Territories' Labour

Problems

From a Special Correspondent IT is surprising how quickly men, whom all hold in high esteem will make use of political trickery like side-stepping issues and dragging red-herrings across trails, when they get into a political atmosphere.

PANGA’S (which, of course, means Papua and New Guinea Administration), Administrator J. K. Murray’s latest re ported utterances place the blame for native labour shortage in the Territory on “huge stocks of US dollars and Australian pounds accumulated by natives during war.” No mention is made of Govern ment action in cancelling contracts.

He is also reported to have said that, formerly, native labourers received 5/- a month. Where? Not in Papua, where the minimum was 10/-; and only a very few newly-indentured “monkeys” in TNG at 5/-. A check of contracts of service of 700 labourers in Lae in 1945 showed average monthly wage was 10/9.

A correspondent, now in Rabaul, tells me Matupi Islanders—perhaps the richest natives in TNG with their Savings Bank accounts —are eager to take on their old washing jobs again in the town. Admit tedly, the native is “holding well”; but of what use is money these days in the New Guinea jungle with nowhere to spend it? You can’t eat dollar bills, or even ten-bob notes! Trade stores (the exploiter trader again!) are non-existent.

Anyway, with plantations crying out for labour, why not engage some of the 80,000 (or whatever the number may be) of Japs, Formosans and Koreans in and around Rabaul on the job? Most of the plantation damage was caused by them.

Mr. J. M. Clift joined the mission yacht “Southern Cross” in Brisbane late in March, and sailed on March 28 for Gua dalcanal, BSI, to inspect his plantation thare. It was in the middle of some of the worst fighting in 1942, and suffered more than most places. From his home near Miles, in Queensland, he had been trying for months to get a passage to the Solomons, and was delighted when the Melanesian Mission courteously offered

him transportation.