UN's NG Scheme

'Nonsense'

The United Nations Mission's pro posal that Australia should establish a 100-member Parliament in Papua- New Guinea by 1964 was nonsense, the Australian Prime Minister, Mr.

Menzies, said on July 31.

SPEAKING in a television interview in Perth, which received little, if any, Press publicity, Mr. Menzies said the proposal “just doesn’t make sense, quite frankly.”

Mr. Menzies had been asked: “What are you going to do about their [the UN Mission’s] suggestion for an enlarged and more representa tive Parliament?” He replied: “We have been developing local government under the administration of Mr. Hasluck himself, who has done a wonderful job.

“There are quite a number of local authorities now in which the indigenous inhabitants are members.

We now have them on the Legis lative Council.

“But anybody who knows anything about New Guinea with its hundreds of different languages and its area and its population, many of them remote and living in a very primi tive state—anybody who supposes that you can hand over self-govern ment to that community out of hand has not learned the lessons of the Congo, that is all I can say.

“We have a great responsibility for New Guinea. . . It would be a criminal act to abandon it.”