Administration And The

Papuans

Letter to the Editor

Rehabilitation de-iuxe is promised

brown brother by the Canberra Father Christmas.

Radio sets are to be sold or hired to the native gentry. Who will foot the bill when Junior comes along and carves the set up with his little axe, in an earnest effort to find out what makes it talk?

“Replacement of live-stock” should not be difficult, as the only stock owned by villagers are tamed bush pigs, animals miscalled “dogs,” and fleas.

Building materials: Natives prefer their thatched homes, as being more cosy, and you cannot burn holes in an earthen floor. Burning holes in a timber floor is regarded as an amusement.

In the meantime, Southern papers illustrate half-finished homes held up for lack of timber and cement. Perhaps Canberra has not heard that “Charity begins at home.”

Marketing of native production is promised. What, and to whom? Most natives have never grown enough vegetables for their own use.

Shipping: Natives are very fortunately placed as they have their own canoes.

They will need a lot of sympathy if they have to depend on Canberra for anything of higher dimensions or standard.

Establishments for training of natives: A wonderful pipe dream. The Minister for Post-War-Reconstruction should get busy with a hammer and nails, and show how it’s done. Or perhaps he had better leave it in the capable hands of the Mission, who have been doing it for half £t century.

Aids to employment; Any emptoyer who has been trying to get boys ever since Mr. Ward freed the “slaves, at this point hurls his PIM into the outer darkness.

I am etc.,

Wait-And-See

Samarai, 1/7/46.

Mr. Frank Faddy, a popular member of a well-known Fiji family, died in buya on August 18. He was 54, and he went to Fiji from Australia as a youth. With his two brothers, Herbert and Norman, he served in the 1914-18 war, and his health was permanently affected by wounds and gas. He was long an active member of the Returned Soldiers Association, and he helped to found the European Electors Association.