ms high

New Guinea [?]olitical party ms high

rom a Port Moresby correspondent Guinea’s new igu Pati hopes to sponsor didates in about 50 per cent. :he electorates in next year’s sral election in the territory, ause the new party hasn’t 'h finance the candidates I’t be fully endorsed after the ion in Australia.

EY will be expected to pay for much of their own costs, but will get help in general publicity advertising. Thus the party will i fairly loose knit organisation i it meets its first elections, vo of the party leaders who will inly stand for the elections are Oala Rama and Albert Maori Rama is one of the four presi ;, and Kiki is the secretary- Lirer. the meantime the party hopes rengthen itself by forming a par mtary wing. This will include members who have already cly announced their membership he party, together with some s who will reveal their interest e budget session in August.

'o of the parliamentary members )e Toni Voutas and Barry Hollo and although Voutas could ibly get himself elected to party rship in the House this position to doubt go to a New Guinean, outas doesn’t want to take on ob.

Fence-sitter?

iuld John Guise in the mean announce he is joining the party, - has indicated he might do, undoubtedly he could have the mentary leadership. t some members of the party uspicious of Guise as a fence who is not likely to make up ind about joining the party until -s how much support it is going t. So unless he decides soon he find leadership closed to him. raordinarily enough, one of latforms of the Pangu Pati has 1 controversy among some of ery people the party hopes to t. This is its demand for one age for New Guinea—Pidgin >h.

What one might call the New Guinea “Bohemian intellectuals”— and there are many to be found in the urban areas, particularly in Port Moresby—say disparagingly that Pidgin is a discriminatory language, and to return to it would mean to return to discrimination.

After all, they have gone to the trouble of learning English, of read ing its literature. Conversing in it has a certain snob appeal, and they are now to be threatened with the pos sibility of the lowly Pidgin speaker, a bush kanaka, suddenly becoming their social equal.

Anybody who considers there is no social snobbery among enlightened Melanesians ought to keep his ears open at Moresby’s Kone Tavern.

And it would not be the first time in history that a minority has de cided a political issue on a minor tenet of a political platform. It’s an interesting thought, anyhow.

Talk, talk, talk!

The Assembly budget session, which starts on August 28, should be in teresting in other ways. The terri tory can depend on getting a few hundred thousands words from its elected representatives on just where the country is headed—and this will make a nice change from the few hundred thousand words on the same subject we have been getting from just about everybody else these last few weeks.

In Australia it appears to be open season on territory troubles, Oala Oala Rama has been down there

lecturing; Albert Maori Kiki went down especially for a TV interview; Dr. John Gunther, Dr. Peter Lawrence, industrial advocate R. J.

Hawke, and Oala again, have all had something to say at a seminar in Melbourne.

The Minister for Territories, Mr.

Barnes, spoke at the same seminar.

Mr. John Guise, who was supposed to be there, went to Malaysia instead to look at land schemes for the Assembly.

It seems to have been lost on the Australian public that the reason for the hotting up of political interest here is due to the simple fact that a NG general election is in the offing.

Giving the Evatt Memorial Lecture in Sydney, Oala attacked Australia’s political policy in New Guinea as “vague”, and said the Assembly was “weak” because there was no under standing of the Westminster type system. Most of the members were dominated by the official minority, he said, and in a way the Assembly was a rubber stamp for the Admin istration. This sounded like a man who hadn’t studied the Assembly very closely.

He added that political develop ment was being hampered by some Australians who had no real interest in the territory, although there were many dedicated men here. The Pangu Pati believed independence should come through gradual changes, and the party’s plea for home rule was working towards this goal.

Independence, 1970

Independence could be as close as 1970, he said, but this depended on the development climate. Australia had a moral duty to promote early independence, and any talk of a with drawal of Australian grants was merely an excuse to keep the elite quiet, he added.

In a Sydney TV interview, Albert Maori Kiki visualised any power struggle in NG as a struggle by the black man against the black man, not as black against white.

In Melbourne, Dr. Gunther sug gested a committee of inqury to in vestigate the constitutional future of the territory, and another to investi gate the territory’s capacity to pay.

The constitutional inquiry should go further than the Assembly select com mittee’s report, and “act as a safety valve”, he said.

Mr. Barnes used the Melbourne seminar to get over some publicity about what Australia was doing to help the territory.

He had nothing new to say, which was fair enough, because neither did anybody else.