Swift NG Developments

Canberra Apprehensive Over Swift NG Developments

From our Canberra Correspondent The sell-out of the Dutch in West New Guinea, the Foot Report on the Australian Trust Territory, plans for an expanded legislature for P-NG and new liquor laws combined to rivet Canberra attention on the island of New Guinea in October.

|VER the past month, more ques tions have been asked in Federal rliament on New Guinea than on y other single subject.

Fhey have covered such diverse itters as quarantine, definition of : boundary between East and West w Guinea, the UN vote of the izzaville African nations, educa i, health, employment conditions, future of the public service, trade, rkers’ compensation and unem yment benefits.

Vlost of the probing on conditions P-NG came from two inde igable Labour questioners, Mr. ird and Mr. Clyde Cameron, and . Cameron in particular implied his questioning that the indigenous rkers of the Territory were being iund under the colonial heel. 3e took much the same line in the )ate on the Territory Estimates, tiing out at the attitude of the big olesalers to native co-operatives, icking land leases to foreign ned companies, and claiming that ) one can help Australia by claim that all is v/ell in New Guinea”, [tus brought the Minister for Ter ries, Mr. Hasluck, to his feet to inter with the statement that “no s is helping New Guinea by claim that all is foul there”.

Support

At. Cameron’s speeches were ong the few exceptions to the two ty policy for the advancement of educational, social, economic and itical welfare of the Territory iple, he said. fhey sought to prove that we were engaged in some Australian en )rise, but in something mean, petty I partisan which should divide stralia instead of being one of the at areas on which the country ild unite. n this, Mr. Hasluck seemed to e the support of Mr. Cameron’s ti side. >nly the week before, when ex

ternal policy was being discussed, Mr.

Cameron urged a new physical boun dary between West and East New Guinea and damned “a straight line on a map as the shortest possible way to a war”.

He said he was “disgusted” with the position in the Territory as re vealed by answers to questions handed to him on employment condi tions.

Mr. Cameron concluded: “Do not forget the Indonesians are going to make West New Guinea a show place.

“They will give it conditions they will not give to other parts of Indo nesia.

“West New Guinea is to be their shop window, the place to which they will point and say, ‘This is what we have done for our part of New Guinea’.”

Not Ashamed But on this occasion it was not the Minister who rose to take Mr.

Cameron to task. It was Mr.

Cameron’s own leader, Mr. Calwell, who declared; “I do not hold with many of his views. They are his own and not necessarily those of the Labour Party.”

And it was Mr. Calwell who inter jected, “I think you are quite right,” when the Minister for External Af fairs, Sir Garfield Barwick, said that no Australian had any reason to be ashamed of Sir Hugh Foot’s highly commendatory remarks about Aus tralia’s treatment of the indigenous people.

Mr. Cameron’s plea for an Indo nesian-Australian border that would follow physical features seemed to be at loggerheads with the desires of his fellow Labour member, Mr. Ward.

Mr. Ward wanted to know whether, if the border had not been accurately surveyed and defined, when the Government intended doing so.

The Minister pointed out that the 1936 Dutch-Australian agreement recognised an obelisk on the north coast as a key marker.

In 1958, Australian and Dutch as tronomical stations had marked the boundary point at the mouth of the Benbasch River, on the south coast.

And recently surveyors from the two nations had placed markers at the two remaining key points, on the banks of the Fly River.

Australia had photographed most of her area, but the almost continual cloud cover in the border area meant that conditions for photography oc curred very infrequently.

The Minister’s answer, of course, hardly meets Mr. Ward’s request for a “defined” boundary or Mr.

Cameron’s difficulties about the need for one marked by physical features.

Nor does it throw any official light on the three Dutch—or former Dutch —enclaves of Waris, Waina- Sowanda and Dera that were found to be east of the 141st meridian. PIM disclosed in September that these en claves had caused something near a panic on the Australian side of the border, while the P-NG Administra tion moved to get them under control before the Indonesian take-over.