Don’t Hurry Back, Mr. Ward!

COMPLETE with staff and equip ment, Mr. Eddie J. Ward, the Australian Minister in charge of the Pacific Territories of Papua and New Guinea, is going to Geneva to attend the annual convention arranged by the International Labour Office. The H_o is a sharply Pink institution, which professes a lively interest in all peoples whom the übiquitous Planners of the present generation suspect may be subject to “exploita tion.”

It always was supposed that Mr.

Ward, from the moment he entered the Territories and began to emulate the famous Bull in the China Shop, had his eye on ILO. The “PIM,” three years ago, suggested that Mr. Ward probably would go to Geneva and claim a halo, as the saviour and pro tector of Fuzzy-Wuzzy.

Now he is on the way. His progress is being watched sourly by the Aus tralian taxpayer, who is becoming very tired of providing peripatetic politicians and their relations and staffs with world tours, with every thing paid for, in luxurious style, out of the public purse. It was quite blithely pointed out in Canberra re cently that “every Minister had had a world tour except Ward and Calwell”; and so a trip abroad was arranged for both.

The Australian Labour Party’s fav ourites —mostly in the shape of re jected Parliamentarians are scat tered over half the world, in Consu lates and Commissionerships. The

Australian Minister for Air, a poli tician named Drakeford, for the sec ond time in 12 months, has just de parted for America, attended by wife and daughter and staff—all at the public expense.

THE majority of the delegates whom Mr. Ward will meet in Geneva will be gentlemen of his own kidney, who will accept without question his story of his achievements in Papua- New Guinea. They will listen with interest to his account of how he wiped cut the vicious system of in dentured labour, and they will cheer loudly his account of his victory over the traders who were “exploiting” the Territories. They will chuckle when he tells them of the stratagems by which Canberra got rid of the Leonard Murrays and McNicholls and all the reactionary followers of the old regimes; and they will applaud the plan under which the Territories are given the incalculable benefits of a State-owned transport system, directed by bureaucrats, in which all considerations of filthy profit and nublic convenience are subverted to the necessity of giving the staff a pleasant and easy time.

It is to be regretted that there will be no one at Geneva able to tell the plain truth about Papua-New Guinea.

Mr. J. R. Halligan will be there, as a member of Mr. Ward’s entourage; and Mr. Halligan knows the Terri tories conditions only too well. But that overworked and harassed official is, after all, a public servant, who is

obliged to give his loyalty to his Min ister —even if his Minister be the in credible Mr. Ward.

THE picnic party in Geneva—that is what it is primarily—ought to be given a categorical description of events in the Australian Territories since Mr. Ward took command, so that the world may see what happens to a hitherto prqsperous community when it is overtaken by the twin curses of War and Wardism.

In the bad old days, before World War 11, the Australian Territory of Papua and the Mandated Territory of New Guinea provided Australian en terprise and capital with a field of activity from which Australia bene fited. The Territories were practic ally self-supporting. They produced copra worth—even in the bad old days—nearly £1,000,000 per annum; gold to at least £2,000,000; and quite anpreciable and valuable quantities of rubber, cocoa, coffee and shell.

The Territories Administrations, working in useful harmony with the missionaries, on one side, and the planters, miners and traders on the other, literally tamed two vast, primi tive, almost inaccessible regions. In 1920, the great majority of the 1.250,000 natives were primitive, Stone-age savages, dangerous and treacherous. In 1940, the whole re gion was so much under control that Europeans might) move about any where in both Territories with little risk.

The natives had been tamed, cleaned un, introduced to European orderliness and European ways of life. They still were primitive; but,

step by step, they were learning to conform to our ideas of good conduct.

The most efficient factors in this change were (a) patient and persist ent work by the missionaries; (b) wise and patient effort, in accord ance with a fixed policy, by experi enced Administration officials; (c) the system of indentured labour, under which, in the Territories, at any one time, some 50,000 natives were being employed.

