Mr. White And Mr. Ward

Interesting Argument About Conditions in Papua-New Guinea

IN the philosophy of the professional politician there is nothing that can not be successfully .explained away.

That the explanations might reduce seekers of the truth to maddened frustra tion is considered of no moment, especi ally when the seekers are a de-franchised minority, as are the residents of Papua and New Guinea.

Reference was made in the May issue of “PIM” to a recent debate in the Fed eral Parliament, Canberra, between Mr. White (Lib., Vic.) and the Minister for External Territories, Mr. Ward. We now have received the full text of the debate and publish herewith the main points made by both gentlemen and, where necessary, our comment. Readers may, if they please, make comparisons between parliamentary verbiage, and the conditions as they know them to exist in the Terri tories to-day.

Joint Select Committee Of In

VESTIGATION. Mr. White: After I had placed on the notice paper my motion that a joint select committee of parliament be appointed to inquire into and report on the inadequacy of the ad ministration in Papua-New- Guinea, the Australian Government set up a commit tee of officials to advise the Minister of External Territories. I regard that as a confession of failings in the Administra tion.

Mr. Ward: This matter had been under cfonsideration for some time and was flnallv approved on my recommendation.

Comment: The committee referred to by Mr. Ward is a committtee of “experts” from Australian Government Departments —Treasury, Post-war Reconstruction, Ex ternal Territories, Commerce, Agricul ture, Works and Housing. They are not there to inquire into the inadequacy of the Administration but to advise on the “large-scale production of tea, cocoa, copra and rubber.” In regard to cocoa, copra and rubber, at least, it is unnecessary to call upon experts to formulate plans. All Territorians know that they do grow in the Territory and all that is needed is less “planned economy” and more actual work.

Legislative councils. Mr. white: The Legislative Councils of promi nent citizens which flourished in Papua and New Guinea before the war have been abandoned in favour of Ministerial fiats from Canberra and a complacent Administrator who carries out orders . . . The Papua-New Guinea Provisional Administration Bill which be came law in 1945 stated “This Act shall continue in operation ... no longer than six months after His Majesty ceases to be engaged in war.” Some of us voiced a fear that the Minister would not carry out his premise made then that there would not be set up a form of govern ment control from Canberra,) and we quoted from a report by Mr. J. V. Barry against continuance of control from Can berra. Some form of local government is essential.

Mr. Ward; The present administration is a provisional one. The Trusteeship Agreement for New Guinea (a former Mandated Territory) was only recently approved by the Commonwealth Govern ment'and the Trusteeship Council. A bill to ratify the agreement will soon be pre . sented to Parliament and after that a bill will be introduced to establish a per manent administration . . . The honour able member failed to mention that Mr.

Justice Barry, in his report, was referring to the administration as it existed under a succession of anti-Labour governments.

Comment: Mr. Ward ignored altogether the question of restoring the Legislative Councils of Papua and New Guinea, pre sumably on the score that the whole set up is provisional. But if there is a Pro visional Administrator, a Provisional Ad ministration and a provisional public ser vice, it should also be possible to have a provisional Legislative Council. Mr. Jus tice Barry was not specifically referring to Canberra control by anti-Labour gov ernments. The Barry inquiry, it will be remembered, was set up to “inquire into all the circumstances relating to the sus pension of the civil administration of the Territory of Papua in February, 1942.”

He found that neither the Administrator nor members of the Legislative Council had failed in their duty to safeguard the Territory but, in commenting upon the confusion which existed in the Territory during that time, and the apparent non co-operation between civil and Military authorities, he indicated that in his opinion the then Administrator had re lied in the crisis too much upon frequent consultations with the Australian Gov ' ernment in Canberra. The Australian government at that time was the Curtin Labour Government of which Mr. Ward was a Minister. (Continued Next Page)

ADVISERS. Mr. White; The area is overloaded with academic anthro pologists, some of whom during the

war were members of the farcical Army Research Section. Of a staff of 25, 18 were colonels and the remainder majors and captains.

