Young Students
p. 115 · Read in the full issue
Analyse
S. Pacific Problems
THE last issue of the journal of the Australian School of Pacific Administration, South Pacific, contains some articles of outstand ing merit.
In “The Legal Problem Behind the Administrative Union of Papua and New Guinea,” Mr. B. Bunting, a distinguished 1953 graduate of the School, examines a situation that not many people appreciate.
Papua is a Territory of Australia; New Guinea is a Territory held by Australia in trust for the United Nations; their constitution is en tirely different; yet Australia is try ing to govern both with the same service and instrumentalities, and subject to the same laws, in terms of the Papua and New Guinea Act of 1949. As jurists see it, the thing bristles with legal headaches. Mr.
Bunting sets out the problems in an interesting way.
Another brilliant young Pacific Islands student, Ronald Gatty (son of Mr. Harold Gatty, of Fiji) con tributes another helpful study: “Fiji Colony In Transition.”
Young Gatty is at an American University, and this apparently is a thesis he has prepared. It is a careful and thoughtful analysis, not only of Fiji’s well known racial problem, but also of the less under
stood but fundamental economic questions which are tied in with the changing condition of the three main communities.
“The Rice Problem In New Guinea” was part of a long article “Changing Native Education In New Guinea,” by Dr. O. H. K. Spate, which appeared in an American magazine. Of all the projects which the Planners have thrown at Papua-New Guinea since World War 11, the idea of growing rice there seems the soundest and the best. It will give the natives—both primitive and Europeanised—a new and valuable food; it will sub stantially reduce imports; it will directly help the Administration in what the latter regards as its main task—namely, the establishment of the native as a peasant producer of an article in general demand; and it will fit in with P-NG condi tions, because there are vast areas in both Territories suitable for both wet and dry rice. Dr. Spate ex amines both the Mekeo (Papua) and the Wewak ricegrowing pro jects in detail, and his comments and conclusions should be helpful to all concerned.
Carryl Bonnet, young daughter of an American, Doctor David D Bonnet, who is attached to the Filariose Institute, was killed by a passing truck on April 24 when she rode out into the main road on a cycle at Paea, Tahiti,