A.B.C Uncertainty

Over Role In New Guinea

From a Port Moresby Correspondent The Australian Broadcasting Commission is taking a long, hard look at its role in Papua- New Guinea, in an effort to de cide whether the time has arrived for it to start getting out.

TTNTIL recently it felt that its job was to continue to expand, but now it is not too sure.

With a staff of 120 for its Rabaul and Port Moresby stations—about half of them New Guineans—the ABC’s annual P-NG budget is more than £200,000, and the question is; would all this money be better spent in Australia?

The recent visit to P-NG by the ABC’s general manager, Mr. Duck manton. has brought the matter of the Commission’s future into pro minence.

He was apparently frank in his discussions, and it is likely that a general policy decision on the future may be made soon.

The ABC began operations in Port Moresby in 1947, using an old Army transmitter. Until two or three years ago. when the Administration opened a small radio station of its own in Rabaul, the ABC had the radio monopoly.

New Stations Planned There are still no commercial stations, but Administration stations have spread to Wewak, Daru, Kerema and Goroka, and one is planned for Mt. Hagen this year.

Still others are planned for Madang, Vanimo, Lae, Milne Bay, Bougainville, Popondetta, Mendi, Kavieng, Kainantu, Talasea and Wabag. These will give an extra ordinarily wide coverage of the Territory.

The Administration stations are all low-powered, operating on re stricted hours, and the Administra tion is careful not to describe them as a network—they are small, in dividual stations serving local areas, and using on occasions the local language.

The two ABC transmitters in Port Moresby are each of 10 kw and can cross the rugged terrain with highly specialised services, including world news bulletins relayed from Aus

tralia. A locally-based ABC team of six trained Australian journalists and four New Guinea cadet journalists supply New Guinea with an independent news service.

But the Administration also sup plies news services over its own stations and has recently announced the appointment of a news editor to co-ordinate the work of its largely untrained news staff. He is a former ABC man.

Complementary

The World Bank mission sees the work of the ABC and the Admini stration stations as being complemen tary, and takes the view that there is also room for commercial and Mission stations in the Territory.

Some Missions have already ex pressed a desire to establish stations and the Administration has proposed that a Broadcasting Control Board be set up to control development.

The ABC is apparently not so sure that it has to be a complemen tary part of all this expansion by others.

At the moment, withdrawal by the ABC from the Territory would be vastly unpopular with the Europeans, and with many New Guineans, be cause it supplies needs that can’t be given by the local stations. Territory residents get this service free—radio receivers are not licensed in the Territory because it is thought it would be impractical to police licensing.

But Who Would Take Over?

But it is most unlikely the ABC would withdraw from the Territory before it was satisfied that its build ings and equipment, and its superior know-how in all departments were being passed on to a trained New Guinean staff.

It would also want to pass con trol only to the kind of statutory body it, itself, operates under—a New Guinea Broadcasting Com mission able to carry on the high traditions of the service.

Under these conditions a New Guinea Broadcasting Commission would not need to be fully nativised before a take-over, any more than the Fiji Broadcasting Commission even now has a fully local staff. But an NGBC would need to have a lot more local broadcasting skill than is at present available in the Territory with the Administration. • The British Resident Com missioner in the New Hebrides, Mr.

A. M. Wilkie, has returned to Vila after leave in the United Kingdom.