An Antiquity Exists?

Have You Good Reason To Believe That An Antiquity Exists?

ELECTED members of the Papua and New Guinea Legislative Council were sarcastic over the legal draftsmanship of the so-called Antiquities Ordinance that came before the Council early in May. A better name for it, suggested Mr.

E. A. James, member for Papua, would be the Iniquities Bill. Mr.

D. Barrett, member for New Guinea Islands, believed that it had prob ably been drafted by the late Joseph Stalin.

The Bill was designed to protect native relics or curios and other articles of ethnological and anthro pological interest, cave paintings and the like. Everyone agreed that this was a worthy aim. However, in parts of the Bill, it was believed that its architect has “run amok ”

Penalties were set out for people who “had good reason to believe that there exists” in any locality a cave or other place of ancient remains, carvings, paintings, his torical remains, etc., and did not immediately report them to the nearest District Officer. There were equally dire penalties for those who defaced, uncovered, damaged or ex posed any of these objects without

the written permission of the Ad ministrator —without any provision for the accidental exposing or damaging of same.

Debate on the Bill was deferred to later in the session, evidently in the hope that those who had fathered it would think better of its Behind-the-Iron-Curtain im plications.