Australian Bureaucracy
pp. 31-33 · Read in the full issue
NG Sawmillers Suffer from Wet “Wet” And Australian Bureaucracy
UE to a more than usually wet 1 “wet”, building timber is in short supply in most of the Titory of Papua-New Guinea, I housing and other construction rk is held up, as a consequence, n New Britain, millers have been ible to move logs from the bush the mills for two or three nths. At Bulolo, sawn pine is ng stockpiled for construction of huge plywood factory of Com nwealth Timbers Ltd. (in which Commonwealth Government ds 51 per cent, of the shares and D 49 per cent).
Tie three acres of cement floor the factory is now being laid — tons of cement are being used h day on this part of the pro 5. In addition, new housing is ig erected nearby for additional ff. >ur Port Moresby correspondent orts that acute shortage of ber, partly due to the wet season, lolding up building in that area; I that until recently there has n a scarcity of cement. A con iment of Japanese cement has ed the situation for the present, there is no comfortable reserve future operations. The Works jartment receives its cement jet from Australia —but most er requirements still come from •an or Europe, although the lent shortage in Australia eased siderably in 1952 and all Aus ian home requirements were be met.
Australian Duty On Ng
Timber
As reported in April PIM, the Wau community in New Guinea—and New Guinea timber interests genera lly_ W ere much interested in the imposition by Australia of duty on timber imported from PNG. (From 6/- to 12/- per 100 superfeet;.
Until the end of 1952, PNG timber
was admitted to Australia duty free.
Presumably, the imposition of duty now is designed to protect Australian millers who, after years of exploiting the home-hungry Aus tralian public, found last year that most Australians had had to give up building houses because of high prices, and that there was conse quently a slump in the timber
market. This imposition of duty is just another of those irreconcilable acts between Commonwealth Govw ernment departments, and does not measure up to the Department of Territories’ expressed intention to foster new enterprises in PNG.
There may, however, be a way out of this duty difficulty—an appeal to what evidently is an international institution for fixing duties and which is generally called GATT.
Papuan rubber planters who have agitated for some time for the rel moval of the 2d duty on rubber going into Australia, hdve until re cently been told that this could not be done as the deliberations of this GATT, which evidently fixes these things, were sacrosanct. But recently they have been informed by the Commonwealth Government that an appeal can now be made on the grounds that the removal of the duty in the case of P-NG would help in the establishment of a new and struggling industry.
Some rubber planters in Papua believe that this sudden discovery (that an appeal can be made to GATT) could get the Australian Government out of a difficulty not only with rubber but also with the new timber duty.
It seems that about the only people affected by timber duty, at present, would be New Guinea Goldfields; there are virtually no other exporters operating because all local production can be absorbed locally. By the end of the year! however, Commonwealth Timbers Ltd. will be in production and when at full capacity expect to produce something like 10,000 sheets of plyl wood per day for export.
This normally would be subject to the Australian duty but in the agreement between the Commons wealth Government and Common-1 wealth Timbers there is reported to be a clause which says that in the event of duty being imposed in Australia, the full amount of it will be refunded by the Commonwealth to the company. If this is so. the present intention of the Customs authorities in Australia to impose duty is purely discriminatory against New Guinea Goldfields* timber exports and against anyone else who in the future decided to export timber from PNG to Aus tralia.
But here, again, in the newly disf covered knowledge that it is post sible to appeal to GATT, preseni and future timber exporters may be able to escape the duty on the grounds that they need this help to establish a new industry.
Regarded purely in the light of ccmmonsense, the above manner of encouraging a Territory industry is a good example of bureaucratic* government run riot.
But some of the cynical business-] men of Papua-New Guinea, who from experience expect government departments to use the devioud approach rather than the common
mse direct approach, feel that the resent willingness of the Depart lent of Territories to appeal to •ATT for the relief of rubber lanters is simply a means of creat ig a precedent—a precedent that t some future time can be turned > good account to foster other in ustries. including the timber in astry.
the expense of having a Commission of Inquiry from overseas to investigate the liquor problem could very well have been saved, as a local Commission could have served the same purpose at less expense, and would probably have achieved better results, in line with local needs and requirements.
With 88 merchant marine apprentices aboard, the Japanese training ship Nippon Maru is at present in the American Trust Ter ritory islands to collect the bodies of Japanese war dead which Ameri can garrison forces have already collected and prepared for ship ment.