Indonesians In N.

Caledonia

The Strange Indifference of Australia

A FEW months ago, the PIM pointed out that, owing to the breakdown during the war of the repatriation i provisions of their indentured labour con tract, a colony of at least 3,000 Indo nesians had taken root in New Caledonia, only 700 miles east of the Australian coast.

The comment was made that it was strange that Australia did not concern it t self with the new Asiatic invasion of the Southwest Pacific, while making so much ifuss about the possibility of Indonesians settling in Dutch New Guinea, which is [little nearer the Australian coast than is New Caledonia.

As a result, Mr. D. H. Drummond, MP, asked in the Australian Parliament a question concerning this matter, and in vited the Government to give an indica tion of policy in relation to the settlement of Asiatics in the South Pacific. The Government promised to make inquiries.

Mr. Drummond, in due course, received a reply from Acting Prime Minister Fadden. He was informed, at length and in detail, that normally, before the war, New Caledonia and New Hebrides together gave employment to about 10,000 Indo nesian indentured labourers (5,000 Jav anese and 5,000 Tonkinese); that, owing to absence of shipping in 1942-46, most of them were not repatriated, as they should have been; and that some of them have been repatriated since the war ended.

But the Prime Ministerial statement carefully avoids the whole point of our article and of Mr. Drummond’s question— namely, that the non-repatriated Indo nesians, to the number of some thousands,

have been allowed by the French to form a permanent colony in New Caledonia.

The statement says: “The French authorities appear to have been fully satisfied with the conduct of the Indo nesian community in New Caledonia.

There has been, so far as can be ascer tained, little evidence of subversive ac tivity among these Indonesian residents of New Caledonia.’’ All of which was al ready well know,n.

APPARENTLY, the Australian Prime Minister has never heard of the Indians of Fiji. There were only a few thousands of non-repatriated Indian labourers there in the beginning, when they were first allowed to settle—quiet, industrious, law-abiding people. Now they number over 130,000—nearly 10,000 more than the native Fijians, whose lands they covet.

In an economic sense, the Indians are an asset—their industry has made of Fiji a very rich and prosperous British colony.

In a political sense, of course, they are what is popularly termed a pain in the neck.

Taking the long view, we believe that there is no future for the European and the indigenous races here in the South Pacific—in Australia and New Zealand, and the Islands—unless the United States will protect us against Asia. Without American aid, we cannot hold these lands against 1,000,000,000 Asiatics.

Why, then, should we hasten our own destruction by introducing colonies of Asiatics to these pleasant, empty lands?

Already, they are established in Fiji, Tahiti, New Guinea and the Solomons.

Why permit another establishment in New Caledonia?

New Caledonia, of course, is French; and the French, in colonisation, have no racial consciousness. It is not an acci dent that, although the French hold, in area, the world’s second largest colonial

empire, they have not succeeded in es tablishing one worthwhile French com munity, outside of the Mother Country.

Generally, what the French do in New Caledonia is entirely the concern of the French. But if, by blundering and in difference, they are going to establish an Indonesian colony within 700 miles of the Queensland coast—in much the same circumstances as they established a Chinese community in Tahiti—that is very much the concern of Australia.