Mr. Ward: I have a very high opinion of the value of missionaries and anthro pologists. When I took over the portfolio of External Territories I did not claim to know anything about those Territories and accordingly I sought the advice of people who had practical experience of the islands. I sought to achieve a reason able balance between the conflicting views of different interests, realising that the best advice came from those who had no personal axe to grind.

Comment: At least as many missionaries are against applied Wardism as for it.

Anthropology is a science. Applied an thropology consists of investigations into what to the lay mind are trivial aspects of native life the various methods em ployed in sexual intercourse, for example; or the significance of string games, of the

cat’s-cradle variety. Anthropology has its uses; but these people cannot be classed with Mr. Ward’s men of “practical experience” nor can they be said to have helped much in getting the Territories back onto an even keel, which would have been the commonsense way of ap proaching the New Guinea problem. How many men of real practical experience of Islands life did Mr Ward consult?

Price Of Essential Commodities

Mr. White: Food prices in the Terri tory are considerably higher than those in Australia. Rice, which was £l4 before the war, is now £34 per ton; meat is 12/- for a dozen tins, as against 6/3 before the war; flour, which was £9/7/6, is £36/10/- per ton; bread is 2/2 for a 4 lb. loaf, butter 3/1 per lb., eggs 3/4 a dozen, tea 4/6 per lb. Two factors are operating to increase the prices. The first is a 35 per cent, surcharge on freight rates on ships operating to New Guinea under Commonwealth charter; the second is the withdrawal by the Government of subsi dies. A recent order issued by the Depart ment of Trade and Customs contains a list of articles on which the subsidies have been withdrawn. These include, as well as food, all sorts of commodities such as leather goods, twine, cordage, tyres, etc. Other Government charges, under the heading of levies, include an export charge of £25/18/10 per ton on self-raising flour; £66/8/- per ton on fats, £B5 per ton on soap, and so on. Members will probably be surprised to know that although the Government agreed to sell wheat to New Zealand at 5/9 per bushel, it is charging 14/- a bushel to settlers in Papua and New Guinea, Mr. Ward: We realise that the cost of living in Papua-New Guinea is high. Last cost of living figures indicated that it was 35 per cent, greater than in Australia.

New Guinea is regarded as an export market and is subjected to the export charges applicable to exports. If the price of certain commodities in New Guinea were bought down to Australian levels, which are maintained bv Government sub sidies provided by Australian tax-payers, it would be only reasonable that residents of the Territory should pav the same rates of income tax as do people- in Australia.

Comment: The policy of regarding New Guinea as an “export market” rebounds upon the natives themselves who are con sumers of rice, flour, edible fats and canned meat. If the cost of living in New Guinea is to remain 35 per cent, higher (about 7/- in the £), then manv Terri torians would be better off paying Aus tralian income tax.

NATIVE LABOUR. Mr. White: Under the present system of allowing a native to make a contract for only one year, and lack of transport in the Territories, employers receive the equiva lent of only about five months’ effective work from each native. Contracts should be of at least two years’ duration. Of about 9.800 natives employed in Papua to-day, 4.000 are employed by the Govern ment. Befort the war. out of a labour force of 12,000 in Papua, only about 850, including police, were employed by the Government.

Mr. Ward: What the honourable mem ber means is that the territory should be developed on cheap labour. When his party was in office natives of New Guinea were paid 5/- per month and those in Papua 10/- per month, and a proposal to raise their rate of pay to 15/- per month is what he calls over-paying the natives.

It is true that there has been some dimi nution of the volume of native labour; that, however, is only temnorary. There were approximately 55.000 indentured natives in the two territories before the

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war. To-day the labour force is 23,000.

It is true that planters in New Ireland and New Britain are encountering greater obstacles in obtaining labour. This is because these natives come mostly from the Sepik district, and they have not for gotten that when war came to New Ireland and New Britain they were captured and ill-treated by the Japanese. In New Guinea, before the war, labourers were ex pected to work 55 hours a week, and 50 hours a week in Papua. We have reduced the hours of work to 44. The Government does not employ indentured labour and has no difficulty in securing its labour needs.

