To The Point

With

Percy

Chatterton

“What surprised me most about it was its orderliness,” said an experienced Australian press man to me. He was referring to the protest march through the streets of Port Moresby and on to the administrative centre at Konedobu, which took place on the morning of Saturday, June 3.

' TOLD him that I was not ■ surprised. I had expected it to e orderly, and would have been *ry surprised if it had been ether ise. No doubt the police were wise > have a riot squad on hand in case was needed. But it wasn’t needed.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been died a protest march at all. It was, i its way, something rather unique - a demonstration designed to prove le particular point, and to prove it the most effective way.

Someone in authority had ap irently made a remark to the effect at only a small number of local Ticers (i.e., Papuans and New uineans) in the Public Service were ssatisfied with the recent decision ; the Public Service Arbitrator on eir salary scale. It was a stupid mark, which invited reaction; and got it. Over a thousand Papuans id New Guineans turned out to ove it wrong.

That the occasion was orderly was te in part to the determination of ; organisers that it should be so, id in part to the innate politeness Papuans.

Papuans are polite

There is no doubt that Papuans e, by nature, a very polite people. fact, one of my chief problems in dng and working among them has en that I have never been quite re whether they are telling me lat they really think, or what they ink I would like them to think.

Looking back over my 43 years Papua, I can recall only four oc sions on which Papuans have been ally rude to me. On three of these casions I had provoked and served their rudeness. The fourth an was drunk.

Of course, Papuans can be both de and violent when they are oroughly angry—as most of us n. But except when they have been r too long in contact with some those Australians who mistake deness for frankness and make a It of it, Papuans cannot be rude cold blood. It is a most endearing

Priorities: Pigs and women before parliament

trait. So our recent demonstration was orderly and good humoured.

But I must admit that some of the placards carried by the marchers were very far from polite, and my mind boggles at the thought of what those were like which the organisers censored before the march started.

Susan Young, the Anglican Mis sion’s public relations officer, has warned that the era of orderly and good-humoured demonstrations may not last, that with repetition Papuan politeness may wear thinner and thinner until the organisers of such demonstrations, however well-mean ing themselves, may be unable to keep their followers under control.

If those placards are a foretaste of things to come, she may well be right.

One of the organisers of the recent march was Papua’s most widely known trade unionist, Oala Oala Rarua, As he marched at the head of his cohorts he must. I think, have found himself wishing that he could get that sort of turn-out at meetings of his Port Moresby Workers’ As sociation, which have been known to flop for lack of a quorum.

What the workers do

The Workers’ Associations of the territory have not been a great suc cess in point of numbers, but they have been a remarkable success in point of achievement. Their leaders have shown good sense and modera tion in negotiations with the employ ers, and the result has been a series of reasonable industrial awards and a minimum of industrial unrest.

How different is the picture in the public sector. Yet the same sort of Papuans and New Guineans are found in both camps.

It is true that in the private sector there is a larger proportion of mini mally educated workers than there is in the Public Service. But the leaders in the two camps are people with the same sort of education and the same sort of cultural background— in fact, in some cases they are the same people.

Why then the difference? It is dif ficult to avoid the conclusion that the difference is on the side of the em ployers.

In the private sector, the Employ ers’ Federation has met courtesy with courtesy and moderation with modera tion, and has demonstrated a wil lingness to compromise. In the Public Service there has been a stance of arbitrary and unyielding authority.

In the House of Assembly re cently, the Treasurer was asked whether the Administration would make public the details of the cost of-living assessments on which the

Oala Oala Rarua

“family needs allowances” introduced in July, 1966, were based. The answer was “No”.

Clearly the Administration has learned precisely nothing from the events of the last few years. Clearly too, the Department of the Public Service Commissioner, that last bastion of paternalism, intends to dig its toes in and maintain its rigid, unbending autocracy until Susan Young’s glum prediction comes true and the stones start crashing through its office windows.

In passing, it is interesting to note that, while in the Public Service as a whole the proportion of local to overseas officers is roughly three to one, in the Public Service Commis sioner’s Department it is one to three.

Too many cleavages

But to get back to employer-em ployee relations. In this young country, striving so hard for unity, still struggling to rid itself of tribal cleavages, we have already created a new cleavage, that between educated and uneducated.

This was perhaps unavoidable.

But must we, in addition to this horizontal cleavage, also introduce a vertical cleavage between those who work in Administration and those who work in commerce and industry?

The Administration seems to take a perverse pride in declaring that it is not a party to and is not bound by industrial awards. It owes its im

munity to a let-out clause in the Industrial Relations Ordinance, and between September, 1964, and June, 1966, this let-out clause made it possible for the Public Service to pay its junior local officers working in Port Moresby a wage that was lower than the minimum urban cash wage payable by private employers.

This quite shocking state of affairs was brought to an end by the new wage scale introduced in July, 1966.

But under the present system it could recur at any time.

Anyway, why must we have this cleavage super-imposed on all the other cleavages?

Does it make sense that, when the Administrator by proclamation in the Government Gazette declares an industrial award to be a “common rule”, it should become mandatory upon every employer except the ter ritory’s largest single employer, the Administration, of which His Honour is the head? Why can’t we have a single system of employer-employee relations, under one ordinance, cover ing the whole range of public and

private employment and workin through negotiation of agreed award between employers and employee; with conciliation and arbitration i: the background to be called on whei needed?

