The Administrator, According To Osmar White

Osmar White

fJNDER the arresting title, “His Angels Would Probably Eat Him,” this article by Osmar White appeared in the Melbourne “Herald” at the end of August. It has a few obvious material inaccuracies; but hoiv correct the author is in his character reading is a matter for Territorians, who know their Administrator, to decide.

Jack Keith Murray, Ba, Bsc.,

quondam schoolmaster, professor of agriculture, administrative soldier in two wars and now Administrator of the Territories of Papua and New Guinea, holds down one of the meanest and most fractious jobs in the Commonwealth Pub lic Service.

Among two million primitive people best known to the Australian public as Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, he represents with dignity, tact, patience and a great deal of rueful human understanding, the King’s Most Excellent Majesty and the Rt. Hon. J. B. Chifley’s Most Extraordi nary Complacency.

Murray knows that among the “angels” to whom he ministers there are quite a few who would like nothing better than a chance to cook and eat him; and quite a few more who would like nothing better than the chance to talk him to death in the cultivated accent the good mis sionaries teach in their convents at Kwato School, down Samarai way.

But among 5,000 or 6,000 Europeans who have gone back to post-war New Guinea seeking! sustenance or fortune, His Honor the Administrator is much less the representative of the King and Chifley than he is the instrument of External Territories Minister Eddie Ward and Secretary Joe Halligan, who is re ported once to have said to a Territorian in an unguarded moment. “Govern ments come and Governments go, but I go on for ever!”

Murray is a man whom few love, most respect, and almost all pity.

When far enough gone in the charity of rum, the rough, tough goldminers of the Watut and Edie say of him, “Why the poor blankard only gets 2,500 a year! A man’d be

a mug to do the work for that much a month!”

YET the Administrator himself does not see it that way. He probably considers himself well enough re warded—in salary ajnyway—for the 12 or 14 hours a day he spends entertain ing bores, interviewing axe-grinders or wrestling with obviously insoluble prob lems behind a littered desk in the rambl ing Government House on the hill at Konedobu, near Port Moresby.

He endures with equanimity the sting ing nickname “Kanaka Jack” plastered on him by disgruntled survivors of the ancient regime; the carefully refrigerated snubs he has received ever since he in vited native chieftains to eat dinner at the same Government House table as the elite of the one-horse capital.

Of small stature, greying, level-eyed precise in speech and gesture, Murray, 60 years old, is an idealist, a scholar, a gentleman—and one of the poorest poli ticians and most faithful civil servants a shrewd Permanent Secretary ever dreamed to see hired. For him estab lished channels are sacred, the discipline of bureaucracy inviolate, and the Gov ernment the sole instrument of govern ment. He is a man of rigid principles and rigid mind.

FROM the windows of the house on the hill, the Administrator looks down upon the blue, landlocked bay and the settlement of Port Moresby which was for so long dramatised as Australia’s last bastion against the Japanese.

To Administrator Murray this settle ment is a symbol of the task that con fronts him. He must build it in a material sense—transform it from a col lection of jerry-built paper-walled dwell

ings and offices into a substantial, permanent town.

He must also reconcile the three elements in its population, European, sophisticated native, and primitive— and that alone is a task from which any man with a grainless idealism might well flinch.

The Administrator is primarily charged with the responsibility of seeing that this melting pot does not boil over and emit a political stink. He hopes—and probably believes —that if a contained boiling goes on long enough, the brew will blend smoothly and Australia need no longer worry about outsiders peering into the caldron with either jealous or critical eyes.

If Murray were backed by a Govern

ment that had any real understanding of the task it has given him, he might succeed—or, at least, pave the way for future success. But he has not received any intelligent direction in high policy, nor the sympathy, support, or clear dele gation of authority that would do much to offset the handicaps under which he now labors.

FACTOR One in the New Guinea prob lem is the nature of the country it self—an immoderate, sprawling, violent land of great mountains, rivers, forests and swamps of whose natural wealth we have only an inkling.

Factor Two is its geographical position, a barrier of wilderness between East Asia and Australasia.

Factor Three is the native population— the most heterogeneous collection of savages gathered together in any one part of the world.

Factor Four in the New Guinea prob lem is the nature of metropolitan power itself. Australia is seven and a half million people clotted unevenly along the 12,000-mfle coastline of a three million square mile continent. Australian poli tical leaders are wholly preoccupied with problems of internal development and are inexperienced in the delicate, tricky business of formulating policy for a sub ject tropical country.

To the task of rationalising those four factors and controlling them, Admini strator Murray brings the wisdom he gained as principal of the Gratton Agri cultural College from 1923 to 1945; as Professor of Agriculture at Queensland University from 1927; as founder of a veterinary section in a Light Horse Squadron; as researcher in maize-breed ing and microbiology; and as commandei of the 25th (Darling Downs) Battalion oi the AMF.

To the variety of that career he ha! now added nearly four years o patient wTestling with the smaller day to day conundrums that arriv* by letter, memorandum and word o mouth from the rotting hutments which still serve Moresby as govern ment offices; four years of patien waiting for Canberra to proclaim : public service ordinance that wouli give him some degree of rea authority.

A lesser—or perhaps a greater—mai could not have lasted the distance.

But Administrator Murray’s patienc is seemingly inexhaustible. Its source apparently, is in his deep conviction tha the Ward New Deal was inspired by re cognition of the human rights of natiy peoples and the principle that Australia prime duty is to educate them, scholasti cally and politically, to the level at whic. they can undertake self-government.

“Yes, it will take' time—a grea deal of time,” he admits. “Perhaj it will take 50 or 100 years, but w must do it . . . I am convinced tha natives are the equal in intelligent of Europeans . . . Only now we ai beginning to regret the years tha the locusts have eaten!”

The present Administrator is no ad mirer of the methods of the late S: Hubert Murray, to whom he is not re lated either by blood or common phil osophy. The late Sir Hubert ran Panu on benevolent police-state lines. Tf territory was explored, pacified and go\ erned by a patrol system, on a Parsimc nious allotment of from £40,000 £60,000 a year. Its lieutenant-governc was an old-time anthropologist wt thought even mission schoolmasters wr educated their scholars to the tnu

standard were a pack of interfering, dis ruptive busy-bodies.

Such an interpretation of the moral responsibilities of metropolitan govern ment offends J. K. Murray, to whose humanitarian mind even a laissez-faire imperialism is abhorrent.

MURRAY’S jealous championship of native rights, his passionate faith in the ability of educationists to haul in 40,000 years of evolutionary slack within a couple of generations, has made 'him bitter enemies among resident Euro peans in whom color-prejudice and the desire to profit from cheap labour run strong. These he coldly ignores as self seekers —and hits them hard wherever and whenever he can.

But there is a more informed and con siderable opposition to the Administra tor’s convictions —those who say that he cannot yet appreciate the bewildering diversity of New Guinea. These critics claim that the natives can be helped effectively only by the admini stration of a man who has worked among them for many years, who understands the nuances of tribal psychology and who can distinguish clearly between what one would wish to do for them and what one can do for them, Murray, however, has clear ideas about how New Guinea could be made pros perous. Australia, he declares, must ad mit its island territories to an economic union—guarantee to buy for home con sumption or sale overseas all the tropi cal crops that they can produce.

The costs of production will for many years be higher than world parity—but that is the price Australia must pay for holding New Guinea.