Up Front

with the Editor

I suppose it shall be taken as no compliment to other South Pacific territories if I say the reason why I so frequently talk about New Guinea affairs in this column is because I find New Guinea’s problems so lively these days.

Take New Guinea developments in April. The month began with a donnybrook on the Administration’s decision to resume Bougainville’s Arawa plantation for roads, houses and supermarkets needed for CRA’s copper development plans.

Then came a whopping great fuss over something the Minister for Territories was supposed to have said in Port Moresby about “freezing” the territory’s constitutional develop ment for the next seven years.

A Russian writer named Semenov was banned from entering New Guinea and made a noise all the way back to Moscow. Debate on his ban shared equal billing with newspaper attacks on the Minister for External Affairs, who had mean while come out flatfooted in support of Indonesia’s dishonest method of polling the West Irianese about their political future.

The month ended with a real live border incident, like they used to have in Europe, with Indonesians actually shooting at us and police reinforcements being flown in.

And those were only the high lights of New Guinea’s month!

West Irian

I don’t believe even the Indonesians could have had much respect for the Australian External Affairs Minister, Mr. Freeth, for his support of what they propose to do in West Irian.

They know better than anybody that their system of consultation with a mere 1,000 West Irianese is a sham act of determination, in contradic tion to the spirit of the 1962 UN agreement.

The West Irianese are the victims of an oppressive colonialism, and if Mr. Freeth doesn’t believe it’s politic ally expedient to condemn Indonesia for it, then instead of condoning it

he might have had the decency to shut up.

Mr. Barnes’ decision to keep that Russian out of New Guinea like wise earns him the award of the Coconut Cluster for Woodenheads, Maybe the Russian did apply at the very last minute for a permit, maybe he was more interested in reporting for Pravda than writing a novel, maybe he was Ivan the Original Spy, but the way to deal with him was how Professor Henry Mayer has since suggested . . . “by arranging a resolution by New Guinea politici ans welcoming Mr. Semenov. Mr.

Semenov would have been wined and dined, given access to archives, and have had an aide to spy on him.

All this on the premise that, in the short run, things in New Guinea are stable, that gestures are cheap . . .”

Arawa case

Outside of New Guinea, people may wonder what the Arawa fuss is all about. Plantations —especially large and old-established plantations —are news in New Guinea, where the economy is built on the coconut.

“Kip” McKillop, of Arawa, runs an efficient plantation that he’s proud of. It’s 1,000 acres, most of it free hold, all under crop, and producing 40 tons of copra a month, and 50G to 600 tons of cocoa a year. Bui McKillop’s special love is 30 acres set aside as a plant-introduction centre irreplaceable, priceless— with fruits, nuts and plants from all over the world, including what is probably the world’s best private orchid collection.

It all goes under the bulldozer, together with 3,200 acres of native land. McKillop’s argument is that Arawa is onlv third or fourth in order of suitability for a town site for CRA (which, in fact, doesn’t want it as a site), and that the de

cision to resume the land is political —designed to prove to Bouvainville that European landholders, too, can cop it in the neck. Why, McKillop asks, should this economic develop ment be wiped out when it is pos sible to retain it, and the copper income, by resuming less-developed land elsewhere.

The core of the matter—the reason why tempers have risen—is this suspicion that there has been dis crimination against Arawa for reasons of political expediency.

Having asked my own questions when I visited the territory in April, I’m in no doubt myself that the decision is, largely, political. The fact that there are also some legiti mate reasons for it is being seized on by the Administration in its own defence and stressed out of propor tion.

Frozen constitution

On The Puzzling Case of the Frozen Constitution, I’m for Mr.

Barnes. His critics followed the wrong clues. I was one of those at his Port Moresby news confer ence, and when I later saw what some of the newspaper com mentators did to it I wondered if there’d been a conference I missed.

The front page lead story of the Sydney Morning Herald was headed, “Barnes sees a 7-year pause in New Guinea”, followed by, “The Minister for External Territories indicated yesterday that he wanted no major constitutional advance in P-NG for at least another seven years. ‘We have got to be patient about these things’, he told a Press conference in Port Moresby. . .” For the next few days the newspapers were talk ing as if Mr. Barnes had “frozen” all constitutional advance.

At the news conference Mr.

Barnes merely had been asked if he anticipated the need for any con stitutional changes in the life of the present Assembly (which has another three years to run of a four-year term). He replied that he didn’t anticipate “any major changes” in this House. It was his “personal view” that they ought to be allowed to settle down for a term, “or even two”.

That’s all. It wasn’t exciting, and the conference droned on to other matters. The key word, after all, was ‘major”.

It doesn’t require any constitu tional changes, let alone major :hanges, to give New Guinea a larger measure of self-government. Under last year’s amendments to the Papua- New Guinea Act, which is the terri tory’s constitution, the seven Min

isterial Members in the 94-member Assembly have far more authority than any of them has yet taken.

They are empowered to exercise joint authority for their departments with departmental heads and to initiate and formulate policies. If they can’t get their departmental head to agree on a matter they can refer it to the Administrator for decision.

The Ministerial Members can, in the executive council (where they are in the majority), initiate pro posals for legislation, including the draft budget.

And from April 1 the Ministerial Members, and the Assembly gener ally, also have a better chance of influencing the policies of the Public Service, whose direction has been reconstituted under a four-man board, two of them New Guineans.

If nothing much has happened yet along these new corridors of power, don’t blame the constitution. And it’s no use the Pangu Pati blaming the Ministerial material, since Pangu itself wouldn’t allow its members to hold office, and it smacks of sour grapes.

The machinery is there, and the corridors of power will echo with a less hollow ring when the Min isterial Members, their assistants and supporters, learn to put a firm foot to the fat behinds of some of those expatriate departmental heads who are out of sympathy with the aims of the Assembly; and when they learn to identify and fight, in their de partments and in the executive council, the more bureaucratic in trusions of Canberra.

Unlike Mr. Barnes, I hope it won’t take them seven years to feel their strength, but at their present pace it may, unfortunately, take them the

next three.

Stuart Inder