Will The Targets Be Reached?

By R. W. Robson

There is only one commentary to make on “Mr. Hasluck’s Nei Five-Years Plan” — namely, that too much unpractical haste is planner.

It will be little short of miraculous if such targets can be achieved bi 1966-67, or even 1976-7.

IN this connection, it may be noted that The Sydney Morning Herald, in a leading article on October 28, savagely attacked Mr. Hasluck for (a) sneaking in his plan in the dying hours of the Commonwealth Parlia ment, so as to dodge debate; and (b) submitting a plan that took no heed of the United Nations’ demand for more and more haste in bringing the New Guinea natives to self-govern ment. As the publisher of PIM, I thereupon addressed the following letter to the editor of The Herald : I have been, myself, a frequent critic of what Australia’s Minister for Territories has done in Papua and New Guinea; but that is no reason why I should not protest against the very unfair attack you have made upon him over his Five-Years Plan.

I believe that that statement was not introduced in the dying hours of Parliament as you claim simply to block discussion and commit a new Government to something that had not been debated. It appears to me much more likely that the announce ment had been awaiting a place on

the Order Paper for several days, , finally came before the House ati last moment only because the Mirv insisted that the Administration wv be gravely embarrassed if it ' held over any longer.

I suggest that you seized on circumstance as a means of earn on your campaign against the P c Minister —you miss no opportunity getting in a blow at Mr. Mem no matter how foul it appears neutral onlookers.

Challenge

/ challenge the accuracy of statement that the Minister deliberately seeking “to com mi new Government to a highly troversial approach to the dew ment of the Territory”.

No one has kept a closer hin than I over the administration Territories since the end of FW War 11, and the Canberra pon which shape and control the adn' stration; and I say that Mr. Hasl\

(Continued on p. 141)

Five-Years Plan, whether good or bad, is completely consistent with what he has been doing there, and trying to do, for the last 15 years.

I can see little new in his plan, except that he proposes to expand more rapidly the Administration’s various measures for introducing an increasing number of trained natives into the services, and to hurry on with all developments calculated to

give the natives economic sufficiency and political stability under the con ditions of self-government now being shaped for them by Westerners.

You are condemning him, editorially because, in your view, he is not moving fast enough. In my opinion, he is moving too fast —the New Guineans, at this stage of their development, simply cannot take responsibility at the rate we now are trying to force upon them.

In the last 20 months, I have personally examined conditions in a score of countries, in Africa and Asia, which now are being hurriedly driven from protected colonialism into so-called self-government, by the types of unrealistic thinkers you so conspicuously represent; and I can only hope, for the sake of Australian interests in New Guinea, that Mr.

Hasluck can be persuaded to slow down, rather than accelerate, the pace of his Five-Years Plan.

Your argument is that there is great urgency in the need to give self government to the primitive peoples of these Colonies, otherwise there will be revolution and a swing towards Communism. That is not borne out by my observations.

In Kenya, for example, last July, I talked to many Africans —and the great majority of them apparently would be quite content to carry on under benign British rule—until their children and grandchildren, having acquired more education and Western know-how, were ready to accept self-government.

In my opinion, based on 50 years of observation, and very much travel, all this post-war hullabaloo in the former and present Colonies of the European nations has been brought about by an unholy combination of native political gangsterism in the colonies, cleverly-shaped propaganda by the Muscovite Communists, and the hysterical outbursts of the headline-hunting dreamers in news paper offices.

Under wise control, the natives of New Guinea are tractable, and generally well-disposed towards whites, and quite capable of being moulded into a self-governing com munity within two or three genera tions.

But if irresponsible politicians and newspapers are to continue with the mischief-making which has marked most of their contacts with New Guinea in the last 10 years, these New Guineans could become just as difficult and dangerous as their counterparts in Africa.

The letter was not published in The Herald.