Minister Adroitly

Taxation Shootings in

Minister Adroitly Blankets Report Of Commission

There has been some inti

ing political manoeuvring ovv

report of the Chief Justid

Papua and New Guinea, <

went to Rabaul in Septemb©

as a Commissioner of Inquii

investigate the circumstances

rounding the Navuneram s

ings of August 4.

rrVHE August trouble ock X when Administration o;c tried to collect, from m Tolai natives in and arounr villages of Navuneram and T] the head-tax of £2 introduca the Administration at the begi? of 1958, and said to be payab males, white or coloured, withd

exemptions.

Most of the Tolais paid, pressure was applied, butt Navuneram section refused.

Step by step, the official! pressure on the defiant nr until they reached the point: the non-taxpayers had ti arrested for defiance of thej When the police and official August 4, moved in to maM arrests, the natives attacked! and —as was by then ineviti the police used their rifles, an natives were killed and anr wounded.

Immediately, the Tern Department was in uproar.

Commenting in August, high officialdom was still bf the aii* and breathing heavily pointed out that blame did r with the tax-gathering ole who were merely carrying ouli logical duty, but with the tories Department’s Top Brass had insisted on imposing hea; upon a primitive people, lon fore the latter were capatJ understanding its meaning or • ficance.

Long, Anxious Wait for R<

The Inquiry conducted by i Justice Mann was thorougH, far-reaching. His report was : hands of Territories Mt, Hasluck, in November. The must have worked day and! on the job—it runs to oven; typewritten pages.

There was widespread inters His Honour’s findings. Whomr he blame? Presumably, the lay either with the Canbern Moresby set-up, which intro the tax, or with the high CD who directed the method of

from the natives of neram. isensus of Territories’ opinion that Canberra and Port sby would try to get out from • by piling the blame on rtmental or District officials. expected that the heads of ct Commissioner Foldi and/or s Superintendent Normoyle 1 roll in the dust. all decency, the Com mer’s report—or at least a ary of it —should have been hed as soon as it reached Ilnister. In that way, much :ss anxiety would have been id. in the manner characteristic little dictators, Mr. Hasluck to keep the document under nd key until he could solemnly on the table of the Com salth Parliament. Why? said that was his “obligation”.

Territorians are of opinion ie did not like the report and that some of its unpleasant r might disappear if he kept •et for a while, ras tabled in Parliament on try 19—nearly three months the Commissioner signed it. n sapienti sat est! er Ready With HIS Report while scores of people 1 and wondered, the Minister ?ood use of the three months, n he tabled the report, he 1 ready a document of eight -typed foolscap pages, which ad out, and in which he ed the report at length, and ted and underlined some of unmissioner’s comments, and sed for wrongdoing, and pro something better in the ugh the report was not avail- Dr study or publication in (it was merely “tabled”, for ?) the Minister went straight detailed reply to it. bers, even had they been able i the report, could not chal the Minister’s smooth and ry comments—9o per cent, n know nothing about the ry, and its complex social ministrative structure. ) the moment of this writing probably until the report is and debated—all that the pers and the people have had •se extracts from the report, by the Minister for quota order that he may hang lem the soft words which he fill turn wrath away.

'eally is a cunning technique, time the report is printed, e debate of the wearisome )rs reported, most people will orgotten the Navuneram ?s —or will remember them the light of the Ministerial tions. Which suits Mr. : very well.

'eport consists of over 1,500 bound in eight volumes.

Seven of the eight are official documents, and the immense amount of evidence taken in Navuneram, Rabaul and Port Moresby. The eighth volume con tains the Commissioner’s summary and comments.

Tribute to Officials

That last volume can be easily summarised. (More details on page 51.) His Honour finds none of the officials involved in the Navuneram incident seriously blameworthy having, in accordance with Port Moresby’s instructions, engaged upon the task of collecting the taxes from the stubborn and resentful Tolais, they could do no other than

pursue the matter to its logical con clusion, and, if necessary, effect the arrest of the natives who openly de fied the law.

