Trusteeship

Nauru For Australian Trusteeship Reported Request to the United Nations

IT was reported in the New Zealand press in August (and later denied by the Australian High Commissioner) that Australia would shortly ask the United Nations to give her sole admin istrative rights in Nauru.

Nauru, which was formerly German, was a League of Nations Mandate held by Britain, Australia and New Zealand in partnership and administered by Aus tralia on behalf of the other two partners.

With the exception of Palestine, whose fate remains in the balance. Nauru is the last of the old Mandated Territories to be proposed for UN trusteeship.

Nauru’s usefulness is. of course, due entirely to her phosphate deposits which are worked, as are those on Ocean Island, by the British Phosphate Com mission. Nauru and its problems bear little relation to those of Australia’s other Pacific possessions. Neither does Ocean Island bear much resemblance to the rest of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, of which it is a part. The sensible thing would be to have these two phos phate-bearing islands under one admin istration. But that appears unlikely at the present time.

Mrs. Doris Fitzpatrick, whose husband is a PMG official at Sumarai, Papua, was killed on the Mission Beach Road, Tully (Qld.), on August 24. A lorry re turning from the beach conveying Mrs.

Fitzpatrick and eight others overturned about three miles from the town.