Comment: Mr. Ward persists in com paring working conditions of New Guinea natives with conditions of Australian workers. There is no basis of comparison.

In 55 hours the New Guinea native would perform as much work as a European in approximately 20 hours. The 15/- per month to which the Australian govern ment has raised the official wage of the native will purchase no more than 5/before the war; in many cases it will pur chase nothing because there is nothing for it to purchase. Five shillings was the minimum amount paid to a native before the war in New Guinea. It was not the average amount. That there were other benefits is proved by the fact that there were, on Mr. Ward’s figures, 55,000 in dentured labourers. It is news that Sepik and Aitape boys will not “make paper” with planters in New Ireland and New Britain because they fear they will be abandoned there in the event of another war. But in 1942 the natives were by no means the only sufferers in this regard.

Some hundreds of planters, Administra

tion employees, traders and missionaries were abandoned there by the Australian Labour Government.

PRODUCTION. Mr. White; (Quoting a RSSAILA publication “Mufti” and the “Pacific Islands Monthly”): The Ward administration is not only hinder ing the rehablitation of New Guinea but threatens to stifle private enterprise al together. Eventually the tax-payer of Australia will be paying l'k million pounds per annum to keep afloat a Territory that before the war was self-supporting.

The Administration should give up grandi loquent plans for the future and concen trate on something concrete to lead to the realisation of these plans when the native is ready for them. The Production Con trol Board is not assisting the white popu lation in any way. It is a notorious fact that the price of copra is £5 a ton less in the New Guinea Territories than in the rest of the Pacific. Our producers are getting only £2B per ton.

Mr. Ward: The “Pacific Islands Monthly” is the mouthpiece for vested interests and for Burns, Philp and Com pany, the shipowners who have been the chief exploiters of the white producers in the islands. I could supply dozens and dozens of letters from white settlers thanking us for what we have done and what we are doing. They state that for the first time they have the opportunity of viewing the future with confidence.

In the years ahead we will be able to develop the territory on sane lines. Civil administration has been restored to the whole of the Territory for only ten months.

Destruction of plantations has been res ponsible for reduced production rather

than any action or inaction by the Gov ernment. The Government has done everything to increase production . . . the Comonwealth Government has made available to planters £280,000 to clear away rubbish and secondary growth. One of the greatest difficulties has been trans port, which is not peculiar to the Aus tralian territories but is world-wide. We have done remarkably well in providing inter-island communication. At the moment there are twelve vessels, each

of about 300 tons, to supplement the steamer services, and nine others are in Australian ports. And we are now able to indicate that there is a possibility of a three-weekly service being instituted between Australia and New Guinea. It is true that the price of £2B per ton for copra is less than in some markets but the cost of production varies from £l2 to £lB per ton according to locality and this leaves the producer with a margin of profit of from £l6 to £lO per ton. In any case the Prices Commissioner in Australia fixes the price, not the Minister. This fixed price ensures a reasonable return to the producer and at the same time prevents any exploitation of the Australian consumer. The price in the past has been unstable. Included in the £2B is a levy of £1 which is paid into a stabilisation fund. We aim at regulating the industry.

Comment: With his tilt at the “Pacific Islands Monthly” Mr. Ward has resurrected an old story. We have denied, repeatedly, that we are linked, either as a “mouthpiece” or in any other way, with Burns, Philp & Co., W. R. Carpenter & Co., or any other of what Mr. Ward scathingly refers to as “vested interests.”

But Mr. Ward believes, with the late Adolf Hitler, that if you lie often enough and loudly enough, someone is sure to believe you. Whether or not the Australian Government has done everything possible to rehabilitate the planting industry is for the planters themselves to decide. That some doubt of this exists in other official circles is indicated by the latest report of the War Damage Commission which is published elsewhere in this issue.

