Mr. Hasluck A P Understudy

Of Mr. R. G. Menzies

In his competence, intellectual arro gance, his resentment of criticism, and his contempt for the opinion of “the mob”, Paul Hasluck, Australian Minister for Territories, Papua-New Guinea’s most unpopular man, much resembles Robert Menzies, his Prime Minister.

Some people insist that Hasluck models himself upon Menzies. There is no man in the Inner Cabinet closer to the PM. Menzies has supported Hasluck fully in this recent trouble and, in ferentially, he has treated the New Guinea “rebels” with the same con tempt.

Hasluck’s dismissal of the P-NG trading classes as “locusts”, feeding upon the riches made available in P NG by Australia’s rich gifts to the Territory, is completely in character.

His writings, over many years, show suspicion—if not dislike —of private enterprise, and his contempt for profit taking, in all its forms. He is an academic Socialist—always has been.

Political Labour treats him with re spect.

Hasluck is the ablest man who ever has held the portfolio of Territories.

Spender, also, was an able man, But Spender was a complete careerist. Has luck, on the contrary, is a dedicated man—he is convinced that, if left alone, he is the chosen one who can lead the New Guineans from primitive savagery to young nationhood.

Socialism—of which Communism is the logical development—leads inevit ably to dictatorship.

Hasluck is exactly of the stuff of which dictators are made. It is seen in the impatience and intolerance with which he treats questioners and critics

of his regime, in his inability to com promise—and especially in the proven fact that no man with ability and ideas of his own can work effectively with him in Territories administration and development. It must be Hasluck, or nothing.

Consider D. M. Cleland. a man of outstanding ability, shown in other fields. Under Hasluck, he has been little more than a rubber stamp.

Consider also the case of lan Downs, the brilliant young District Commis sioner who, in the Eastern Highlands, began to give shape to what ex perienced Territorians believe to be the only policy to bring quick, effective and permanent change to the New Guinea primitives—namely, the settle ment among them of trustworthy, hand-picked European planters, to help native communities, by example, to a better standard of living.

Hasluck. in 1955, fell like a thunder bolt on Downs and finally drove him out. Bureaucrats, directed and con trolled in every move by Canberra, would train the natives, he said, and direct them to another way of life.

It was the inevitable clash between Individualism and Socialism; and Socialism won.

That is the kind of man who now has made himself the supreme boss of Papua and New Guinea.

With one gesture, last July, he could have won the goodwill and co-operation of all responsible Territorians. He re mained aloof and contemptuous . . .

Territorians know all this, instinc tively. Instinctively, they know they are right in their challenge to the dictator. But they have had a singu lar lack of success in giving effective expression to it. —R.W.R.