New Political

Set-Up?

Signs and Portents in S.W. Pacific

SOME shrewd observers of Pacific affairs profess to see a connection between the following conditions and events; ■ Nothing has been done by the British Administration in the Solomons to encourage the return to the Group of private enterprise. This may be because the British Colonial Office does not ex pect to hold the Group much longer. ■ It is expected that the Conference on Southwest Pacific Regional Affairs, which will assemble in Canberra about January 21, will be instrumental in estab lishing the South Seas Regional Commis sion; and that the Commission, in its turn, will approve of the plan that Aus tralia should control “Australia’s protec tive perimeter”—namely New Guinea, Bismark Archipelago, Solomon Islands and New Hebrides. This should mean the transfer to Australia of the Solomons and, perhaps, of the New Hebrides, ■ The managing director of Qantas (the Australian aviation company) an nounced early in October that Qantas contemplates the establishment of Pacific Island air-lines connecting Sydney with the New Hebrides, the British Solomons, Nauru and Ocean Island. There is very poor communication between Australia and those Islands now. ■ The headquarters of the Gilbert and Ellice Colony are being removed from Ocean Island to Abemama, leaving the way clear for Ocean Island to be linked in one administration with its fellow phosphate-producing island of Nauru (180 miles away). The two phosphate Islands in their turn, could be most conveniently tied in with the extended Australian Pacific Islands administration, referred to above. ■ Qantas has made no further state ment about its contemplated Islands ser vices; but a party of eight experts, under Chief Engineer Fricker, from the Aus tralian Department of Civil Aviation, travelling in a Catalina, has just returned to Melbourne from a close survey of avail able and possible airfields in the Solomons and New Hebrides. This survey obviously was carried out with the approval of the British High Commissioner for the Wes tern Pacific. It is believed that Qantas will make no further move, pending the report of the survey party. Meanwhile the Australian Government has bought the British Government’s shares in Qantas.

The indications are that there is going to be a closer political connection in the future between Australia and all the Islands of the Southwest Pacific; and that communications will be maintained by air—just as communications between New Zealand and all the Islands of the Central South Pacific are being main tained now by the New Zealand Air Force (see article page 40).

Editorial Note

The South Pacific seems to be on the eve of interesting political developments.

The pity of it is that these plans are being made by Governments and bureaucrats in an atmosphere of strict “Hush-hush,” from which private enterprise and all non official interests are being strictly ex

eluded; pitiful, because that means inevi table failure.

The idea seems to be that Governments, and not companies or individuals, shall develop the resources of these Islands Territories, for the benefit of the native inhabitants. The European interests which heretofore have supplied the im petus, facilities and finance for transpor tation, planting, mining, and trading are now dismissed as “exploiters”; the job will be done not by private enterprise, but with instrumentalities supplied by the Socialist Governments of Britain, Aus tralia and New Zealand, at the cost of the over-burdened taxpayers of those countries. That will go on until the tax payers rebel —and then we shall all come down to earth again.