The “dozens and dozens of white settlers” who have written to Mr. Ward thanking him for what he has done, and stating that they can view the future with confidence «now for the first time, no doubt 1 have tried every other means of getting reason into

the comic oprea set-up and have finally fallen back on what is vulgarly known as soft-soap. The shipping position, admit tedly, has been difficult. However the service conducted by the Australian’ gov ernment between Sydney and Islands ports is, for efficiency, not even a distant re lation of that provided by the wicked Big Firm which, Mr. Ward says, exploited the European residents of the territory before the war. Nor is the inter-island service provided by the New Guinea branch of the Australian Shipping Board, with its dozen 300-tonners, as efficient as the ser vice provided by scores of small pinnaces, schooners, cutters, etc., privately owned, and operated on the profit motive, before the war.

It is hard to see what the varia tions in cost of production and of profit margin have to do with paying only £2B per ton for New Guinea copra unless the Minister labours under the delusion that this £2B is the price paid “at the planta tion.” When the cost of copra was raised, earlier this year, the basis of payment was changed by the PCB from “at the plantation” to “at the ship’s slings”

Rabaul, Kavieng, Port Moresby or other overseas shipping port. The unfortunate planter who happens to live in Bougain ville or the North-Western Islands or any of the out-ports in Papua-New Guinea now has local transport costs to add to his costs and it is he who has to stand up to the “variation in profit margin”— not the PCB or the Australian Govern ment, as Mr. Ward appears to think, Ceylon copra brings £5B; Fiji copra £33; Philippines copra £7l. If the New Guinea planter cannot expect to benefit in Aus tralian government subsidies on various commodities, unless he pays taxation, (and Mr. Ward, remember, thinks he should not) then it is equally unfair to pay the New Guinea producer less than any other producer of copra in the world, in order that the Australian consumer of soap and

margarine, etc, should not have to pay more for these products. This is exploita tion of the most flagrant kind.

Housing and public service UNREST. Mr. White: There is un rest to-day in the Public Service of Papua and New Guinea. Public Service organisations state that the promised public service ordinance regulations have not been promulgated; that the high cost of living, coupled with low salaries, means bankruptcy to them. Housing in Moresby and Rabaul is shocking. The Government, at the same time, has undertaken to build a model village at Hanuabada, near Port Moresby at a cost of £llB,ooo—the money would have built 118 houses for Europeans in Australia —while in Rabaul the natives are permitted to run around wild.

Mr. Ward; A classification of the public service was carried out by Mr. Buttsworth of the NSW Public Service and the de partment is now considering his recom mendations. His recommendation that the minimum salary of £3OO be raised to £372 has been acted’ upen and operates from March 1. As regards Hanuabada the natives were evacuated from their village at the beginning of the war and it was later destroyed. We decided to rebuild the village as a model village, not a show place, but one which would indicate to the natives what could be done for them in providing a village on new, hygenic lines. There is a vast difference between providing huts for natives who wish to live under their own, more or less, primi tive conditions, and building houses for the administration staff. The honourable gentleman claims that the amount set aside for Hanuabada could have built 118 homes for the members of the administra tion staff in Port Moresby. Some time ago the Government built 24 homes in Mores by at a cost of £5O 000! If there is un rest in the Public Service then it exists only in the minds of certain disappointed people.

Comment: All Territorians who have seen the slum area which constitutes the present village of Hanuabada agree that the village should be rebuilt. What they cannot understand is why it should be a “model” village built by the Administration for £llB,OO0 —why it cannot be built by the Hanuabadans themselves from native materials on traditional lines, and why all this money should be spent on one set of natives when there are 1.500.000 other natives in New Guinea and Papua for whom no building at all will be done.

The 24 houses which the Administration built for its officials in Port Moresby last year at an exhorbitant cost of £50,000, went nowhere towards solving the housing prob lem. But if conditions in Port Moresby are bad, conditions in Lae. Rabaul and Madang which were totally destroyed, and where Europeans are now forced to live in tents and old army camps—are infinitely worse.

In spite of Mr. Ward’s airy dismissal there is discontent in the Public Service, due to the causes already mentioned and also due, in part, to the fact that members formerly employed in either the Papuan Service or Mandated Territorv service now find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the fact that there is only one service.

Inter-Territory prejudice is perhaps ridiculous but it is nevertheless a factor in the present unrest.