Commentary

in

Doctorates

HRADUATES of Central Medical UT School, Suva, before the Second World War were known as fative Medical Practitioners. After he war when the word “native” be ame suspect—a nasty term, a slave erm, a term of derision —graduates martly became Assistant Medical )fficers.

But there they remain officially -so far as the institution itself is oncerned.

In some of the Territories to 'lnch these young men returned fter graduation, there were varia ions on the theme—in Samoa, for sample, they are Samoan Medical ►fficers or Samoan Medical Prac tioners (SMP). But it has been ift to Papua-New Guinea to take le next step into the academic nknown and go flat-footed for the onorific title “Doctor”.

This wasn’t a step into a dream orld designed by the graduates lemselves, but, as we understand , fully approved a year or so ago y the Administration itself.

The reason suggested for this was lat the use of “Doctor”, instead of MO, gave the Practitioners added irestige”. (Only those with warped inds might see it as a neat piece : wool-pulling over the eyes of ustralia’s UN critics. Newspaper ories from P-NG during the recent >ate of publicity have been TPered with quotes from a MS graduate who is locally called octor. Some of these may have und their way back to the places here they will do the most good.) The question, of course, is—what a doctor? It is about 50 years nee a famous American humourist, Litt.D., told the story of how, hen an emergency call went out r a doctor to attend a beautiful •ling female he was beaten to the aw by a Ph.D. and a LL.D. None eless, the term doctor still con res up for most of us, the picture a medical practitioner—although e medical practitioner in question more likely to be an MB than i MD.

In these days, when no one is in ner to any one else (only “dif rent”), the cult of adopting some indie to one’s name has assumed tradoxical and fantastic propor 3ns—and the easiest handle of all adopt is that of Doctor.

Think of the current crop of ibhcity-boosted Doctors who spring ost readily to your mind, and it’s a aipel to a beaker of carrot mice ere will not be a practising

medical practitioner amongst the lot of them.

If the P-NG Administration wants to carry its prestige-creating system even further than it has, there is no legal reason why it cannot label all its native school teachers “Doctor”; its native politicians and Cargo Cult rebels similarly.

And there is no denying that a native member of the Legislative Council, with the title of Doctor (of something), would give real class to that institution and would, as well, look extremely well when morsels from his contribution to debate were reported in Australian news papers.

Fully qualified medical practi tioners in British countries are re cognised by the British Medical Association. The BMA does not re cognise graduates of the CMS in Suva as eligible to join the Asso ciation.

However, for 20 years before P-NG decided to send students to the School, graduate NMP’s were going out into their own communities and, without any European handle to bolster their “prestige”, doing the magnificent job for which they had been trained.

The original concept of the Central Medical School training was to pre pare young native men to serve their own people and to lead them into en lightenment. It was never intended, at any stage, to make of them imitation Europeans; the crux of the whole scheme was that the NMP’s should remain of their own communities.

It is hard to see what P-NG is going to gain except ultimate ridicule—by departing from these simple rules and by handing out meaningless doctorates like a mail order university or some under privileged member of the Afro- Asian bloc. ☆ ☆

Mr. Hasluck Meets Some

P-NG Old-Timers

ris probable that Territories Minister Hasluck returned to Australia in July with his Terri tories thinking modified a little as a result of his meetings with the Australian pioneers in Papua and New Guinea.

He appears to have talked to a few solid men, with down-to-earth opinions about the P-NG future— Mick Leahy, and Colin Sefton and Fred Archer, for example—and he must have learned some of the home truths that were conspicuously

absent from his planning and talking five or six years ago, when he drove District Commissioner lari Downs out of office because Downs held stubbornly to the view that the only practicable way of inducing the natives to conform to European standards was to enlist and hold the goodwill and co-operation of well-selected European settlers.

Since then, in 1958 and 1959, Mr.

Hasluck was shown—in the hard way—the nature of his errors.

We gather that Mr. Leahy pulled no punches. He apparently told the Minister that the Europeans would be pushed out of New Guinea within a few years unless the Government revised its thinking about the potentialities of Brown Brother.

Mr. Archer said much the same thing, in biting phrases. He has written it out for the PlM— see his article elsewhere in this issue. We hope it may be read by a few of the mischievous visionaries—mostly survivals of the Eddie Ward era— who have been bedevilling P-NG Administration for the past 10 years. Minister Hasluck not only has treated these idealists with tenderness—he also has allowed odds and ends of them to burrow into the P-NG Administration. (Over)

Mr. Leahy had some interesting comment about Epineri Titimur, the Matupi native who told the Minister in Rabaul that the Aus tralians had been too long in New Guinea, and asked when would they get out? Mr. Leahy, knowing his natives, said that Epineri did not think that one out on his own ac count. Already, Mr. Archer had placed it on record that Epineri was merely the mouthpiece of a group of “shrewdies” in Matupi village.

The fact that Mr. Hasluck— supported by the Prime Minister — has stated publicly that it will be another 30 years before natives can take any significant part in P-NG government shows that •Canberra Top Brass actually is ignoring the screeching newspapers and the yelping Pink visionaries that cluster around UNO.

But that is not enough.

