Editorial ...

isands Development and Visionary Ministers —Especially Australian

[RESENT indications are that Mr. Paul Hasluck, Australian Minister for Territories, will be fled to the small list of politician itators whose names are cursed hen remembered) by intelligent cific Islanders. On two counts few Guinea land settlement and NG public service organisation— ■. Hasluck has been much in the lelight lately, and the picture has t flattered him.

All the South Pacific territories, thout exception, have suffered der this kind of infliction. The rritories have either very limited jresentative government, or none all. Nominally, they are ruled »r by a Minister for Territories, Colonies, or Islands Depend ;ies, or something. In nearly all ses, the system of Western inocracy supplies for those Min eral jobs either a Trades Hall litician, a well-meaning nonentity, -most dangerous of all —a type 10 knows it all in theory, and is ite sure he cannot possibly be ong.

Administration over tropical and 3-tropical countries, heavily pulated by people who have not b reached the stage of self-gov iment, calls for special education, lining and practical experience, der and wiser nations recognise is, and place carefully selected »n in charge of such countries, re them a general direction on licy, and leave them alone.

No other system is possible, if ere are to be development, social ogress, human justice and a isonably contented population.

HJT not countries over-run by > Socialist politicians. Recent ex periences in relation to Australia New Guinea, and Britain in the lomons, provide examples of what ppens when enthusiastic ideolog s get loose on a helpless tropical untry.

The British Solomon Islands, onomically starving, have just id what appears to be a stroke luck. A young Australian ologist claims to have discovered goldfield which is at least in resting, and may prove to be ally rich. It is good enough to tract miners and investors. If they > establish a gold industry, the finderella” Territory” may prove be not only one of the most de :able in the Southwest Pacific undamentally, it is as good as sw Guinea), but also of great ade value to Australia.

Yet that stage could have been

reached eight years ago if a British Socialist Government had not in sisted on placing crippling mining restrictions upon the late Mr. E. G.

Theodore, just when his well endowed Fiji expedition was about to move into Guadalcanal. And who in the South Pacific will ever forget the Socialist Minister for Colonies (name forgotten) who visited Solomons, Fiji, etc., just be fore the Attlee Government was de feated!

THE history of the “Eddie” Ward regime in Papua and New Guinea should be emblazoned in Port Moresby and Rabaul, as a horrible warning for future genera tions.

Before the Wardist era, Canberra wisely had followed the old British system, and had left those Terri

tories in the care of skilled Admin istrators. Economic and social pro gress—which was quite satisfactory —was due, not to Ministerial in spiration, but to the wise direction of men like Hubert Murray and Wisdom who, in turn, encouraged individual pioneering and private enterprise and who, in their turn, were greatly aided in the fields of education and medicine by the de voted work of Christian missionaries.

Into this Islands world, with fury and anathema, after the war, came the famous Australian Specialists, Dr. Evatt and Eddie Ward. They insisted that P-NG had become a region of native enslavement and capitalist exploitation. Their de nunciation of the former regimes was typical Red propaganda.

Even while the war was on, they filled the Territories with “specialist” advisers, earnest Leftist planners suitably decorated with the red military tabs of the General Staff.

As soon as the war was over, they threw out the old native labour rules —“the era of native enslave ment is over”; and so also apparently was the era of the pri vate trader and the shipowner—all goods distribution and all shipping

in future were to be State-owned and controlled.

This astonishing regime did not last long. It virtually ended when Minister Ward had to spend many months of his time convincing an Australian judicial body that he was not implicated in the New Guinea timber lease case (a Qld. firm paid out some £50,000 and imagined they were buying a timber lease from certain persons, some of whom were associated with Mr.

Ward). Territories old hands remember, of course, that Minister Ward was “completely exonerated,” while the notorious Communist, Jock Garden (who had been Min ister Ward’s intimate personal and political associate up until that time) was sent to gaol; and no one ever found out what became of the £50,000.

But the Wardist regime would have collapsed under its own absurdities, even if there had been no Timber Lease scandal to disrupt the Socialist planning.

QINCE the Wardist era, P-NG has been nominally under a non- Socialist Administration. In many respects, P-NG dwellers have found it hard to distinguish the difference. They still are very much under the Planners, both Ministerial and Bureaucratic.

The system, pre-war, was to leave the Territories very much to their own devices, under responsible Ad ministrators, and to expect them to be somewhere near self-supporting.

Since then, under Socialist Ward and reputedly non-Socialist Hasluck, Australia has provided annually really enormous subsidies—so that the Territories literally have almost anything In the way of adminis trative ipachinery and industrial encouragement that money can buy.

But the Australian Minister, in re turn. insists that P-NG shall be his administrative plaything and hobby horse.

With so much money available, from subsidies, high produce prices, gold and oil search, P-NG has a reafiy remarkable opportunity of establishing an economic structure that will be a credit to Australia— and will provide Australia with an Islands bulwark, to serve the double purpose of defending Australia’s northern shores, and discouraging either peacetime or wartime en croachment by Asia’s countless hungry millions.

BUT, to achieve so desirable a thing, two factors are essential.

One is settlement in New Guinea of a much larger bodv of carefully selected Europeans, and ff? ot ? er and bal P. Private enterprise by the administrative corps. Mr Hasluck seems likely to defeat both 5 those aims, because he will not keep his restless Ministerial nose out of Territories affairs which his trained

officials understand much better than he.

He is directly responsible for in troducing an idealistic, over elaborate, over-officialised system of land settlement that, if it does not defeat the pioneering impulse of the hundreds of young men who have been seeking land there in the last five years, surely will dis courage and partially stifle it.

And (rightly or wrongly), he is blamed for creating, between Can berra and the Territories’ public service, a relationship which is de plorable in itself, and must eventu ally do much general harm to the Territories. In the present Admin istrator, Departmental heads and public service generally in P-NG Australia probably has as good a line of officials as may be found in any similar country in the world keen, efficient, loyal and with plenty of initiative.

But, as in the Wardist regime— and under all similar Socialist regimes—Canberra will not let them alone to take the responsibility and do the job. Mr. Hasluck may be nominally a Tory; but his record U P date (pre-political and post political) suggests that he is mostly a Socialist planner, incapable of leaving the trained practical men alone in the jobs for which they have planned.

There has been a strong move lately m Australia to ask the Prime Minister for a far-reaching inquiry into the relationship between the Canberra Minister and Department and the Administration and public service in P-NG. We suggested something of the kind six months ago. For the sake of Papua-New Guinea, it should not be in definitely delayed. Mr. Hasluck is a man of ability, culture and charm.

But, when Cabinet-making, Mr.

Menzies cast him in the wrong role