The MBE for M. J. Leahy!

THE Administration of Papua- New Guinea really has a re markable faculty for stepping off with the wrong foot.

Consider the case of Michael Joseph Leahy, of New Guinea.

Everyone who has heard of New Guinea has heard of the four Leahy brothers, gold-miners, explorers, jungle fighters and (of late years) experimental farmers.

Like hundreds of pioneers of this type, the brothers made small for tunes in the big Territory. But. unlike the great majority, they did not go off with their wealth of money and experience to more com fortable climes. They stayed right there on the NG tablelands, and ploughed it all back into the rich, untested soil —Mick, at Zenag; Jim, at Goroka; and Danny, at Mount Hagen.

Because they love the country, and are natural pioneers, they have done more, in their direct, practical way, to show the possibilities of the Highlands in cattle, pig and sheep raising, in coffee-growing and pasture development, and the use of the abundant water-power, than any

other private person. They deserve well of New Guinea.

Yet, a few months ago, when the Administration appointed the Microbe District Advisory Council, the name of Leahy was very con spicuous by its absence. Old resi dents commented sourly on the fact that Mick Leahy had been an out spoken critic of the Markham Point bridge plan, and of other Adminis tration activities. Ergo. Mick Leahy was not on the new Council.

Echoes of that public discontent must have reached Port Moresby.

The VlP’s doubtless argued that tne matter could be put right by in cluding the name of Mick Leany in the New Year Honours List. And so His Majesty was recommended to award to the older Leahy the distinction of MEMBER of the Order of the British Empire—the lowest grading in the Order, usually reserved for long-service hospital sisters, clerks, constables. It is an honourable distinction: but if M.

J. Leahy’s services to New Guinea are worthy of any recognition at all, they certainly are worthy of something of much higher grading than MBE.