Develop Or
p. 41 · Read in the full issue
Perish!
Pioneer Tom Nevitt on New Guinea’s Future
From Our Own Correspondent
Pt. Moresby, Sept. 1.
SOME very down-to-earth com ments on the labour problem were made during August by Mr. Tom Nevitt, a well-known figure in planting circles. He also emphasised that the most urgent problem facing the Territory was that of labour; but he carried his argument beyond the economic level into the even more important angle of the Islands’ future fate.
Mr. Nevitt was speaking on the eve of his departure from Port Moresby, after 40 years of residence In Paoua. He retired, last May, as General Manager of the British New Guinea Development Com pany, and is making his future home in Brisbane.
In Mr. Nevitt’s opinion, backed by a record of long service in the development of Papua, the native peoples may well forfeit their de scendants’ security by continuation of their present antipathy to any thing resembling real work. He em phasised that the New Guinea Territories are the only area on the South Pacific fringe of Asia with vast reserves of undeveloped lands.
Unless these are utilised and the country brought into something near full production, there is little hope that the natives will retain their homeland against the pres sure' of their more energetic and over-populated northern neighbours.
Mr. Nevitt sees it as a prime responsibility of the Government to make the native people realise this danger, and ensure their co-opera tion in a vigorous and continuous developmental programme.
Unless conditions here soon chane, future historians may well point to Mr. Nevitt’s hard-hitting and grimly realistic statement as an instance of an unheeded warning.
Rome is said to have burned while Nero fiddled; and New Guinea is likely to be lost by official fiddling with short-sighted policies.
Protecting the natives against their own folly is the first respon sibility of an Administration, and there is no greater folly than en couraging the present “brown play boy” attitude which is sapping all progress in the Territory.
Every nation or race which has shirked hard work and squandered its heritage through idleness has in time lost its freedom and posses sions to more vigorous peoples. There is no lack of purpose or capacity for hard work in the races who already have their eyes fixed on the Territory.