Nutshell

In A Nutshell

• To complete its current five-year plan—expected to cost STS million— Tonga is for the first time raising an internal loan. The Tongan Govern ment is seeking an $BOO,OOO loan— ssoo,ooo from government deposits and the balance of $300,000 from businesses and the public by an issue of development bonds, maturing in five years at 4 per cent, simple interest. At last report, a fortnight after the loan had been launched, some $200,000 had been subscribed. • Early enrolments at the Uni versity of the South Pacific in February indicated that between 40 and 50 students—most of them hav ing completed last year’s Preliminary II classes—will attend the university’s first degree courses this year.

From among these, the uni versity’s first graduates will emerge in three years time with BA and BSc degrees, obtained from the Schools of Natural Resources, Educa tion or Social Development.

The Registrar, Mr. S. F. Perrott, said that early enrolments indicated that besides those attending degree courses, the university would have about 90 Preliminary I students, be tween 90-100 Preliminary II students and about 30 attending non-graduate courses in teacher-training. Some 180 students will live on the Laucala Bay campus. • Canadian Superior Oil (Aust.) Pty. Ltd. has applied for prospecting areas in south-western Papua to look for bauxite. No immediate start will be made because of wet conditions.

The search could test a theory that big bauxite finds at Weipa, north Queensland, and Gove, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, extend to Papua.

O Two Australian companies, Basin Oil NL and Reef Oil NL, will soon sink a 10,500 ft oil well called Tovala, north-west of Port Moresby. • Three new professional boxing champions were crowned in Fiji in February. At the Civic Theatre, at Ba, Fiji welterweight champion Kolaia Bauli won the vacant Fiji middleweight title, Etuate Rabuka took the vacant South Seas middle

weight crowd and Aslam Khan won the vacant Fiji featherweight title.

Bauli knocked out Seva Mocesuia, of Suva, in the 12th round; Rabuka ko’d Jo Sova, of Ba, in the fifth round; and Khan took the title when referee Bill Walker disqualified Cyan Singh, of Ba, in the seventh round. It was disclosed after the fight that Bauli had been offered a Sydney fight against Australian welterweight cham pion Carmen Rotolo—and in the meantime, negotiations are underway for his first title defence against Rabuka in Ba in March. • At last report pineapple planters on Mangaia Island, in the Cooks, were enjoying a successful season, having shipped, up to mid-January, 53,755 cases of pineapple to Island Food Ltd’s processing factory on Rarotonga and 3,017 cases to New Zealand. By mid-January Cook Islands pineapple growers had been paid $51,000 for the current season. • After 20 years of negotiations between the New Zealand and Cook Islands Government, work has started on a much-needed hospital near Black Rock, Rarotonga, to be financed by New Zealand, The SNZSOO,OOO hospital will consist of a theatre suite of over 11,000 sq. ft, a kitchen block, two ward blocks and a nurses’ home. • Criticism of Fiji farm workers in New Zealand has come from the secretary of the Gisborne Trades Council, Mr. G. J. Murray, follow ing the arrival of 56 Fijians in NZ’s South Island. They will spend four months working as scrub-cutters under an arrangement between Fiji and New Zealand Governments.

Hearing of their arrival, farmers at Gisborne, in the North Island, decided to seek a similar supply of labour, as they’ve done previously.

But the Gisborne Trade Council’s secertary was strongly critical of such a move. Pacific Island labour would put a heavy damper on any efforts to improve the image of farm employ ment, Mr. Murray was reported to have said.

It would be a “menace to the health, ethnic and employment standards of the whole district”, without helping Islanders to build up healthy employment in their own countries. • The Tamure Bar, in Papeete’s centrally-situated Rue Clappier, was destroyed by fire early in February.

It was the second such establishment in Tahiti to go up in flames within a month. Le Col Bleu was burnt down in January {PIM, Feb., p. 40).

• Loan assistance—to the tune of $150,000 —from New Zealand and the Asian Development Bank for up grading Western Samoa’s Faleolo air port to DC 6 and Electra standards was sought by Fiame Mata’afa, Prime Minister of Western Samoa, when he was in NZ in February. The up grading, which includes improve ments to the road between Apia and the airport, is expected to cost less than $1 million. • After years of being urged to do so, the Australian Goverment has decided to allow air travellers to NG to buy duty-free goods on return at Sydney and Brisbane airports. • The US National Association of Educational Broadcasters, which had been a support agency for American Samoa’s Department of Education for the past eight years, withdrew from consideration for a new contract with Samoa in February and another body, composed of West Coast US univer sities will take over. The NAEB’s operations in Samoa were criticised in the territory’s legislature last year.

