'White Norfolk’

New Development of Notable Australian Decision

VILA, February 20.

INDIGNATION has been caused recently in the New Hebrides —and especially in Santo —by the application of what is apparently a new policy in Norfolk Island (an Australian Territory). It is called “the White Norfolk policy”, and appears to be a development of the White Australia Policy—the fervid application of which now is causing so much ill feeling throughout the Pacific and Indonesia.

Hitherto, residents of the New Hebrides have occasionally sent their children south to Norfolk Island, to school. The regular Australian steamer, running between Sydney and the New Hebrides, usually calls at Norfolk Island —so it was a convenient arrangement.

Some of our families have a strain of blood from Pacific Islands races.

Recently, a well-known and highly re spected resident of Santo went to Norfolk, to arrange that some of his children should go to school there. He was informed that, because of their mixed blood, they would not be allowed to reside on Norfolk.

Very angry and indignant, he pro ceeded to New Caledonia, and his children were enrolled in a school in Noumea, The French have a realistic and sympathetic outlook upon such matters.

It is reported that the Australian Gov ernment had no hand in this develop ment in Norfolk Island —local officials are believed to be responsible for the new interpretation of the law.

EDITORIAL NOTE. —Even if it is a local interpretation, it is in line with the recent pronouncements of Australia’s very remarkable Minister for Immi gration, Mr. Calwell.

In 1948, the Minister decided to keep all Polynesians out of Australia. He “fell in up to his neck”, because the New Zealand Maoris are Polynesians, and therefore, came under the ban. This aroused the NZ Government to angry protest; and the Australian Minister thereupon hurriedly found some ancient law under which the ban upon Maoris was immediately removed. But the ban remained and still remains upon Samoans, Tongans, Cook Islanders, Tahitians and Hawaiians, although racially they are exactly the same as the Maoris—they are all Polynesians. The ban applies also to persons of European- Polynesian blood (who are not New Zealanders).

There are now resident in Australia thousands of people of Polynesian and part-Polynesian blood—good and re putable citizens. They, apparently, are to be weeded out, because they have no one, like the influential Prime Minister of New Zealand, to speak for them.

In one respect, the Norfolk Island de cision is very funny. All the original Norfolk Island settlers came from Pit cairn Island, being the surplus descen dants of the “Bounty” mutineers who could not be accommodated on that overcrowded island. They, of course, practically without exception, are half Polynesian—half European and half Tahitian. All the nine “Bounty” men who cast their ship away on Pitcairn took Tahitian wives with them; and it is mainly their progeny that now populates Pitcairn, and provides the oldest community on Norfolk—excellent, law-abiding people.

The silly, fumbling application of the immigration laws by the Australian Socialists is building up against Aus tralia, throughout the Pacific area, a very strong and bitter feeling of ill-will.

Australians on tour encounter it in many places.

Dr. Elsie Came has rejoined her hus band, the Rev. T. C. Came, of the Methodist Mission, Lautoka, Fiji, after leave in Australia. Their work is among the Indians of Fiji.

Mr. J. F. A. Taylor has been appointed Inspector of Mines -on agreement for three years. Mr. Taylor is a New Zea lander who was employed for two years in Northern Rhodesia and was for two years with the Pasco Copper Corporation in Peru.