Some Pointed Queries

About

Kenaf Production

ABOUT 1,200 woolpacks made from kenaf fibre grown ex perimentally in Papua have been distributed in Australia, for test. Reports on 200 say they are satisfactory.

Australia is trying to establish the kenaf industry in Papua-New Guinea. About £260,000 is being made available for roads, bridges and wharves in the Oro Bay area of Papua, and the backing of Aus tralian industrial and pastoral concerns is being sought.

Australian planners developed the idea when jute—a product of India—was in very short supply soon after the war, and prices of woolpacks, copra bags, cornsacks, etc., soared. It was felt that some alternative fibre was needed.

But, in the past year or so, the Indian jute situation has been reorganised. Jute products now are coming to the markets at prices which will be sharply competitive with bags made from the kenaf fibre of New Guinea.

Will Australia protect the new industry? Or will it surrender to the demands of the big interests, and leave the kenaf producers “out on the end of a limb”?

Australia encouraged planters to produce rubber in Papua. They now produce excellent rubber. But, because Australian rubber manu facturers and consumers howl at the suggestion of a duty to protect the Papuan industry, the Papuan rubber producers have to enter into hopeless competition with the products of cheap-labour coun

tries. Why should the kenaf pro ducers expect any better treatment?

Rev. W. G. Murphy, LMS Missionary in the Cook Islands, has returned from leave in England.

His ship, the Rangitane, arrived in Auckland a few hours too late to connect with the first sailing of Maui Pomare for Rarotonga.