In turn, NAEB’s president, William G. Harley, in a recent letter to Samoa’s Governor, Owen S. Aspinall, said the NAEB had received “grudg ing and impatient tolerance” from American Samoa. NAEB’s efforts to maintain the territory’s unique tele vision education system had been “consistently thwarted”. • The NG Pidgin New Testa ment “Nupela Testamen” was re leased in NG on February 23 by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Printed in Madang with a first edition run of 40,000 copies, it is claimed to be the largest print ing and binding job completed in the territory.

Pidgin translators of the Bible hope it will standardise the vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure of Pidgin, and become a standard literary work in the language. The translators were the Reverends Paul Freyberg, John Sievert, Dr. Willard Burce, Paul Schultz, Euan Fry, Leo Buckman, Mr. Cecil Parish and two New Guineans, Los and Kadeu. ® A decision by Wendell-West Company of the US whether to go ahead with their proposed SUSI mil lion colonial hotel for Norfolk Island will be made by mid-March (see story p. 29).

Mr. Paul Stocker, white-haired Australian manager of the company, told PIM in February he was “not discouraged” despite a resolution by

he island’s council in January not o allow the company as much land it Kingston for the hotel as it had jriginally required.

“It’s a matter now of us rehashing )ur plans to see if they can fit in on ess land,” he said. “If they can— md our engineering proposals are icceptable—we would still go ahead.”

The hotel scheme was put to Norfolk’s Council last year. Mr.

Itocker has said Norfolk Islanders md Australians would be welcome to ake up minor shareholdings in the mtel {PIM, Dec., 1968, p. 63). • Big spending of US funds in American Samoa is over. The terri ory’s Governor Owen S. Aspinall re cently said “the golden goose that aid the golden egg has flown away”, meaning that the reconstruction in he territory which began in 1961 vith big grants was ended. The jovernor predicted “few changes” in JS policy with the Nixon Admin stration. • To mark the 30th anniversary if the first air postal link between ’ranee and New Caledonia Mr. lenri Martinet hopes to repeat in darch the long-distance flight he made in 1938 in a single-engined Renault aircraft. Mr. dartinet will fly Paris-Noumea return nd make several NG and Solomons tops en route. • Different types of voting ystems should be tried out in some lilot local government council elec ions, and residential qualifications or electorates should be strictly en orced. These were two recommenda ions of Mr. R. R. Bryant, NG’s Chief Sectoral Officer, in his report on ’■NG’s 1968 House of Assembly lections. He said local government yould be the place to try different ystems, as it would lead to less con usion. Both “first-past-the post” and •referential systems had good points or P-NG, but there may be other ystems best suited to the people, and hey should be asked. • American Samoa’s Governor, )wen S. Aspinall is reported optimistic” over chances of raising >US2.S million to add 100 rooms o the territory’s Pago Pago Inter continental Hotel. He recently re urned from fund-raising talks in Jawaii. Meanwhile, the territory’s Dffice of Tourism has released record dsitor figures for 1968—10,922. • Dr. Billy Graham’s famous eligious rhetoric was heard for the irst time in Fiji in February—and ?y the crusader’s standards, by an ;xtremely small audience.

Instead of his usual mass gather

ings in floodlit parks, his super amplification system and emotional on-the-spot conversions, Dr. Graham preached quietly to 100 Methodists at the tiny village church at Cuvu.

It happened while Dr. Graham, his wife and team of fellow-evangelists were staying at The Fijian hotel, en route to New Zealand for a six-day crusade in Auckland and weekend meeting in Dunedin.

During a similarly brief holiday at The Fijian last year, Dr. Graham attended Cuvu Church, where he was unrecognised by the congregation.

He decided to visit it again this year and found that the scheduled preacher hadn’t turned up.

“So I preached on the blind man in the 10th chapter of Mark’s Gospel and my friend George Beverly Shea sang to the congregation,” he said afterwards.

He added that no crusade had been planned for Fiji but it might be possible to stage one in the future.