Gaps In The Papua-N. Guinea

Plan

A T last, after years of bumble \ footed administration, a plan for the development of the ustralian Territories of Papua and few Guinea is beginning to take lape. As distinct from the British nd Australian planning of the nmediate post-war period, it is not dream of a Socialist Utopia: there evidence of official eagerness to icourage private enterprise to go i and do something.

The Territories can produce almost ly tropical foodstuff or material ithin reason. The Territories are allowing in money—mostly sup ied by Australia, at the rate of )out £6 millions per annum. An nazing number of planners, re archers, experts, advisers and hat-not are circulating busily in mberra and the Territories, blue inting all kinds of new industries, id paid for by the not-so bilant Australian taxpayer. Under ch conditions, some worth-while onomic development should be pected—and there now are quite ipressive signs of it.

But it must be emphasised that is economic liveliness, this notice •le spirit of optimism, have no und basis, as yet. They spring 3rely from (a) an abundance of mey and (b) Ministerial and reaucratic promises.

We are assured that the Terri fies can produce cocoa, coffee, ;naf, cattle, timber and so forth addition to copra and gold, eryone knew that. High official m says that land now will be

made available, and invites capital and private enterprise to walk in and get busy. So far, so good.

But there are serious gaps in the plan, as sketched by high official dom for the attraction of capitalism.

They are the absence of guarantees relating to Labour, Taxation and Markets.

INDUSTRIES in a tropical islands territory cannot be developed on a scale large enough to interest big capital unless a labour force is imported. The land-owning islanders —quite properly—are an undepend able labour force. Proof of this may be seen in New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti. There are perhaps lh million natives in P-NG. A proportion can be in duced to labour; but, generally, they are in so primitive a condition (in other words, they have so little urge to sell their toil in exchange for foreign goods) that only the coastal sections can be brought to labour without some measure of compulsion.

If there is to be big-scale de velopment in P-NG, a new supply of labour must be found, either by changing the living habits of the majority of the natives, or bringing in indentured workers from Asian countries.

Western Samoa, now exceedingly prosperous on cocoa, provides an in teresting example. The Germans originally established the cocoa in dustry by importing Chinese labourers. New Zealand, after World

War I, sent the Chinese home. By then, it was possible for the cocoa industry to be worked by Samoan labourers and Samoan peasant planters. There is a wide gap, however, between the literate Poly nesians of Samoa, and the still un tutored black Papuans of P-N.G.

Maybe, the encouragement of New Guinea native rice-growers will pro vide some sort of answer to this problem. But it is not wise at this stage to expect big capital to go into P-NG without a dependable supply of labour. fITHE history of pioneering (or, if JL you will pardon the use of the hated word, colonialism) shows that success never was achieved un less there was reasonable freedom from direct taxation. With another dose of Socialism looming in 1954, the present rulers of New Guinea cannot promise that freedom. The Minister has indicated, hesitantly, that there will be no taxation of in comes for a couple of years.

No man is going to risk large sums in speculative enterprises in P-NG. if there is likelihood of State seizure of part of his profits. People are wailing about absence of coco nut re-planting in NG. The chief cause of that is uncertainty about future taxation and markets.

MARKETS represent the biggest gap in the new tropical heaven which the planners have sketched.

It is ironic that the Planners pro pose to establish the kenaf fibre industry right alongside the Papuan rubber plantations. One glance at what has happened to the rubber planters will scare off the kenaf planters. Papua produces excellent

rubber; Australia uses immensely more rubber than Papua can supnly: but at the faintest suggestion that Australian manufacturers be com pelled to use Papuan rubber there is a howl that sends the Australian politicians scuttling for cover.

Jute now is cheap, and getting cheaper. Will Australia penalise users of wool-bales and cornsacks by insisting on the use of P-NG kenaf?

Remember New Guinea’s infant cocoa industry, pre-war? NG. planters were producing good cocoa beans, but Australian confectionery manufacturers, wedded to the West African product, would have none of them. NG. cocoa sells easily now, since the West African cocoa plantations have been decimated by disease. But the West African planters are beating the scourge.

When the Accra product is back on the world market in quantity, what will happen to the output of the NG cocoa plantations, now being so enthusiastically encouraged?

There now are 9 million people in Australia. That is a big market for P-NG. products. As Australia, for her own security, is obliged to spend many millions per annum on P-NG., it seems only logical that she should try to make P-NG self-supporting by giving the existing and proposed P-NG. industries a guaranteed market. She has not done so. The politicians fear they may arouse the antagonism of big Australian in terests, which too often think only in terms of profits.

That is the great weakness in Canberra’s present P-NG. policy.

One would have thought that some where, among all these busy teams of planners and investigators, some one would have found an answer to it.

There may not be much time in

which to complete the P-NG plan.

How much longer will Australia and the oil companies continue to endow P-NG with £7 million p.a.?