Administrative Union In Papua-

New Guinea Bill For Re-Drafting : Another Delay Likely

BECAUSE of the yelping of some of the irresponsible Leftist elements in UNO, the Australian Socialist Govern ment has modified its plan for a unified administration for Papua-New Guinea.

It will be remembered that about the middle of 1948 the Australian Government introduced the Papua-New Guinea Bill, which gave effect to a plan of administra tive union worked out by the Department of External Territories and some of the other Departments interested during the preceding two years. There did not seem to be anything much in the plan to cavil at. It had been agreed that the two Territories were to be administered as one unit; and Canberra had produced a plan that appeared to be simple and prac tical, and which provided for all funda mental considerations, like the responsi bility of the Trusteeship Council towards New Guinea.

When the plan came before the Trustee ship Council and the General Assembly of UNO, the spokesmen of Russia and her satellites (whose purpose was purely to make mischief) and of one or two irre sponsible little States, expressed suspicion of the “imperialist” motives of Australia in framing one administrative unit.

Any Government with backbone would have ignored these demonstrations and proceeded with its plan, secure in the knowledge that it was not trying to serve any hidden purpose. But not the Chifley-Evatt-Ward set-up in Canberra— which already is notorious for its readi ness to listen to the voices of Moscow, Indonesia and any other anti-British concern which bestirs itself.

So the Papua-New Guinea Bill was quietly removed from the Parliamentary Order Paper last December and has gone back into the machine for a bit of re drafting, with a view to meeting the ob jections of the UNO critics.