Liquor Problem

Commentary

v orsening

EEE territories are in the news :cause of liquor this month— ®st Samoa, Fiji and Papua 4uinea. ior has always been a problem i South Pacific. It is now a ig problem as the territories ze and the native people be insistent on their right to themselves under the table if wish, just as the white man That, apparently, is progress.

West Samoa, where people are ermitted to drink (and where dates have to go through the nse of pretending they are mg for medicinal purpcises crime statistics for 1959, just ased show that cases of enness increased by 117 per and that there was a big in in most other criminal es—much of which the police e is due to drinking. [ most of the drunkenness, he drinking generally, is the of the manufacture of home which has reached alarming rtions. >t Samoa probably does not i to make a serious attack on quor problems until after it iispensed with the important :al and constitutional matters icted with its march to in idence. ; when the time does come, as st, Samoa should bear in mind only drastic revision of the 5 liquor situation will suffice. 5 current problem in Fiji con hotel hours. Fijians were first itted to drink beer without re ion in 1958, and the first year sd that the fears of the lity howlers, who foresaw lem, were needless. On the j the Fijians settled down r well. t now there appears to be an ase in drunkenness, and as a t. the Colony proposes to re , hotel trading hours under the iple that with hotels closed for >r periods people have less time hich to get drunk, has been suggested by some this is merely a panic measure. ’ could be right. And the re ctions might create more Lems than they solve, ere are many people in the h Pacific who still remember ley’s notorious “six o’clock swill” few years ago when all the Is closed at 6 p.m. and stayed d. The result was most people . all-out to take aboard as much ir as they thought they could

hold before closing time, with appalling results.

It can be said, of course, that Fiji has no intention of closing the hotels for the night at 6 o’clock, but the proposed two-hour break, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. could well have the affect of a six o’clock swill on many drinkers not prepared to come back in the evening.

If Fiji wants to experiment then there is nothing to stop it. But it shouldn’t hope for too much.

The New Guinea situation is dis cussed fully in an article by a Rabaul correspondent on p. 53 of this issue. New Guinea natives aren’t allowed to drink either —but they are drinking.

There is only one question that needs to be asked and that is how much longer is Canberra pre pared to let the situation drift?

There has been much fiddling with it over the years, and there have been many reports submitted on the subject of liquor. One can’t help coming to the conclusion that Canberra knows very well what it would like to do but is too scared to move because liquor is such a hot problem.

Why doesn’t it unburden itself publicly and let’s all hear what it thinks? ☆ ☆ ☆

Pacific Air Routings

A Political Football

THE chips are now down in the South Pacific for an airline battle of magnitude. Following the surprising results of the new French-Australian agreement, the big French airline TAI has now be come a sudden power in the Pacific, and is put in a first-class position to take traffic from the Big Two — Qantas and Pan American.

From now on there will be jockey ing for best places along new and colourful air routes through areas travellers have not so far been able to see without an effort—routes that will pass through Tahiti, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, the Solomons, Samoa, and even the Cooks and Easter Island.

“Fly to Europe and See the Solomons on the Way!” “Fly To America and See Gorgeous Tahiti!”

Such are the slogans that the travelling public will no doubt be seeing in the future.

This is going to be a very good thing for the traveller, and also for numbers of Pacific territories. But the airlines are going to pass through a painful settling down

period until things are sorted into an economic pattern. The new Noumea services are a sample. Last month there was no direct air ser vice between Sydney and New Caledonia. u , .

This month there are three flights every fortnight, and next month there is likely to be two every week —with bigger and faster aircraft. If the traffic can bear this economic ally, it will be a surprise.

The airline that has nupre reason for complaint than any is Qantas.

It could be forgiven for believing that it has been sold out cheap by the Australian Government. Qantas probably believed Australia meant what it said when it told the French only last December that it could not give rights through Sydney, be cause it would mean handing the French a million pounds worth of airline business, with very little immediate return for Qantas. Syd ney was a trump card.

But now the card has been thrown away. Why? The answer is that civil aviation everywhere these days is not always based on intelligent airline planning, but on politics.

Aviation has developed into global political warfare.

Australia wanted rights to Rome from the Italians. The French have been complaining that its commerce with Australia is one sided. Italy and France are members of the European “Air Union” group and no doubt helped each other in forcing concessions. , , , The result is a bigger headache than Qantas deserves, and a new set of problems for TEAL. ☆ ☆ ☆

No Time For Listening

In New Guinea

fTIHERE is probably no more J. maligned native in the whole of New Guinea than the Tolai of the Rabaul area of New Britain.

He is blamed for being a “big head , a loudmouth, a political shrewdie.

Whenever some jackass talks of the “inevitability” of a native uprising, it is always in the direction of the Tolai that he knowingly nods. .

But considering what the Tolai has come through in the last 40 years in his tight little isle—Ger man government, Australian mil

itary government, civil government

under mandate, Japanese military government, ANGAU government, and civil government again under trusteeship—the surprising thing is that he is as tractable as he is, and not the crazy mixed-up kid that many people seem to think he is.

The Tolai has advanced. He is conscious of himself in the scheme of things, and cognisant of such things as the remarkable progress of the Chinese in his midst. The Tolai now owns a truck, and has a

licence to drive it. He grows and markets his cocoa intelligently; he makes his own home brew (and drinks it); he is a member of a local council, and helps run it; he is liable for taxes, and pays them.

But not always does he do all those things. Not all Tolais are caste in the same mould as the majority; not all of them join councils and pay taxes. But that does not mean that the individualists are less intelligent, or even less reasonable, than the mob.

Thus it would be foolish, and per haps dangerous, for anybody to be lieve that because a small group of Tinginagalip village natives is re fusing to pay its taxes again for about the third year in succession, as reported on p. 20, that they are merely big heads who should be smacked down hard. And nor, in the other extreme, should they be ignored as being of no account.

Nobody wants any trouble at Tinginagalip. Nobody wants the name to achieve the notoriety of another Navuneram. But if real trouble should develop there, it could well be it will be the New Guinea Administration and not the Tolais who will have caused it.

The fact is that the difficulties of Tinginagalip are not new. They have been aired before in official quarters. The Administration should know enough about the situation to realise that there is a principle at issue somewhere, and that, basically this group thinks it has had some thing put over it by the Government somewhere along the line. The Tolais could be wrong, but that’s not the point.

'pie-‘Administration has had a duty to settle the situation satis factorily, and should have before now. The reason it hasn’t is because of a basic weakness in New Guinea administration which is growing more serious as time goes on In snort, the Government is better at winning wars than winning the Pv/dLc, With ’♦hi "rs of patrol officers , the . sM, patience and guts to ♦SS?® l nt i 1 'l ge u tl , y bush kanakas faking a pot-shot at their first white man from the nearest rugged comes to Wmng in£ U vifof ly th e complicated, press? mg, vital problems of the town sophisticates, the “petrol” officer takes over —and not necessarilv through choice— and races in nnH out the villages on a trail of exhaust fumes, with no time at all to spend too a £ terS ttlat coun t: directed, too often, by senior men whose idea i 9 s among the natives room op . en I new sc hool system has them too to T hsten d m m tbp has no time tu listen to the native peonle nnv

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