This Phenomenal Boom In Papua And

Energy And Money—But

Thrust Is In Wrong Direction

This Phenomenal Boom In Papua And New Guinea

With Australian grants and oil companies’ expenditure added to its normal earnings of £l5 millions, Papua and New Guinea are spending at least £25 millions per annum. R. W. Robson here argues that, while this expenditure has created a phenomenal business boom, and is greatly enriching the big corporations and the Chinese, it represents an effort partly wasted, because it is not being used to establish the right kind of young Australians as planters and ranchers in the huge Territory.

AT first sight, the “progress” be ing made in Papua and New Guinea is staggering.

The Administration is construct ing offices and staff houses, schools and hospitals, roads and wharves, bridges and airfields, in a sort of frenzy—just as if it thought its money supplies were going to be chopped off.

Private enterprise is similarly active. In fact—as in Chinatown, Rabaul, where 83 residences and stores are at this moment under construction, financed by the Chinese themselves —private enter prise is out in front.

Casual observers, accustomed to

cutting the coat to suit the cloth, look around in amazement. Why and how, they ask.

The how is easily answered. P-NG sells produce worth about £l4 million Australian per annum; the big-hearted Australian taxpayer adds another £8 million or £9 million to that, as a gift; and the oil barons provide another sub stantial sum (this year, £3l million), in the expenditure of which they hope to stake out a new oil empire behind the Gulf of Papua.

Add that up, and you get the answer. Of that total of £25 millions annually, a large propor tion is being spent in building and

in establishing new industries with in the country, and in feeding not only the folk engaged in the estab lished industries, but also the army of administrative officials and artisans created by this extraord inary boom.

Incidentally, in the doing of this,

a good many deserving folk are making fortunes. There is no tax ation of income in this happy land.

BUT the why is a less simple question. What object is Aus tralia trying to serve in making this prodigious—and expensive— effort to create a big and lively economy in P-NG?

Is this an attempt at “colonisa tion”? Or a concerted effort to raise primitive folk from Stone Age to European standards in a couple of generations? Or is it a planned attempt to place something like a defensive barrier between Australia and the swarming masses of Asia?

One can get no intelligible answer from Canberra. Canberra, of course, insists that the over-all emphasis is on native welfare.

And the natives certainly are coming along, up the social grade, in remarkable fashion —I have just seen Tolais, near Rabaul, who are quite rich cocoa-growers; English speaking youths at Goroka who, 3 years ago, could use only the dialect of a Chimbu village; efficient native clerks and salesmen in Port Moresby stores: native youths in college blazers travelling from Brisbane on the planes to spend Xmas in New Guinea.

But Canberra insists also that the whole future belongs to the natives.

In view of the way in which some Europeans are putting in cocoa and coffee plantations, and sawmills, and engineering shops, and jostling each other for land, and the confidence

with which the Chinese are extend ing their buildings and plantations, it is clear that, with or without Canberra approval, this is not go ing to be a one-race economy

Canberra says one thing; the logic of events and developments indicates something else.

It could be that one eye of Aus tralia’s Top Brass, which could have been keeping an unfriendly watch over P-NG’s private enterprise, is fully occupied in studying the ugly trends to-day in Indonesia and Singapore; and that, on balance, Top Brass really is very glad to see the creation in P-NG of a European economy which, in the event of an Asian surge southwards, would pro vide some sort of defensive barrier for under-populated Australia.

But Minister Hasluck officially does not subscribe to that.

Anyway, for what it is worth, and irrespective of confused and con flicting policies, Australia’s abund ant money, and Australia’s hard drinking and hard-working young men, really are doing a magnificent job in the huge Dual Territory, and creating there an empire of which Australians (despite the screeching of the Red and Pink “anti-colonial ists”) may well be proud.

OF course, in an enterprise of this size, all sorts of stupid mistakes are made; square pegs create savage frictions in round holes; greed and exploitation lead to evils which reflect badly on our individualistic system.

The demand for all kinds of goods and services is sharp and com petitive—so that costs are almost beyond belief.

I found a plumber of modest capacity who demands —and gets— £l4B per month, plus free housing.

I paid £3 per day for hotel accom modation which consisted of three meals and a square box without water or bedside light or dressing table. I found a newly-arrived young mother wailing over the incredible prices of baby-food and shoes. I was in an air-serviced store which charged 4/- for the PIM, which we blushingly sell for 2/- in Sydney.

