The Telefomin Affair

Hysterical Newspaper Comment In Australia

IT is officially believed that the attacks by natives of the Tele fomin area of New Guinea, tvhich in November resulted in the deaths of Cadet Patrol Officer G.

B. Harris and Patrol Officer Gerald L. Szarka and two native police toys, came from the Teraptavip group which numbers less than 200.

The District Commissioner of the Sepik District of New Guinea, Mr.

Alan Timperley, who has been in vestigating the murders and the circumstances surrounding them, aelieves that the attacks were pre neditated and were made by young men. It seems to him probable that an initiation ceremony for voung men of the Teraptavip group las to take place in the near future md that an aged man of the group lad allegedly been advocating that he station at Telefomin should be removed so that tribal practices could be resumed. The District Commissioner discounts the theory ;hat the attacks were made as “pay sack” for the loss of five native carriers who were drowned when iccompanying a patrol in an id joining area earlier this year.

No one seems to know why the ;wo young men split their forces and Datrolled in different directions; or vhy they took so few policeboys vith them.

News of the tragedy was followed )y a spate of newspaper specula ;ion and theory—most of it un nformed and designed purely as a colitical weapon. In Sydney, in November, most of the big daily lewspapers were “shopping around” hr comment from anyone who had ever been in the Territory, to prove ;hat the murders were due to Aus ;ralian Government policy; or to he fact that the young men who net their deaths had been forced *) take unnecessary risks.

The Administrator of Papua and *ew Guinea, Brigadier D. M. Cle and, said, in regard to some of hese statements, that they were ‘irresponsible, impertinent and not n accordance with fact.”

In Australia, the peak of un nformed comment came from the Melbourne Argus —in politics de cidedly Pink—which had this to lay in a leading article;— “Australians will be deceiving no )ody but themselves if they pretend hat the Telefomin affair is lymptomatic of anything but i failure of colonial administration.

“If we do fail—and Telefomin is l disquieting danger-signal—then ve need blame nobody but our elves. It is not the natives’ busi less to slmw us how to win their ;ood will; it is our business to win

their good will in our own interests.”

This comment simply shows that, in spite of all the publicity New Guinea has had since the war, the problems of administering that primitive country are a closed book to the majority of Australians.

District Services 37

Permanent Absentees

ALTHOUGH much of the hysteria that followed the Telefomin affair can be dismissed as merely mischievous, the fact does emerge, however, that District Services field staff is much too small to do the gigantic job of bringing government to the New Guinea natives and that, as a con sequence, some of the outposts are not always as fully staffed as they should be One of the greatest contributing causes of this staff shortage is, doubtless, the fact that at least 37 of its patrol-officers, and even Assistant District Officers, are away in Sydney spending up to two years learning the theory of Pacific ad ministration. (See page 49 this issue).

There seems no reason at all why this Australian School of Pacific Administration should not function somewhere in the Territory where the students who are attending it could get to grips with what is actually happening there, and be available for much more practical work in the field.

The School is a post-war growth and at the beginning the course extended over a few months. Now the School course covers two years.

Before the war, Papuan officials got along without any formal in struction ip tropical administration; and in New Guinea, cadet patrol officers were given six months at Sydney University after a pre liminary two years in the field in New Guinea.

It is quite fruitless to be always comparing the “good old days” with the present. It has yet to be proven, however, that the present system which includes some years at the ASOPA in Sydney makes better patrol-officers or District Com missioners than the old pre-war system. {See also article, Magazine Sec tion, this issue.) if A daughter was born to Mr. and Mrs. Cam Turner of Wellington, NZ, during October. Mrs. Turner was formerly Miss Pele Grey, daughter of popular Apia hotel hbstess, Mrs. Aggie Grey.

A party headed by Mr. L. J.

Davis, Tokelau Officer, made an official flight to the Tokelau Islands late November per RNZAF Sunder land aircraft. Official visits are made from Apia every three or four months.