shell (mos j; ly i? 1 Czechoslovakia and Ja P an > are sadly disorganised parcels of shell have been selling at from £lOO to £l4O Australian per to i. But b^Tern tonans, mostly held in Australia by un sympathetic officials and given no help ™ any case can do little to take advantage of t J“ s wonderful chance to recoup their Scores of little ships have been seized by the bureaucrats for administra tive pur y p oses-there are none for com mon trade. We heard recently of one group of would-be trocas fishers who went from Thursday Is. to Melbourne, seeking suitable craft —and failed. They got no help from the Government—they are just ordinary, common profit-seekers— “exploiters,” in the words of Mr. Ward,