£23,870 Followed £50,000 Down The Sin

Memories of the New Guinea Timber Lease Case

ris interesting to learn, from an examination of the last two Australian Budgets, that the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the case of the New Guinea Timber Leases cost the Australian taxpayers just under £24,000.

In 1949-50 the Treasurer put aside £5,000 for the inquiry. He paid out £21,610. In 1950-51, still optimistic, he earmarked £9O. Actually, in that year, he paid out £2,260. For this year he allocates nothing. We hope he is right.

Although the Royal Commission exonerated the Honourable Eddie Ward, Minister for Territories, of any complicity in the affair, and the latter went back to the House of Representatives to chirrup happily on the front Labour bench, the case was a foul and smellful thing; and from the viewpoint of national morality and political decency, the inquiry was completely unsatisfactory.

The Queensland timber firm, Hancock and Gore, paid the racketeers a cash sum of £50,000. All the King’s judges and all the well paid investigators who assisted them, failed to discover the desti nation of most of the big sum.

Farrell’s plea that he did not get it seemed to be borne out by the probate granted on his estate.

The authorities decided that Ray Parer did not get it a decision apparently supported by the fact that Ray now is working very hard for a modest livelihood in small ships in New Guinea.

Jock Garden insists that he § none of it—he came out of gaol desperately poor man.

The learned Commissioner w emphatic that the hitherto spotld political fingers of the Honoural Eddie Ward were not befouled one penny of this £50,000.

Well, in the name of commc sense, WHO got the £50,000?

The losers seem to have be Hancock & Gore, who tried to g a business advantage, and w» coolly robbed of £50,000; Mr. Joe Taxpayer, of Australia, who ps £23,870 for privilege of knowi that the Honourable Eddie Ward politically spotless and undefile and Mr. Jock Garden, who end his long public career in a comnr gaol.