Footnotes

Despite all the pious pep-talk of “one name, one flag, one anthem” the cause of Niuginian national unity does not seem to be flourishing very well at present. Here, as in other parts of the world, it has been too facilely assumed that the end product of a series of colonial accidents will exhibit coherence when given the opportunity of becoming an independent nation.

The people themselves have, of course, never been asked what they wanted.

In 1884, what is now called Papua was proclaimed a British Protect orate. The people were not asked whether they wanted to be protected, and were told only in very general terms what they were to be protected from. As J. K. McCarthy suggested in his brilliant cartoon in the October, 1969, PIM, there was a lot of small print on the back.

In 1888 Britain annexed the place.

Its people were not asked whether they wanted to be annexed.

In the early years of this century Britain decided to give British New Guinea to Australia. Its inhabitants were not asked whether they wanted to be given away, or whether they liked the new name which Australia gave to their country.

No one them

what they wanted

After the 1939-45 war Australia decided to amalgamate Papua and New Guinea. She asked the UN for its permission to do so. But she didn’t ask Papuans, or New Guineans, whether this was what they wanted.

New Guineans, of course, have had an even more kaleidoscopic pattern of not being asked than Papuans.

Now they are being told, “Get yourselves a flag and a song and become a nation”. And scolded if they say, “We’re not sure we want to be one”.

The main causes of present unrest are not tribal but economic, and their latest manifestation comes from Papua as an aftermath of the UNDP Report, in which Papua gets scant attention. At the March meeting of the House of Assembly three mem bers representing Papuan electrorates expressed with considerable vigour their alarm and despondency at the

failure of any development plans to promote the development of the Papuan region.

All three were Europeans, but there is little doubt that, had the debate been allowed more time in the early stages of the meeting instead of being repeatedly adjourned and allowed to peter out incon clusively in its final hours, some of the Papuan members would have joined in the chorus of dissatisfaction.

From the point of view of pro moting national unity it’s just our bad luck that the areas of poor economic potential, and therefore the ones most likely to be neglected, are not scattered evenly throughout Niugini, but are concentrated in particular parts of it. It is even worse luck that most of them are con centrated in that part of Niugini which has for so long borne a dif ferent name, and which has had a different colonial history from the rest of the country. The MacGregor- Murray tradition in Papua and the German-Australian military tradition in New Guinea were both paternal istic, but they were two very different kinds of paternalism, and although both are now no more they engen dered attitudes and sentiments in the indigenous people which still live on.

It is an over-simplification to speak of the boundary between Papua and New Guinea as just a line on the map which can be rubbed out at will with a school-boy’s eraser. Perhaps the best way of getting rid of it would be to throw a road across it.

A road from the south coast of Papua to the north coast of mainland New Guinea, whether it ran from the Gulf of Papua through the Southern Highlands to connect with the Highlands Highway or from Port Moresby via Wau to Lae, would do more for Niuginian unity than the most beautifully designed national flag or the most tuneful and in spiring national anthem.

It looks as if our “National System of Education” is not going to have a completely trouble-free launching in spite of the chorus of

With Percy Chatterton

in Port Moresby

praise which greeted the Weedon Report. I share the heart-searching of some of the missionary educa tionalists.

As a mission teacher I spent 40 years wishing that I could tell the Administration where to go. Un fortunately the mission I worked for could never afford this luxury. Mis sions and churches can still less afford it now. The price of Admin istration grants is Administration control, and the bigger the grants the more the control. Church educa tion authorities are torn between the desire to get a better deal salary-wise for their teachers and the desire to retain a measure of that indepen dence which is after all the raison d’etre of the existence of church schools.

Any position in

any school

And this independence involves not only what is taught but who teaches it. It’s a pity that a proposal put forward by one of Niugini’s largest church bodies that, as in England, teachers should be free to apply for any position in any school, while school governing bodies should be free to specify the qualifications, both professional and non-profes sional, required of applicants, was not accepted by the Weedon Com mittee. Perhaps it’s not too late for this proposal to be re-examined.

Personally I am less concerned about the survival of church schools qua church schools than I am about the survival of independent schools qua independent schools. Too power ful and all-embracing a system of national education could easily be come an instrument of brain-wash ing, conformism and intolerance. If that were to happen, our university might well find that by the time the products of this system reached its campus, it would be too late to stimulate them to think for them selves.

The existence of independent

schools alongside a national school system is a sine qua non for a healthy democracy. Is the salt about to lose its savour? Perhaps the major churches of Niugini would do better to concentrate their combined resources on maintaining a few strong, truly independent, inter church schools instead of dissipating them on a proliferation of weak, over-controlled denominational ones. ★ After being first looked at askance and then “accepted in principle”, the making over of Port Moresby’s squatter settlements into no-covenant housing projects in slowly gathering speed; and the general principle of no-covenant areas, in which would be householders are allotted build ing blocks, provided with minimal services, and left to put up the best sort of dwelling they can afford, has received the blessing of the highly competent firms of consultants which produced the Port Moresby Urban Development Study, tabled at the March meeting of the House of As sembly.

Rerrf not only

reason for_ squatters^

A recent survey of one squatter settlement carried out by the Port Moresby Community Development Group suggests that inability to pay the rent demanded for even the cheapest Housing Commission house is not the only reason why people live in squatter settlements.

The group finds that “many could afford Housing Commission rents but prefer to live in a group with people of their own language group”, and advocates the resettlement of a group of 30 families on a four-acre block which is one of several cur rently being offered by the Admin istration for group re-settlement of this kind.

This represents a completely new departure which is to be highly commended. For too long we have assumed that Niuginians welcome western individualism. They don’t.

And perhaps they are right.