In N. Guinea!

Those Leftish Planners In N. Guinea!

Letter to the Editor STAVING just returned to my Police • Post from a rather long and wet »trol, I’ve taken the evening off from eftist Socialist Planning to read the ctober issue of PIM. Three articles irticularly caught my eye.

Firstly, there was your Moresby Special Correspondent’s” blurb about the :ting Administrator’s position, and his rrent inability, due to his “acting” role, dealing with the “many gentlemen of rong Socialist views who were planted the P-NG service by the Wardist gime, or have percolated here through e Mosman School of Pacific Administra tn Are the statutory powers of an Acting Iministrator less than those of an ap inted Administrator? I think not. As • these Long-haired Lettish Socialist -ASOPA l’m one, I ppose. I did a two years’ course there, e also spent some seven odd years up re, part of it scrapping against brother p, after a couple of years scrapping ainst brother Hun in the M.E.; but i only a boy yet.

Vow, on the whole, I wish 1 hadn’t ae that two years’ course. It’s given all the wrong ideas. At the School, ! Leftist Socialist Theorist staff used make us work like hell in Law, History, thropology and Colonial Administration.

Phis latter subject should be banned, involves us in reading all sorts of ngs about other colonial territories as II as Papua-New Guinea, and occasion f even the dullest—which was myself— an uneasy idea that maybe Australia sn’t in the vanguard of colonial progress the degree we’d assumed. At times even seemed that we might be eating the sort of blues other colonies de some 50 years ago. The L.S.T. ching staff, with typical Marxian ming, didn’t tell us that they just de us wade through masses of Annual lorts, and the works of dangerous tists like Lord Hailey, and draw our i conclusions.

UT that’s all in the past. Now I’m back to reality on my Police Post, ch, curiously, I like. I even like the d trader-recruiter, when he’s sober, the two missionaries are tolerable, for the local coons—l count ’em, se ’em, gaol ’em, medicate the odd , tell ’em to clean their villages, obey law (most of which they know noth about) and be good boys. n and off, they’ve been told that now about 30 years. Several of my ;red and omniscient Senior Officers it part of their careers hereabouts ig just what I’m doing now. But the rateful savages don’t react the right They want a school, and they want get up a “blsnis”, and all sorts of things. They’re getting cheekier

and more sullen every day—so the old missionary says—and as for their morals . .

Now. partly because I’ve been polluted at ASOPA, but mainly because, although dull, I’m not althogether daft, I’ve an idea or two on what we ought to be doing here. But am I going to start telling my omniscient Senior Officers?

Not me! Tried it once before, and they didn’t like it. This joint was OK when the Assistant Director (or some such ordinary) did a patrol here in 1928, so it

must be OK now. As it was in the beginning . . . With luck, I should be transferred elsewhere before the strife is really on. Some other sucker will catch it, and I’ll have a clean record for an ex-ASOPA!—because I don’t raise awkward questions and behave i'ke a Woolly Leftish Socialist Planner, r T'HE second article that interested me F was on Native Co-ops. Now, I’m not a Co-op officer, but I always had the idea that a Co-op was essentially private

apital enterprise—the capital being aised by large numbers of small men anding themselves together. Yet In your Editorial Comment on this topic you say !o-ops “are believed to check and under line the system of private enter rise . . .”

Something wrong somewhere. Or oesn’t your definition of “private iterprise” stretch to organisations other lan European and Chinese? I can well nagine various traders not liking native o-ops. Neither would I, if I’d been lying native copra at £1 per bag.

Seeing we’re all agreed on the >sirability of increased production in the trritory, I must say that a native co i. which results in the native copra it-put being doubled—as I believe has ■en the case in Kavieng—seems no bad ling. At least they can’t “blue” ALL the proceeds on grog, or take their in out of the country. Still, I’m a .L.S.P. Theorist, remember.

Over in Rabaul a REALLY woolly bunch bureaucratic Theorists has started Ilage Councils, the purpose of which is iparently to kid the local natives into xing themselves and paying for their m schools, hospitals, etc. That sort thing should be stopped. I bet that me of my ex-ASOPA class-mates are solved in it. They probably got the sa from reading all those subversive itish Colonial Office publications.

Personally, I’m content to wait until n told what to do and how to do it by Senior Officer who has been up here t less than 28 years. HE’LL know—and

never mind about Hailey & Co.

The third article (page 66) that caught my eye was headed “The Harm That an Unmuzzled Scribbler May Do”. It has cowed ME into signing off. How about you?

I am, etc.,

Reformed Theorist.

New Guinea.