Shirley Ann Gives

It a Go

Blonde, 24-year-old Shirley Ann Macke liar was the surprise packet nomination of all the open electorates in the P-NG elections. Small, looking like a teenager, she is the wife of a patrol officer in the Madang district and has been the delight of TV cameramen covering the elections.

She has been six years in the Territory, all of them in the Madang area, and although she hasn’t been particularly active in any of the organisations that European women favour in P-NG, she says she has always been interested in the natives.

She has made her bid for the votes of native women who don’t necessarily follow the example of their Australian sisters and vote like their old man.

She has worked hard in her Madang electorate in the last two months, and has made patrols under her own steam along most of the Madang coast and Madang town hinterland.

In the normal course of events she shouldn’t have a hope against her two native opponents; but in the mish-mash this election has turned out to be, fust about anything could happen, and the election of a Selian (the Pidgin equivalent of her Christian names) is not beyond the bounds of remote possibility.