If there are good reasons why thi cannot be done, let’s hear them. Bu don’t let’s hear that hoary old ex cuse, “That’s not the way we do i in Australia”.

Parrot cry!

How tired I am of that parro cry. Most of the bills which an introduced into the House of As sembly are just re-hashes of Aus tralian legislation. I well remembe one occasion on which we were givei a table showing where the bill befor< us differed from the corresponding Australian Act, and why the change: had been made. The framers of th( bill seemed to be almost apologising for the differences. I would have much preferred an explanation oi why so many of the clauses were exactly the same.

• This was the scene during the march of public servants in Port Moresby on June 3, when more than 1,000 New Guineans demonstrated against the territory recent wages decision. The signs included, "Wage justice without descrimination' "Equal work for equal pay", "Down with Matthews" (the Public Service Arbitrat[?] who handed down the decision), and "Arbitration decission salary descrimination Black men grow poorer, white men grow richer. We demand decission be dis[?] allowed". The march was more orderly than the spelling on some of the signs.- "Sydney Morning Herald" Photograph

It is clear that both before and after independence Papua and New Guinea will need to import know ledge and skills from overseas, and just as with rice and tinned fish, these things have their market price.

We shall have to pay the market price or go without them.

Visitors from newly independent countries in Africa have made this point repeatedly. But there is just one difference between their situa tion and ours. In the independent countries of Africa it is the Africans who decide what expatriate know how they need and how much of it.

Here it is the expatriates themselves who decide these questions.

It is rather as if the grocer had the job of preparing my shopping [ist and didn’t even ask me what I would like for breakfast. His as surance that he knew best what was »ood for me wouldn’t entirely con sole me. Nor, even, would the fact ;hat he had slipped me two of the :hree dollars in my pocket.

The latest catch-phrase in Kone lobu is “indigenous participation”.

Surely here is an area in which more effort might be made to enlist it.

Papuans and New Guineans would ind differential pay-rates less un jalatable if those on the high rates >f pay were here because the locals lad asked for them.

PHE June meeting of the House of Assembly was both shorter and iprightlier than its predecessor, and

Assembly meeting was s

was mercifully free from those debates on “matters of public im portance” which so rarely generate anything but hot air.

The old saying that the two sub jects on which Papuans are most easily aroused are pigs and women was proved true once again. Sinake Giregire’s bill to amend the Animal Diseases and Control Ordinance dealt only marginally with pigs, but that was enough to touch off a spate of oratory. The Papuan’s attitude to his pig has much of the emotional and mystical quality of the Aus tralian’s attitude to his beer.

Who was indignant?

Listening to the debate, I found myself recalling the seminar which was held at Sogeri in 1964 to initiate us new chums in the intricacies of parliamentary procedure. It was decided to put a dummy bill through all stages as an exercise in the pro cesses involved, and to make the exercise interesting, the subject chosen was a proposal for the compulsory enclosure of pigs.

The ensuing debate was so success ful that it became difficult to dis tinguish between those who were throwing themselves whole-heartedly into the fun and those who were really indignant about what they supposed to be a genuine threat to

the freedom of the pig.

At the end of the exercise great care had to be taken to collect up all copies of the dummy bill, lest some should find their way back to the electorates and be taken seriously.

In this latest House, Tony Voutas’ bill to amend the Child Welfare Ordinance was defeated, but not before those aspects of it which dealt with the frailties of women and their consequences had fired a number of normally inarticulate members to eloquence.

In contrast to these fireworks, the third and final report of John Guise’s Select Committee on Con stitutional Development turned out to be a damp squib. The second report, tabled last year, confined it self mainly to proposals for the number and types of electorates for the new House in 1968, and these recommendations have been in corporated in general terms into Canberra’s Papua and New Guinea Act, and are in process of being legislated for in detail by the House of Assembly itself.

It had been widely expected that the third report would attempt to lay down some guide lines for the long term political development of the territory.

However, it confined itself to 1968, recommending the appointment of some elected members as “ministers” and “assistant ministers” in place of the present under-secretary system (an innovation which could mean anything or nothing), and some very cautious changes in the composition and functions of the Administrator’s Council.

Anti-climax

Perhaps the composition of the Select Committee and the very great diversity of views expressed to it during its tours of the territory made this conservative approach necessary and even desirable. But it could hardly be expected to provoke lively debate.

It certainly didn’t; and one honour able member who dashed out of the chamber to get the notes he had prepared for his speech returned to find that the debate had fizzled out and the report had been adopted.

No doubt this anti-climax was mainly due to the unprovocative nature of the report. But perhaps there is a lesson in it for budding politicians; namely that most Papuans and New Guineans are still more interested in pigs, women and, of course, land than in the niceties of pariamentary government.

P ort Moresby, whose local public servants have protested more strongly against [?] alaries than those anywhere else in the territory, is the territory's biggest town and its administrative centre. It's booming commercially. The yachting season has opened again in Port Moresby harbour, and water skiing is now a popular pastime.

In the background left is A.N.G. House, which will be the territory's tallest building when it is finished about September. It will have two lifts —the only lifts in the territory.— Chin H. Meen, photo.