Those officials, in some prelim inary proceedings—a few days be fore August 4—held a conference at which some decisions were taken.

His Honour says that a serious error was made there in not having legal advice and legal officers avail able. He is critical of officials of the Native Affairs Department for some of the things they did—or did not do—in these preliminary proceed ings.

His Honour says a great deal in this paragraph of his report: “I do not want to be taken as express ing the view that the officers of the Ad

itration should be held responsible for ncidents. ideed, I reject such a conclusion, and that any search for a scapegoat to the responsibility for these events I involve serious injustice to these rs. and would deprive the Administra- Bf the benefit which can only be de from close attention to the causes e trouble. 1 of the officers who gave evidence so frankly, truthfully and without re. icy are all men of outstanding ability ntegrity, and wide experience in the ;ory, and they faced the very difficult ;ms with which they were confronted great courage, and application to at reference to “close attention he causes of the trouble” is ficant.

Much Wider Dispute

e Commissioner quite properly that the immediate background le events of August 4 is found le operation of the head tax; that the question of taxation mly incidental to a much wider ite going back over years, e Minister is shrewd enough to he meaning of those sentences, it as they affect his adminis m, and so he jumps in with explanations. Here is one: ly a comparatively small percentage ! native population pays the maxi rate of £2. t of an enumerated adult male ition of 476,840 in Papua and New a, a total of 176,497 were automatic exempted at the beginning of the tax-year and 53,999 were either or partially exempted by tribunals the year; so that only half of the male population were in fact pay ie full personal tax. e vast majority of those on whom ;ax has been levied have paid by passing, I should mention that, gh the tax was primarily introduced number of reasons advanced by the istrator as being valuable for our istrative purposes, the tax is also ;ordance with the expressed wishes Trusteeship Council of UN.” ; the Minister’s smooth phrases )t explain (a) why the tax was e first place introduced among primitive folk of Papua and Guinea, at the present stage of opment and (b) why it was 1 upon this particular section ie Tolais, when 200,000 other es were exempt.

The Difficult Tolais

5 Minister went on to say, at stage in his comments, that head tax was “inextricably i” with the Administration’s ipts to introduce an increasing e of local government among latives. It was provided that 3 natives were being taxed by governments, they could be — vere —exempt from head tax.

; the Commissioner emphasises

neram’s opposition to local nment as well as to the head and the natives’ belief that acceptance of head tax would the way to the local govern

ment, which they had rejected The 9 ommissioner refers also to the history of those Tolais—there is a record since 1950 of clashes between them and the District Ad ministration the McCarthy in cident at Raluana a few years ago may not be forgotten.

He refers to many things local and general, which had contributed to the “bewilderment and alarm” of the native people, in connection with this tax.

It all goes back to the questions: Why was the tax imposed upon the Tolais? Why was it introduced at all?

To sum it all up: The Com missioner lays no special blame for the Navuneram shootings on the officials immediately involved in the shootings. He suggests that the Administration could derive benefit from “close attention to the causes of the trouble.”

He could have said a good deal more under that head. Perhaps he would have liked to have done so— but apparently he took the view that his authority did not extend to an inquiry on why the Govern ment introduced the tax, and the manner of its application. . . Parlia ment’s first knowledge of the nature of the report was gained only through the comments with which the Minister blanketed it.

Minister's Promises

The Minister concludes with a whole series of pious resolutions which he says are called for by the report, and which he summarises as a “need for constant, patient and penetrating effort to under stand more clearly the complex situations with which we are deal ing.” He promises to: • Re-examine the Taxation Ord inance. j , • Make a full examination of land available for natives. • Make increasing efforts to in troduce local government. ® Reorganise and review the De partment of Native Affairs. • Seek greater continuity of ser vice of appropriate officers in par ticular areas. • Take steps for a fuller and closer examination of the local position in the Gazelle Peninsula that is, the attitude and condition of the Tolais. , . , . „ Why could these things not have been done, without conflict with Navuneram natives, and a com

mission of Inquiry? .

