[?]onfusion to Australia's

Commentary

N Report Adds [?]onfusion to Australia's [?]G Task

KHE things that “couldn’t happen I here” but only in Africa or Asia, Ippened in July, leaving Australia th a vital decision to make in the xt few weeks.

Australia has until sometime after ki-September, when the General isembly of the United Nations ;ets again, to decide whether she II go with the Trusteeship Council’s :ommendations on self-government r New Guinea.

The choice will be simple—honesty lexpediency. If Australia is honest ;her avowed intention of bringing fe people of Papua-New Guinea to Reasonably advanced state of de xracy that has a chance of work g, she will defy the United Nations d carry on much as she is doing iW.

If the choice is to be expediency, t will erect the expensive facade of u 00-member Parliament as urged [the recent report of the April-May hsteeship Council Visiting Mission [New Guinea, but carry on behind ■supplying the political know-how, I money, the brains and the tech ;al and professional skill.

Of the two, the easier choice is I Australia to conform. If she does |t, she will have to withstand the k)ut assault of not only Russia d the Afro-Asian bloc to whom the m “self-government” is an emo inal end in itself, but also the cold, ft voices of disapproval from what ime Minister Menzies has called ur great and powerful allies” (UK d USA), whose cynical view of the est New Guinea situation has al idy forced Australia to change her to policies in the last 12 months.

Up to now, Australia has taken the l-fashioned view that self-govern ;nt was for the country with the iterial advancement to go it alone; [ the country with the trained per anel to conduct itself in an adult ernational world. It has staked its th in the principle that advance tot should be reasonably uniform •oughout the community and not tificially placed in the hands of a fccted junta or elite.

In July it learned what several ler European powers have been lining in Africa in the last decade:

That self-government can be given to people who don’t particularly want it; who are not ready for it; who are largely illiterate. That self government can be a name, a gim mick, achieved by almost any back ward country, so long as there is someone else with the necessary know-how and money to prop it up and support it.

Out of the welter of argument, theory, newspaper headlines and con fusion that followed the UN Mission’s report, one thing was soon abundantly clear—that self-government, at least in name, for Papua-New Guinea at some unrealistic target date, is now certain and that the most that Aus tralia can do is delay the inevitable.

It therefore follows that whether the date be 1964 or some few years later, the important task ahead is the preservation of what Australia and Australians, in the last century, have invested there in lives, time, effort and money.

The planners who have precipitated the premature idea of self-government for P-NG have chosen to ignore the fact that probably 80 per cent, of the economy of the Territory—the thing that makes it a going concern—is in the hands of the 25,000 non-native residents of the Territory.

The Mission may have considered that this fact was unfortunate —and maybe it is, from an academic point of view. But it is a fact and cannot be shrugged-off 9,000 miles away in the glass tower of UN.

Even if some method of com pensation for investment money could be devised, Australia is still the best friend P-NG is ever likely to have and Australia cannot walk out and leave the Territory to its fate. Nor can Australia forget that P-NG is still part of its defensive arc against Asia. With Indonesia inevitably mov ing in to West New Guinea, this is the most inopportune moment in history for Australia to consider mov ing out of New Guinea.

Solutions to these problems have to be found before Australia can think of taking her hand off P-NG affairs —and whether or not Australia de cides, at the same time, to play in the UN back-yard by erecting the fancy facade of imitation self-government, makes no difference.

With the example of Africa before us, no one who has been interested in New Guinea affairs could have failed to be acutely aware that time

was a vital factor. But we had every right to expect more time than we are going to get.

It was in this department that the report of the Visiting Mission failed NG. A different approach by the Mission—the one which both resi dents of the Territory and the Aus tralian government obviously expected —which would have supported Aus tralia’s honest attempt at overall de velopment, would have taken most of the sting out of the criticism of the Afro-Asian and Russian blocs.

Instead, against all reason, the Mis sion went for lip service to popular anti - colonial demand, precipitated what was merely a matter of urgency into panic and crisis and created an atmosphere where dishonest ex pediency can seem more advantageous than common-sense.

The report of the 1962 Trusteeship Council’s Visiting Mission to New Guinea might have been a charter for the orderly development of the Territory; instead it is a dangerous and disturbing document that can hardly fail to impair Australia’s good relations with her own Territory and with the rest of the world.