Australia’s Bid to Retain
p. 33 · Read in the full issue
NG Trade
APRIL 4; Pirn was informed to day, by a representative of the Rice Mill Owners’ Association that that association had offered rice to Papua-New Guinea at “a very low price” in order to hold the monopoly of the P-NG rice market. The Association is awaiting the reaction of the Administrator of P-NG to its proposals.
At the same time we received the following despatch from our Port Moresby correspondent.
“The Australian rice trade in late March offered to reduce the price of Australian rice sold to New Guinea.
“Representatives of the Rice Mill
Owners’ Association of Australia told the Department of Territories at a conference that millers would re duce the price from £B3 a ton to £72, but no further.
“The Territories Department for warded the offer to Port Moresby for decision by the Administrator, Brigadier D. M. Cleland. Despite the reduction, there is still a big difference between Australian and world prices for rice.” (No comment on the above is necessary—except to say that while most employers of labour in P-NG would prefer to patronise Australia rather than the East, if Australia can compete on a reasonable basis, most of them will wonder why the Australian middlemen have so sud denly found that they can afford to sell their rice at £ll per ton less than they have been doing).
Two German deaconesses, Sisters Lydia Mohring and Elizabeth Kessler, arrived in Australia at the end of March on their way to Tari, in the highlands of central Papua They trained at the Martha Maria Deaconess Institute, Nuremberg, and underwent a course of study in Lon don in preparation for their mission appointment. At Fremantle they were met by the W. Australian secretary of the Methodist Overseas Missions (the Rev. A. Crookes Hull) and Mrs. Crookes Hull.