If these natives are to be kept in order, and African-type troubles avoided, Canberra and Port Moresby must leave far more power and responsibility with the District Commissioners, and the latter must get a few new ideas, and a new spirit—and perhaps a few new men —into the District field staffs. It is there that weakness lies, and there where most of the damage has been done —and it is there we must look for reform, if the Leahys and Seftons and Archers are to remain in New Guinea, and really bind Australia to this strategically valuable fringe of archipelagoes. ☆ ☆ ☆

Norfolk Will Need To

Do Better Than This!

r!AT current agitation on Nor folk Island about wanting self government right here and now is all good healthy letting-off of steam. But it is to be hoped that the Norfolk Island Council is not really so naive as to believe that the tactics it has chosen will achieve the result that it wants.

The island began Local Govern ment in June, but almost from the first it has adopted a policy tantamount to a sit-down strike.

It declines to take up the reins of Local Government until the Aus tralian Government agrees to hand over the entire island, with the Ad ministrator included in the deal apparently, to the islanders, to run just as they wish. In the meantime it will act in an advisory capacity, only.

Council members don’t want taxa tion without representation. They will raise all revenue and decide how to spend it, and make all the laws, too. To be sure, they admit that their laws will need to be approved by the Commonwealth Parliament, but since, at the same time, they make it clear that re mote control from mainland Aus tralia is definitely “out”, presumably

even Federal Parliament will need to watch its step!

There are many Pacific territories which know just how Norfolk must feel about Government, and remote control, and money shortages and wastages, and all the other anomalies calculated to frustrate all Islands residents everywhere.

Others also know about “no taxa tion without representation”, and would be quick to tell Norfolk people, who have no income tax, anyhow, that they have nothing special to complain about. That principle has been dead for decades.

Where the Norfolk Island Council is making its mistake is letting its indignation at bureaucracy, and its natural impatience to see greater autonomy, become confused with the hard facts of life.

The facts of life for Norfolk are that the island is forced to live on a subsistence diet because it has piecious few markets —certainly none of importance—and little immediate hope of finding any.

The island is virtually at the end of the line with transport, a fact which makes it harder for it to export goods cheaply, or import tourists easily. And the tourist trade may be the only real hope of improving Norfolk’s unhappy economic plight—if it could find some way of making a success of it.

In the meantime it will be forced to depend on subsidies from the mainland (£33,000 in 1958, out of a total revenue of £69,000) like many territories everywhere.

If Norfolk were to be allowed to free itself from Australia, in the manner which the Council says that it wishes, the local people might soon see for themselves that a lot of nonsense is being talked. It cannot be argued that Norfolk is not cap able of helping to solve some of its problems; or that it might not make a better fist of it than Canberra has, so far. But it will be hard to convince the objective observer that the present arrange ments for Local Government do not give the Council a chance to prove itself.

What the Council has to do is to pick up the reins of what it has got, and get the horse moving. When it shows that it knows enough to stay in the saddle, no doubt the Australian Government will be only too pleased to throw open the paddock gate, in the hope that both horse and rider will gallop off to all those distant, greener fields— and not come back! ☆ ☆ ■&

42 Minor Reforms For

Bedevilled Fiji

THE Government of Fiji has an nounced that it now has dealt with 42 out of the 124 recom mendations made by the Burns

Commission, as part of the Burns Plan for administrative reform and developmental activity in the archi pelago. The 42 are mostly minor and insignificant. They show that the Governor is not ignoring the Report—as too many highly-placed people in Fiji are inclined to do — but there is no discernible reason for complacence.

The Colony’s plight is due to a combination of unusual factors; • There is too much dependence on one industry (sugar), which is economically dominant. • There has been a phenomenal growth in the immigrant Indian population, but little growth in the means of feeding it. • The Fijians, although virile and socially desirable, are unlike the In dians, in that they cling to £ village communal way of life, and lack the spirit of private enterprise: • The Government has created a special Administration, for the Fijian community alone. • The land generally belongs tc the Fijians, and too large a pro portion is not used. • The Colony’s economic mach inery is mostly owned by Australian corporations, which have little voice in administration and no share whatever in government.

For these reasons, the Colony socially, politically and economic ally, is out of gear. Development has not gone forward with popula tion. The available productioi organisation is not sufficient t« maintain a suitable standard oi living for the people. Yet Fiji under effective developmental con< trol, could feed three times th t present population.

Within the 124 Burns recommeni dations there are major plans am reforms, calculated to put thi Colony back into the high gear a development and progress. Bu their implementation awaits (aj acceptance by the Legislative Count cil and (b) the appointment of Development Commissioner wit!; sufficient power to integrate thr over-all plan and to co-ordinatt bureaucratic report-writing am Colonial Development Fund grant with private enterprise and mans gerial drive.

Nothing likely to change the pio ture in Fiji can happen withou (a) and (b). The implementatioc of the 42 minor recommendation represents little beyond the outpu of busy departmental minute writers.

The main job lies ahead. Mean while, as shown by the article o: page 17, the unfortunate countir is bedevilled by a sugar industr deadlock, caused partly by sec; tional and industrial misundeij standings, and partly by somethin that is beginning to look suspc ciously like subversion.