But no one worries. Every sober and industrious man in the Dual Territory is making more money than he ever dreamed of in Aus tralia. And there is no taxation of income. Any man—or woman—who understands business principles could become rich here in ten years—if these conditions last ten years.

There are some unpleasant things to be said about the High Command —but let us look at the pleasant things first. fpHE most impressive and praise- X worthy factor in the P-NG set up is the enthusiasm and eager ness of the Administration’s field officers.

I met them everywhere—patrol parties, education men, instructors of co-operatives, medical parties, lads from Agriculture studying soils

and grasses and animal husbandry —and many were almost tripping themselves up in their haste to get on with what is an inspiring Job.

Some two years ago, when I was in Goroka, DC lan Downs had just finished pinning his fantastic road to the sides of the precipitous gorges, with huge stakes man handled out of the high valleys; and thus had beaten the Public Works pistol by about ten years— he had put in a trafficable road from Kainantu to Mount Hagen.

All praised “young Downs’s” initiative and energy, but many said that the clay track across the mountain-range into Chimbu would collapse as soon as the monsoonal rains hit it. Cherry Lane drove me over it—one of the various

reasons why my hair is white—and I agreed with the critics.

So I was happy, this trip, to go with District Commissioner H. P, Seale on his fortnightly inspection ©f the “Downs Road” —and it was a bonny sight. The road still is there; it has been everywhere drained, strengthened and improved; and it is gravelled for 25 miles, from Goroka to the top of the 7,500-ft dividing range.

JIMMY WILTON put the road in for Downs—a really wonderful job—but the ingenious James is long gone; and the later work has been done, not by road engineers and bulldozers, but by patrol officers and policemen, with lines of villagers carrying armfuls of gravel

in pieces of bent tin; and painfully manhandling logs out of the higher jungles.

Seale has grabbed money where he could, and used lorries to cart gravel and broken shale; but it has been done mostly with primitive man-power.

As an example of how these Aus tralians use the material at hand; DC Seale got his calculating eye on the thousands of 40-gall, petrol drums lying abandoned around the old American airfield at Gusap. He organised a DC3 airlift, and brought 6,000 of them into Goroka. Boys cold-chiselled the ends out of them; odd lorries carried them out onto the road.

End to end, they make admir able culverts. True, they rust away in about 10 years—but they cost nothing except freight—they are far cheaper than cement and last much longer than wooden slabs.

In many places, I saw eight lines of drums laid side by side in a gulch. Thus, they took care of a mountain torrent, and eliminated the back-breaking labour of build ing a log bridge. The labourers from the nearby villages just laid the drums in the creek-beds and filled the gulch with clay loosened from the overhanging banks F‘ a few months’ time, when they put in those remaining bridges at the head of the Markham

Valley (Maralumi, Iruma, Leron and Umi), there will be a complete and really good motor-road from Lae, over the Ramu Divide to Kainantu and Goroka, and over the Chimbu ranges to Minj and Mount Hagen The opening of that road will be followed by a developmental leap in the Highlands (now entirely air serviced) which will be even more amazing than the progress of the last five years.

Two years ago, Goroka announced proudly that it had 100 buildings.

Now it has 200, and 100 telephone subscribers.

There are 270 motor vehicles registered at Goroka—nearly all brought in by air. But, this year, while the unbridged streams are drought-stricken and low, the re sourceful Australians have been sending in trucks and cars under their own power. Commissioner Seale’s new Holden car reached Gusap from Lae the day I left— and as I looked down from the plane on those turbulent Markham fords, I wondered how it was done.

Manhandling, I suppose.

A young Australian, with a line of strong and willing natives, can do almost anything in this country.

That is the secret of P-NG’s record of achievement since the Japs were thrown out 12 years ago—Australian resourcefulness and drive and native co-operation.

1 HEARD someone say, “There’s a bit of Mau-Mau-ism around the Territory,” but I could find no sign of it.

Low-class whites—and the intro duction of such people seems an In evitable part of construction pro grammes—have associated closely with poor-type natives, encouraged them to drink alcohol (often methylated spirits) and be insolent to whites; and out of that associa tion have sprung some evils. But officialdom keeps an alert eye on them, and the over-all record is very good.

Relations between District staffs and unofficial Europeans and Chinese are excellent.

The District Commissioners (really local governors) are widely different in temperament and habits; but they are singularly alike in that they (a) try to ease the

way for private enterprise, with all its grouches, frustrations and suspicions; and (b) bend all the re sources of Administration to the heavy task of improving the social and economic condition of the natives.

