Commentary

'e Than Time For

ree Exchange

this issue goes to press, Aus alian Territories Minister aul Hasluck has only just d the threshold of his Papua- Guinea tour —the tour that residents have been waiting nee early this year when they te the special victims of Mr. ck’s method of doing things, first reactions in Rabaul are ndication, it seems that the yers are going to send Mr. ck away with a quite clear of what they think about It ven if they are not able to ice him of anything more. It , too, that Mr. Hasluck is go ) hold his own end up, and n why he has done what he one. s it looks, at this early stage, there is going to be what the latic writers call “a free ex e of views”. That will be a jood thing. They are certainly i at the moment, fact, Mr. Hasluck, despite the of office which give him a work to do in Canberra, and esponsibility he has to other ories besides Papua-New a, would find it more than re ig if he could visit the big s Territory far more frequently fie does. Port Moresby Is only night hours away by aircraft day or two in P-NG every or four months would do far good than a longer tour every Dnths. Mr. Hasluck says he isited the Territory about 17 since 1951. Yet he never seems on hand when problems are ig. Senior Territories Depart officials visit regularly, but s not the same thing, ings were running high enough 3 Territory last April (when ring PIM man reported that )wdown is on the way, and if rra hasn’t already seen that three weeks this report takes into print, it ought not de tself any longer”). But feel :ot a great deal worse in the few months, as Territorians id in anger and Mr. Hasluck 1 back from prepared defences aberra. It might not have be as bad as it did if Mr. Hasluck If had been on the spot much often this year, and last. :e a lot (although certainly not )f the bad feeling, has been dered by the fact that Terri s have felt (and still feel un tr. Hasluck’s present tour does hing about it) that whatever think, nobody in Canberra

J; ak fs any notice. Canberra, it seems to them, is like the man who uses the other fellow’s conversation as a period for thinking out what he himself is going to say.

These are vital times for the Territory and closer liaisons are needed. The Government cannot do without private enterprise, and neither can the native people. The Territory would not have advanced the stage it is today without the work of all these people in partner

sbiP- . .

T he Government knows this as well as anybody else, and yet be cause of this lack of liaison, this m P la . m co-operation, H l6 present antagonism towards the Go ? e ™ m t n l has developed.

And what , Perhaps is worse the Governments attitude has done nothing to dispel and quite a lot to sponsor, a deplorable view which %S y f f m f S5 8f!

Australian public that is, that the g° od old Australian Government is the only thing Preventing the New Guinea “whites” from exploiting the poor “blacks”. This is a view which is bein £ enthusiastically helped alon g by numbers of socialists and others in Australia who have their own mo ti ve s for doing so.

Canberra really wants to make p eace in the Territory, it will now wor k as hard as responsible Terri torians, including missionaries, have been correcting this ill-informed an( j d ang erous point of view, a ,a JL

I~T Vt X

Face to rOCG . ... , . . .

With the CriSlS

TT > S Dec ember in Fiji’s Rewa I valley now just as It s in other valleys in other parts of the

world, but December in the Rewa probably means more. It means that the crisis is almost upon those many Indian farmers who have done nothing to switch their lands from cane to some other crop.

They will have no income from CSR sugar after June, and other plans for a new sugar company have not yet borne fruit.

Even those who are attempting desperately to start the new com pany have been warning the farmers, as the CSR has for the last couple of years, that they will have to plant other crops on at least part of their land if they are to eat.

The Government has also been pushing home the message especially hard lately and it seems that some of the farmers are now ready to

London cartoonist Christopher Wren well-known for his aviation cartoons, visited Papua-New Guinea in November when the Handley Page Her aid ma de a tour there (see "Pacific Report"). Before he left he produced this cartoon for "PIM", showing two old Dakotas on a Territory airstrip, one commenting to the other: "How d'ya like that? Flies fast AND comfortably-not at all a territory type..!" "PIM" forgives him the blatant plug for the aircraft, because what that old Dakota is saying is fair comment!

listen. But it’s incredible that all of them haven’t listened long before this.

Some of these people are of Indian peasant stock, certainly, but they have been a long time in Fiji now—most have been born there — and this is a more enlightened age. ☆ ☆ ☆

Setting Out To Confuse

The Indigenes

A FEW years ago a well known New Guinea District Com missioner, talking about the so called dangers of nationalism in New Guinea, said that Australia was doing more than anybody to send the nationalist instincts of the natives off in the wrong direction.

“They want to become Australians, but we won’t let them,” he said.

“We won’t even let them have a flag as their own. In New Guinea, officials and civilians are supposed to tell them their flag is that blue thing with the map of the world, or the United Nations, or something, on it. They are perplexed. They want to be Australians and can’t understand why we won’t let them.”

Since then, Australia has done nothing more to encourage the NG natives to become Australians, but the UN certainly has been working harder to get them to make that blue flag their own.

Latest move in the Trusteeship Council is a resolution calling for the establishment of UN Informa tion Centres in or near Trust Terri tories. The resolution was adopted by 59 votes to 12—those against it being Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal. Spain, South Africa, the UK and the USA.

The information centres may be established only after the Territory concerned has agreed to it, and it’s a safe bet that at the present stage of New Guinea development Aus tralia is unlikely to agree to such a centre in New Guinea.

The capacity of the New Guinea natives to absorb the concepts of the United Nations is still very limited and an information centre at this stage will more confuse than inform.

But this won’t be the end of this matter. There is every evidence that the UN is going to pay more and more attention to the Pacific Islands, although this might take a little while to develop. It might not necessarily be a bad thing, for the UN could make some useful con tributions. But to do it, it must work through the local authorities, or the South Pacific Commission, or there will be complete chaos.

Informed, helpful advice is one thing, meddling with something you know nothing about is another.