That indentured labour system was evolved in three decades of trial and error. It was employed by the plant ers, miners and traders, under strict supervision of Administration officials and missionaries, as an alternative to bringing in Asiatic labour, with all its undesirable complications. Every year, thousands of natives —well fed, cleaned up medically, with a rudi mentary training in European ways gained in two or three years of ser vice—returned to their villages and were replaced with an equal number of ignorant and dirty savages from the primitive bush.

EVERY so often, the Territories would be visited by Australian Trades Hall gentlemen who never be fore had seen a tropical country or tropical conditions, and knew noth ing whatever about primitive natives.

When they discovered that the native labourers were paid only 10/- or 15/per month and “found,” they usually squawked loudly about “exploitation” and “slavery,”

Experienced and responsible offi cials and missionaries—most of them proved humanitarians —were quite satisfied with the set-up. It would have been ridiculous and unwise to pay those primitive natives, with their present outlook and back ground, anything more than a few shillings per month in cash. But the Trades Hall gentlemen, as ignorant in their way as the native is in his, felt themselves more wise than all officials, planters, missionaries and mining companies combined, and bawled for native labour reform.

Territorians regarded the perform ances of the Trades Hall gentlemen with amusement and tolerance. They did no harm. It was no use trying to tell such people that no one could speak with authority of Territories’ affairs until he had had at least a year’s experience of Territories con ditions.

Then came the war, and a Socialist Government in Australia, and Mr.

“Eddie” Ward, a tub-thumping dem agogue, as Minister in charge of Ter ritories. The rest is history—and what history!

MR. WARD decided on a completely new policy in New Guinea. He went for his plan to a “research” body composed of professors, bureau crats, anthropologists, academic planners generally—not one of whom had lived long enough in the Terri tories to understand the conditions of life there. So far as is known, he did not consult one experienced Ter

ritorian outside the ranks of official dom.

The indentured labour system was abolished, and there was introduced an anaemic, ill-designed system which, so far, has failed to work.

The sea transport services were taken out of the hands of private enterprise and handed over wholly to Government control. We now have had over a year of inefficiency and blundering confusion—especially in the working of ships in the various ports—and the shipping services, both coastal and oversea, are in a more hopeless condition than ever.

The handling of the produce of plantations was forbidden private enterprise, and given over to the Production Control Board (a Ward controlled Government instrumen tality), with the result that planters, already struggling against lack of labour and lack of transport, get paid for their produce just what Mr. Ward thinks is right—which is about half of world parity!

Traders have been permitted to re turn: but under such restrictions and handicaps that there is little encour agement of enterprise.

Non-official Europeans have been given little practical assistance in re habilitation, apart from the pay ments made by the War Damage Commission—which functions quite independently of Mr. Ward and his myrmidons, anyhow. But nothing that Canberra can devise, or the Aus tralian Treasury can produce, or the local Administration can offer, seems too good for Black Brother. The Ward policy in New Guinea is on all-fours with the Australian dockers’ policy in relation to Indonesia. (As all the world knows, the Australian dockers forced the Australian Government, of which Mr. Ward is a shining orna ment. to make common cause with the Indonesians against the Dutch.) Where, previously, the government of the Territories cost the Australian taxpayer practically nothing, Mr.

Ward is now spending close on £3,000,000 per annum of Australian funds in the Territories on all sorts of schemes devised by his Trades Hall confreres and his dreamy-eyed acad emic planners for the enrichment of Black Brother.

Flowing out of that huge expendi ture, there is false prosperity of a sort in the Territories. But what a crash there will be when the Aus tralian taxpayer revolts, and this orgy of mad-headed spending is fin ished!

IF there is in Geneva any Pink Planner of advanced ideas who re quires the services of a hard-hating Minister with a pro-native, anti white complex, and an endless cap acitv to abuse and shout down all criticism in finest Australian-ese, and guaranteed to turn any tropical country into a chaotic Socialist para dise within four years, we can most cordially recommend Mr. “Eddie”

Ward, of King’s Cross, Australia.

However, if there is no such job offering overseas, we can only join in the Territorian chorus and say: Please have a good time at our ex pense, Mr. Ward—and DON’T HURRY

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