Three New Knights

New Year Honours

HONOURS were evenly distributed to the Pacific Territories in this New Year—Fiji and New Guinea each has a new Knight, and a former NZ Minister for Islands Territories also has been knighted.

The list is as follows:

K.C.M.G.

Thomas Clifton Webb, QC. High Com missioner for NZ in the United Kingdom and formerly NZ Minister for Islands Territories.

K.B.E.

Frederick Phillips, Chief Judge of the Papua-New Guinea Supreme Court.

Ragnar Hyne, Fiji Chief Justice. 0.8. E.

Commander Clive Elliott, chief manager, CSK Co..

Fiji.

Officers Harold Brockett Gibson, Labasa, Fiji.

Jerry Auret Marais, Post-Master General.

Suva. Fiji.

Members William Carlyle Baker, planter, of Fiji.

Filimone Canimanu Raiqiso, Department of Agriculture, Fiji.

Although Sir Ragnar Hyne and Sir Federick Phillips have received identical honours, Sir Frederick has a distinction that Sir Ragnar has not: He is the only Knight in the whole of the big Territory of Papua and New Guinea, while there are about half a dozen in the small Colony of Fiji.

Sir Frederick is the Territory's first post-war Knight. Even before the war they were rare. Sir Ramsay McNicol, immediate pre-war Admin istrator of New Guinea, received the honour for the work he did during the 1937 volcanic eruption at Rabaul, and Sir Hubert Murray, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Papua from 1907 until his death in 1940, was knighted many years before that.

In the post-war years, Australia has been going through a semi socialist phase and all honours are apparently to be avoided like the plague.

There has been agitation to have the present Administrator renamed a Governor or High Commissioner, but the official answer is always “No.”

The story of Sir Frederick’s career is told by Tolala in Talk-Talk in this issue.

Sir Ragnar was born in Norway but is a Queenslander by adoption.

He went to school and University there and entered the Qld. Educa tion Service. He served in World War I and then went to Tonga as Director of Education. He was called

to the Bar in Queensland in 1924, seconded to the BSIP in a legal capacity in 1929, returned to Tonga again as Director of Education in 1932 but on several occasions until 1936 acted as Chief Justice. He had appointments in Suva and BSIP as well as Tonga until 1944, when he be ca m e Solicitor-General, Sierra Leone. Transfer to the Gold Coast followed in 1948 (as Puisne Judge).

He arrived in Fiji as Chief Justice in 1953.