Do You Wish
p. 35 · Read in the full issue
To Enter
Papua-N. Guinea?
ALTHOUGH it is now four years since the war ended, persons desiring to travel to the Territory of Papua-New Guinea still seek a “Permit to Enter,” and submit to one of the cumbersome, time wasting “controls” which bureaucrats loved to devise during the war period, and which they surrender with manifest re luctance.
The application must be made to the Department of External Territories, in Australia. It then is sent to the head office of the Department, in Canberra.
There, presumably, the proposed visitor is “screened”—or perhaps the screening is done in Port Moresby. For it appears that all such applications are sent by air mail to the Administration in Port Moresby, and the latter solemnly reports back to Canberra. Canberra, in its leisurely way, then instructs the branch which has received the application to in form the traveller that he may travel.
The procedure usually takes about one month. We have not heard of any case of a Permit to Enter being refused. But the traveller cannot get a ticket for air or sea travel until he produces the Per mit.
We do not know whether the month’s delay applies to officials and residents re turning to the Territories. It certainly is used against non-residents.
Officialdom probably will make the ex cuse that, owing to the shortage of hotel accommodation in the Territory, it is de sirable that the Administration should control all immigration. There is a shortage of accommodation—but we can think of a dozen more simple ways of
Permit^ystem. trouble than this absurd Most travellers who have to submit to it become hostile critics of the Administra tion. Canberra is quite indifferent to that, of course.
Yet Canberra spends really startling sums, nowadays, on Public Relations.
Scores of highly-paid journalists and radio-script writers are now claquers for the Australian Socialist Government.
Why should some of that money and effort not be spent on creating a better public opinion in relation to Panua-New Guinea? Very many public prints, recently, seem to carry hostile criticism of conditions in the Territory. Conditions there are bad—but not as bad as some newspapers represent them to be.