P-NG Legco Ends

With a Whimper

What a wonderful future it had!

What rosy things they said about it!

Democracy had arrived at last, way back there on November 26, 1951, when they inaugurated, with all that pomp and ceremony, Papua-New Guinea’s first Legislative Council.

Now, nine years later, the Terri tory’s third Council has ended not with a bang but a whimper ... a miserable mess that had been boy cotted by the electors, its very raison d’etre at this moment challenged in the High Court. Even the native people, who were to be the greatest legatees of this new democracy, have got not a sniff of it over a depressing nine years. It is five years since they were promised (annual report, ’55-56) that their representation would be in creased “as suitable individuals be came available” and that local govern ment councils probably would be given a chance to nominate natives to the Council (not, we all hoped then, merely as “observers”, but to sit on it and act).

But the only real development they, too, have seen is the Council’s increas ing tendency to fall apart at the seams.

And who has been responsible for this miserable failure? Of course it’s Territories Minister Paul Hasluck— whose grip on New Guinea Government is such that hardly a typist is given a job there that he doesn’t okay the file.

Recomposition is on the way, we know that. But under a Minister like Mr. Hasluck there is always a good chance it doesn’t go far enough. Thus we’re pleased to hear the talk in Canberra lately which says that the Cabinet has been getting restless and has taken recomposition more into its own hands than it had intended.

That’s good news. It’s time Cabinet did a little more of its own thinking on New Guinea.