Administrator Tells

Brisbane Audience About Papua-New Guinea

From Our Brisbane Correspondent

Brisbane, May 1

rE annual John Murtagh Macrossan Lectures for 1947, which are under the auspices of the University of Queensland, were given by Colonel J. K.

Murray, Administrator of the Provisional Territory of Papua-New Guinea, in Bris bane on April 22 and 24. His subject was “Papua—Mandated New Guinea in its Historical Perspective.”

Colonel Murray paid tribute to the late John Murtagh Macrossan whose far sightedness at the Federal Conference of 1891 would, if acted upon, have prevented the annexation of the present Mandated Territory by Germany; and to the late Sir Hubert Murray of Papua.

Colonel Murray said that the future called for great effort on the part of the present Administration. Australia, he said, must spend more money on the edu cation of the New Guinea natives. Early administrators and the Commonwealth Government had always protected the native from exploitation, but there was now a definite, positive duty to be done towards the native, and that was to edu cate him to understand the white-man’s culture.

There was nothing to indicate that New Guinea natives were any less intelligent than Europeans. It was background they lacked. Native people failed to under stand many things merely because they could not read English.

Colonel Murray was of the opinion that the 1,200,000 kno'wn native inhabitants of Papua-New Guinea could help turn the Territory into an efficient production unit.

There should be a plan of development which would integrate the economies of

New Guinea and Australia. Under that plan, New Guinea would ultimately supply Australia with what Australia could not produce and vice versa. That relation ship would be mutually beneficial. Such a plan should commence with a research group who would find out what New Guinea could produce.

Land and sea transport was at present a problem in Papua-New Guinea, but air transport was playing a tremendous part in the development of the Territory.

Aircraft meant as much to outback New Guinea settlements as the flying-doctor service meant to outback families in Aus tralia. (Continued next page)

Lantern slides illustrated the emaciated condition of some natives, and tne diseases with which they are afflicted. Had any of the audience contemplated making a trip to the Islands those pictures might have damped their enthusiasm.

Editorial Note: THERE is no urgency in appointing a “group” to find out what New Guinea can produce. We assure the Administrator that the Territories can

produce copra, cocoa, coffee, rubber and gold in quantities sufficient to allow them to pay their way. All that Is needed is (a) encouragement of European private enterprise; (b) transport facilities; (c) planters and miners to be permitted to get world-parity for their products. (At present, the New Guinea planters are being deliberately and cynically robbed by the Australian Government of at least £2O on every ton of copra they produce.

What is wrong with the policy of en

couraging the Europeans to develop the Territories’ wealth during the period (at least 25 years) in which anthropologists, educationalists and well-meaning theorists generally are trying to make a peasant farmer out of “Fuzzy-Wuzzy”?