Has Now
p. 42 · Read in the full issue
Dr. Lucy Mair
Written A Book
WHEN the Australian Socialist Govern ment was planning its' new policy and administrative set-up in New Guinea it brought from overseas a cer tain Dr. Lucy Mair, who may be described as one of those earnest academic planners who have been such a nuisance in the postwar world. Dr. Mair was in and around Canberra and Papua-New Guinea quite a lot and, no doubt, her expert advice contributed much to the character of present conditions in the Territories.
Like all these peripatetic scientists (we do not know whether Miss Mair’s doc torate is connected with anthropology or zoology or astrology) Dr. Mair has writ ten a book, “Australia in New Guinea.”
We have not seen a copy, but it has been reviewed by one or two Australian news papers.
We gather that Dr. Mair praises the progressive policy of Minister Ward, his “Directorate” and a few officials; but she declares that these notable reformers have made progress “only in spite of a De partmental apathy that amounts to de liberate reluctance.” Then, apparently, she proceeds to flay the Department of External Territories. One gathers also that her general argument is intensely pro-Ward, pro-native, anti-bureaucrat and savagely anti-planter.
One reviewer thinks that Australians will find Dr. Mair’s book “an engrossing study.” We shall be surprised if it is read by more than a dozen people south of the Equator.
The majority of South-Pacific residents who know anything about the Pacific Islands are becoming very tired of the academic planners, most of whose fancy theories serve only to make more con founded whatever confusion there now exists in Islands administration. What is needed above all things is a clear-cut policy in which the interests of Euro peans will be taken care of just as scru pulously as are the interests of the natives, so that all communities may co operate properly in the social decencies and in human progress. There has been nothing more irritating in the field of postwar administration in the Pacific Islands than the unpractical babbling of our well-meaning anthropologists.