The Sacred Right To
pp. 76-77 · Read in the full issue
Strike
Red Poison Works Among Papuan Seamen
AS an example of the long-range effect of the Ward-Murray Socialist regime in Papua- New Guinea, and the difficulty of eradicating the influences of the 1945-50 epoch, we may quote the case of the little 300-tons coastal vessel Tarra.
While the Tarra was being fitted out in Sydney for coastal service in New Guinea, the Production Control Board, following Territories practice (and economy) sent from Port Moresby to Sydney, by air, a crew of native Papuans.
In the bad old days, when private enterprise was allowed to “exploit” the natives, teams of native labourers were usually carried as deck passengers on ships, or at freight rates in air freighters. They seemed comfortable enough, and they certainly never complained.
But the Ward-Murray reformers raised their hands in horror at the spectacle of human beings being carried as cargo, and insisted that they have the same accommodation in ships and planes as European workmen. So far as Administra tion is concerned, the Australian taxpayers pay for the new arrange ment; and who cares about the cost to the planter! fIIHE large party of Papuans, hav- X ing travelled in comfort by air, had to wait around the Sydney waterfront for the final fitting-out and sailing of the Tarra. The Sydney waterfront is run by the Reds. Some of them got in really effective work among the untutored savages from Papua.
At first, the captain noticed noth ing wrong; but, as the little ship made her slow way into tropical waters, the Papuan crew became lazier and sulkier. Once they were in their home ports, under the eye of sympathetic officials, they dis played a remarkable new fluency on the subject of wages and working conditions.
They had been told in Sydney that they were being “exploited”— that they should demand, in a European-run ship the wages and conditions awarded to Europeans.
The PCB and its officers did not take them seriously; but the Sydney waterside poison worked, and by the time the ship reached Rabaol, the crew was ripe for action.
Natives are not allowed to drink ntoxicating liquor. One of the rarra crew, striking a blow for iberty and fraternity, somehow got i “skinful”—and landed himself in jaol.
The others’ demands, for higher tnd higher wages, became so in tolerable that the skipper tried a ittle discipline. The whole crew thereupon declared a strike, and eft the ship. r 3 toe of a healthy boot, healthily applied, in the place provided by Nature for such Dccasions, should have been used ,n the beginning, in Moresby; and it certainly should have been re sorted to in Rabaul.
But Papua-New Guinea official dom would no more think of such tactics nowadays than it would deny the authority of Karl Marx.
The sacred right of a worker to strike—even if he be the dupe of a Sydney waterfront Red —must not be interfered with. The crew of the Tarra, carried to Sydney by air at enormous expense, signed up under a contract, and treated with great consideration and delicacy, were allowed to go. The Tarra, urgently needed for transport work along the coasts, lay idle in Rabaul harbour.
However, we have the consolation of knowing that the Rabaul agents of the PCB are really very, very angry. They have radioed Moresby, and recommend that the Papuan
seamen’s contracts be terminated in Rabaul, so that the PCB will be under no obligation to carry them back (by air, no doubt) to Papua.
That will show them!
Some day, someone will introduce a note of realism into the Paradise created for native workers in Papua-New Guinea by the Ward-
Murray regime.-