It all has been admirably stage managed. If he can get away with it, the Minister will be left un challenged in his pos i t ion as dictator—he may not even have to defend his introduction of the head tax, which is the primary cause of the Navuneram shootings i nor have to explain why, having brought in the tax, he failed to prepare these notoriously difficult Toiaisfor imposition. The Commissioner s ;re port puts the issue squarely up to

Minister, but the Minister has

-stepped it all, adroitly,

owever, the Parliamentary de

* on the report—even in that mber of ignorance and tomb of ative —may produce fireworks, iterjections by that battered old rior, Dr. Evatt, indicated a ible determination at a later e to have a large piece of Ad istrator D. M. Cleland, who is litely persona non grata in the

;ralian Labour Party.

despread Bloodshed Avoided

When Police Disobeyed

i ’rom a Canberra Correspondent )st of the Commissioner’s com

ts are pointed and pithy; and

a small proportion were dis ;d by Mr. Hasluck in his speech, e Commissioner devotes most is comment to the actual in it at Navuneram on August 4, to the events which immedi led up to it. He does not dis the virtue or justice of the -tax, and the method of intro

ig it —he apparently regards

as outside his Inquiry,

e Commissioner, however, does

that in his opinion the evid had shown that the matter of payment of head-tax was merely ental to the shooting incident vuneram. Conditions, pressures loyalties inside this section of ?olais, and many other factors, contributed to the final trouble,

ler points made by the Judge;

determination of the officials at eram to employ only minimum forces hostile natives were concerned, and to fire upon natives unless it was tely necessary to save life, was in ith one of the proudest traditions of rvlce. The New Guinea officers con in the Navuneram affair had shown it deal of patience and courage in ice of the hostile natives; but it ;en misplaced in the case of Navu officials in control of the police had special care to instruct the police e high and avoid injuring the i. “I am satisfied that it was a result of a contravention of these and of the killing and wounding natives, that the attacking natives »ut to flight, and thus widespread led on both sides was narrowly I.”

Javuneram, the force assembled to ith the defiance of the natives was [equate. “It should have been so ?hly armed and prepared, and appear in such strength, as to leave bt in the minds of the law-breakers what the outcome would be.” The ssioner said that the force employed proper first-aid supplies, radio led patrols and first-aid vehicles, s, and other modern devices de to quieten mobs and avoid loss of Commissioner strongly criticised ct that little attention was given conference (wherein the steps to en to enforce tax payment were id) to legal considerations—and es ' to the fact that Native Affairs who had already been involved trouble, took a prominent part in er activities. i there arose the question of how ffectively to enforce the law, the

entire operation should have been in the hands of the regular police force, sup- P"*®? “ necessary who were better trained in the use of fire-arms p ommis sioner especially was ' em phatic in condemning certain aspects of the Navuneram proceedings, which he de scribed in these words: “ De *P ite the many legal difficulties in the actions proposed, no Crown Law officer took part in the conference held at Rabaul on August 2 which decided on the Navuneram proceedings.

“Two assistant district officers were chosen to constitute the court at Navu neram. Both these officers were well known to the natives as officers of the Department of Native Affairs. Both at tended the August 2 conference at which the plan of campaign was discussed “On August 4 one of them took an active part in the fighting which ensued between police and natives.

“During court proceedings, the District Officer, Mr. Flower, appeared for the prosecution and asked for the maximum penalty, which was imposed. The evidence in support of the charge was given by Mr. E. j. Emanuel.

“When it is considered that Mr. Flower was the immediate superior officer to whom the magistrate, in relation to his departmental duties, is responsible and that another function of the Native Affairs Department is to see that natives are properly and adequately defended in any court proceedings—it becomes ap parent that the department’s zeal in undertaking conflicting duties was being carried beyond the limits of prudence or reason.

“The department’s idea of dispensing with formality in court proceedings is not in accord with the experience over many centuries of judges who have had the re sponsibility for conducting courts.”