Up Front

With The Editor

Now that there are new people in Port Moresby’s Govern ment House, I predict we will be hearing about the need for a new and better Government House overlooking that historic harbour. And with it, I predict, will come some words in the Assembly about the cost of it all, and whether the country can afford to spend anything on a Government House while it still needs roads to Hagen and more golden handshakes for public servants.

YOU’LL never avoid that kind of comment. Which is a pity, be cause a new Government House is needed. The Hays can only hope— presuming they are still there when this prediction of mine comes good —that the issue won’t raise heat enough to cause embarrassment when the appropriation has to be approved.

When it comes to Government Houses, it’s easy to forget that those who might best know the dis advantages of such establishments are the people who live in them. And if one of the occupants also happens to be the country’s chief executive with responsibility for spending a few score millions, it doesn’t neces sarily follow that his brain ceases to function responsibly when he is faced with the decision of having to spend some of it right on his own threshold.

The Fosters

Yet there is always the innuendo.

Some nearby colleagues of the Hays, Sir Robert and Lady Foster, probably were aware of it over recent proposals to replace Government House, Honiara, which was built in 1943 as part of a New Zealand military hospital, and occupied by Army nurses before a succession of Western Pacific High Commissioners were promoted to that privilege.

Last year Gabrielle Lawson, of Honiara, referred to it in one of our issues as a “patched up army hut with a leaf roof, fighting white ants, in a hot and steamy location by the water”. She said it was a sore point with Melanesians that the Queen’s representative lived in a slum house; and PlM’s heading (not Gabrielle’s) suggested Sir Robert was losing face.

The attack on Government Hous was, I suspect, inspired by somethin said by the refreshingly frank Lad Foster, bless her, and I agreed wit) it in principle and in fact. I haj pened to be in Honiara at the tim our piece was published, returnin from a visit to Nauru, and develoj ing, so it turned out, a wog whic sent me to bed at the New Guine Club in Rabaul, where I survive only because of the sympatheti ministrations of that kindly factotui Pang Chung Sing (whose dead tragically, has recently been reported

A lot of interest

PlM’s few paragraphs abon Honiara’s slum house had caused a inordinate amount of interest i some Honiara quarters, which is th way it is in small territories withon newspapers of their own, and despit my wog I took part in a rad! interview with a bloke whom gathered hadn’t long been out fron London.

I didn’t make much of a fist of th interview, and I gather my intei; viewer wasn’t much happier himsell having failed to get across the me;; sage that he thought the PIM repoii was “scurrilous” (as he confide afterwards). I allowed myself to g on record as inferring that it wa important for money to be spent cr economic development before Got eminent House—which was onl part of the point I wanted to make.; The point is, where does economi development priority stop?

When I made my first visit tt Honiara some years ago the broao casting station consisted of a poke; announcer’s room and an ope;; verandah for guest broadcasters, bu

one we then were broadcasting m was part of a modern air-con oned complex. On another visit, secretariat offices still consisted of oden and tar-paper huts, with tions, I seem to remember, of dirt )rs —and this inconvenience the cers were prepared to put up with :ause it was felt that other develop nt had higher priority. Today the niara secretariat has modern ces.

Regrets

But Government House has not lly changed much, and this re ids me of something said by rrie Niall, after he relinquished long-held post of District Com jsioner of New Guinea’s Morobe strict to take on his present he dged post of Speaker of the P-NG use of Assembly. Horrie had been md of the fact that he worked for g as DC in Lae in quarters which re sub-standard and inadequate, :ause he wanted the money to be :nt on local developments of a her priority. tfe came to regret it, because the mey that Peter was being robbed to pay Paul, actually got spent John and Luke in Port Moresby i Rabaul, and the Morobe District ; neither a decent administrative tiding nor anything much else. 5o it would be, I think, in Honiara 1, if the Government hadn’t re itly decided to go ahead anyway J spend money on a new Govern :nt House —tenders for which •sed the other day.

What the new two-storey building U cost I don’t yet know, but if :re is to be any more argument, it be on details of cost and con uction, not on the principle of orities. And that would go for Port aresby too.

Stuart Inder