They'll Investigate New Guinea

New Guinea residents later this year will find themselves living among members of a new organisation—the New Guinea Research Unit.

The Unit was set up in January as a section of the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific Studies. The Unit is purely a university organisation, whose object is to seek out basic information on Territory problems and publish the findings so they are available to anyone who wants them.

The Research Unit will have a permanent staff of eight Europeans, plus native assistants, living in the Territory. The first of them should be housed in Port Moresby by the end of the year. (See next column).

Executive officer in charge of the Unit is English-born, pipe smoking Dr. D. G. Bettison, who trained at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. For some time he was involved with research work on urban development in Northern Rhodesia, but for 15 months before taking over his new post at Canberra he was senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Queensland.

He said in Canberra in July: “We have a tentative list of projects.

We are open for suggestions for other or better ones—whether ideas come from the Government or private enterprise doesn’t worry us. But we will concentrate on the problems whose solutions will help the greatest number of people and do the most good”.