I formed the impression that much of the good that is achieved by the District Commissioners comes from the DC’s own commonsense and purposefulness, and is not the result of Canberra directives.

Canberra should give public thanks for its DC’s, who have been an admirable barrier between a bureaucratic dictatorship in Can berra, and Australia’s rapidly-de veloping little colonial empire.

Non-official classes, who loathe Canberra and most of its well mouthed policies—and especially its peripatetic politicians—have respect and regard for the District Com missioners and their staffs. I think that is the result of the reorganisa tion which Administrator Cleland carried out two or three years ago, under which the District Com missions were created, and the authority and functions of the Dis trict Offices re-arranged.

But I do not think that District Commissioners are given enough local authority in such vital matters as land settlement, afforestation, and native education. Minister Hasluck, as the great planner and

little dictator, keeps those powers jealously in his own hands OF all the things vital to the future of this Dual Territory I should put first the matter of land settlement by Europeans.

Unless the whole economic structure of P-NG has a backbone

of European primary producers, this vast land (one-half of the world’s biggest island, plus the large islands of New Britain, New Ire land and Bougainville) will come inevitably under Asian domination; and Asian domination of P-NG in evitably means the end of a Euro pean Australia and New Zealand.

Minister Hasluck belongs to an anti-colonial school of thought which insists that this Territory (capable, on East Indies standards, of maintaining a population of from 50 to 80 millions) shall be reserved for the descendants of the esti mated li million primitives now there, and, so far as protection against Asia is concerned, he puts his faith in ridiculous conceptions like UNO and the Colombo Plan. I shall not live to see it, and one cannot collect or pay bets in the place where I am going; but I should like to stake everything I own that Minister Hasluck and his ilk are completely and tragically wrong.

The bulk of that £8 or £lO millions per annum which Australia is giv ing each year to P-NG should be spent on the establishment of these eager young Australians in P-NG as copra-producers, coffee and cocoa-growers, cattle-ranchers. In actual fact, the Hasluck policy is encouraging European private enter prise in P-NG far more than it acknowledges. But the practical help is going mostly to the big cor porations, who have ample funds to back their enterprises. There is nothing for the young men who are so eager to get in on some land, and establish plantations and farms.

In this country, such places call for a capital of from £lO,OOO to £20,000. The young men simply haven’t got it, and they clamour in vain around the District Offices and plead uselessly to the land settlement organisation directed by the grim-faced Mr. Mclnnes.

Why, in the name of justice and commonsense, is there not some machinery through which these eager young Australians can be financed onto suitable plantations and ranches by means of some of the £B-£lO millions which Minister Hasluck scatters so lavishly over the Territories each year?

So much could be done —and is being done —in carrying out public works and creating the machinery for development. So pathetically little is being done in introducing and equipping these young Aus tralians as the core of the Aus tralian developmental and defensive organisation in New Guinea.

For that, I blame primarily a Minister who—judging him by his writings—is generally anti-colonial and pro-native. Look at what ten years of anti-colonialism and pro native-ism have done to the Western world! Why repeat it in New Guinea?

THE Administration must be very happy over the way in which the natives are learning to grow coconuts, cocoa and coffee, for the world market.

In the year ended March 1, 1956, the natives planted some 270,000 cocoa trees, making a total of nearly 2 million trees, on 7,464 acres

of native village plantations; and in that period the natives contributed 329 tons to the Territory’s total cocoa export of 1,300 tons.

One finds the same general pro gress in native coconut planting: and the natives (mostly through their co-operative societies) are responding well to the Administra tion’s pleas that they should grow rice, peanuts and a larger quantity and variety of food crops.

That is all to the good. None can quarrel with all the efforts that can be made to establish New Guinea as a little nation of peasant producers, enjoying some degree of literacy.

But if anyone imagines that that kind of New Guinea will provide any kind of protection against Asia for the European countries in the South Pacific, he is not only a fool,

but a menace.

So much is being done in Papua- New Guinea, in a material sense, with Australia’s huge annual subsidy. But, in the final analysis, it contributes so little of real value to the future security of the South Pacific’s European communities.

And that, in my opinion, is all that matters in this ugly world. Native “welfare”? Can there be any greater contribution to native welfare than holding the South Pacific against the swarming, hungry masses of Asia? t Mr. Bob Hewlett, secretary of the Fiji Visitors’ Bureau, and Mr.

Harvey Hunt, of Hunt’s Travel Ser vice, Suva, went to Australia this month to attend the sixth annual conference of the Pacific Area Travel Association in Canberra.