"Plain Frustration"

C.W.D. Sales In Rabaul Were "Plain Frustration"

Rabaul Dec. 30.

THE residents especially the women —who returned on the “Duntroon” lost about 25 per cent, of their furniture and effects in transit, and have suffered great inconvenience. Most of the returned civilians have settled in and are trying to reestablish themselves, but there is a great and growing demand for such things as tents, refrigerators and jeeps.

The jeep seems now to be part and parcel of everyone’s requirements. Spare parts for jeeps will certainly be a prob lem soon as the Commonwealth Disposals Commission at Rabaul have sold in bulk approximately £150,000 worth of spare parts to Southern buyers, for £12,000. One item. 300 jeep tyres were sold for £6OO.

These tyres are now practically unpro curable in Rabaul. If the tyres had been disposed of in small quantities locally the return would have been much higher than £2 each.

The recent Commonwealth Disposals sales was “frustration” of the worst kind.

Assurances had been given to the RSL and the Citizens Association that every consideration would be given to the local neople. The absence of an adequate cata logue was perhaps just an accident.

Every inquiry for spare parts was met with the explanation that stocks were not available “owing to the Administration having first preference”: or “Army had not declared surplus stocks”; or “wait for a week just now we are stock taking.”

For upwards of two months every effort was made to obtain spare parts, but we were met with nothing but frus tration. The kindest thing that could be said of the recent Commission’s sale is that either the responsible officials were totally ignorant of their responsibility to their country, or were just plain fools.

Otherwise —to name only one item —how did it come about that 300 jeep tyres were sold in bulk for the absurd sum of £2 each?

On the approach of Southern buyers, catalogues were issued with the greatest alacrity, and sales in big parcels were the order of the day.

We are now faced with the absurdity that the remaining equipment is to be sold “by private treaty,” or some such fool arrangement, which probably means that tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment will be disposed of for tens of thousands of pennies. Carefully thought-out explanations will be forth coming. The net result of which will be that the Australian taxpayer will be correspondingly robbed.

On all sides, you hear expressions of disgust, and ridicule of the whole sorry business. The fiasco that took place here after World War I, in the sale of enemy’s expropriated properties, is being re enacted ofter World War II but this time it is the Australian tax-payers’ property that is being “disposed of.”

The French Protestant clergyman, Monsieur Lacheret, who is already known in New Caledonia, has returned to take over from Pastor Begainus at Houailou, east coast, and the headquarters of the Protestant missions. M. Begainus is re turning to France. Other arrivals are Madamoiselle Roche, a Protestant mission nurse, who is going to the Loyalty Group, and M. le Seanna, a teacher, who will be attached to the Houailou Centre. Four Catholic missionaries and four nuns arrived in Noumea by the same vessel, the “Ville d’Amiens.”