Guinea

Inside New

With John Ryan

Unless the planning goes awry in the next 20 months. New Guinea’s 2,300,000 tribesmen are going to be pitchforked into selfgovernment in 1972.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Development (chaired by Papuan trade unionist and MHA, Paulus Arek) leans heavily toward internal selfgovernment in 1972. It would coincide with the next general election, along with Canberra’s plan to withdraw the 10 Government or official” members of parliament.

Most New Guinean university students and many college undergrads want it in 1972. Several of the more thoughtful and influential European academics advise it for 1972. Papuan Speaker, John Guise, wants it. Even some of the more politically adventurous Australian public servants here want it in 1972 The big key that opens the New Guinea door to self-government is Prime Minister John Gorton prodded along by the Federal Treasurer (New Guinea cost him SAI2O million last year) and the Leader of the Federal Labour Opposition, Gough Whitlam.

But most of all, New Guinea’s new Administrator, L. W. Johnson, will want it in 1972. He’s much too intelligent to try prolonging this terminal stage of decolonisation in which the hundreds of thousands of villagers now find themselves.

Clever and rnthlocc

Clever ana rutniess Johnson is clever, and he can be ruthless. Politically he’s no tO ?J* 4 ., Outside pressures are mounting.

They re building apace now that Australia’s defence commitments are increasing in South-East Asia.

The Federal Treasury needs every cent it can lay its hands on, and the New Guinea bill cannot go too much higher.

Domestic New Guinea politics (parties, campus-thinking and regional secessionist threats) are abuilding too. In all these circum stances, New Guinea’s small but potent native elite cannot be held back.

Whether New Guinea likes it or not, its constitutional future is being hammered out right now —behind closed doors. It’s not the public evidence-taking by the select committee that will decide the issue.

Self-government is being achiev ed, step by step, like a carpenter with a fretwork saw . . . the trouble among the Gazelle Tolais, the secession-loving Bougainville students, the machinations of Pangu Party politics, the give and-take in parliamentary meet ings.

Whv co afrairl? . C As Speaker John Guise so often L e ” s u his el ectorate meetings: Wby are you 80 a f rai( l of self go «c r lV men f' , Self-government is already here • *. * your own elected re- Presentatives are in parliament, your own councils decide where and your local government taxes Wlll be spent.

“ Do not be afraid of self-gov eminent: much of it is already her A e ' , - * u n i carvm g U P ™2» na li,k udget ( a F ecord 5196,000,000 this year) is all that remam s (for the purposes of self-government) in the hands of Canberra, apart from defence and foreign affairs.

Self-government for New Guinea in 1972 will mean genuine local control, with full ministerial “cabinet” possibly presided over by a New Guinean Chief Minister (for the want of a better term) who, in turn, will have a top notch (I hope) Australian adviser discreetly in the background All these things are about to materialise.

The Select Committee on Con-

Highlanders hold out

stitutional Development is con vinced ... so is Canberra . . . and Konedobu. The only in fluential group likely to hold out are the estimated 800,000 New Guinea Highlanders who, naturally enough, are still afraid that too many of the bright young coastal men are going to get the top government jobs.

New Guinea may be short of export income, but there’s one commodity certainly not short: sheer, obstinate, tribalistic, haughty pride. And it’s this very pride that may be the makings of an independent New Guinea.

The Highlanders have only been in consistent contact with the thinly-spread government men since 1946.

Port Moresby is a very long way from Kerow a g i, Mount Hagen and Mendi . . . and the Highlands pride, and their some times ruthless single-mindedness in the bid to “catch up” with the coastal men, will force many of

the mountain people to resist a self-government that will be handed New Guinea’s more ad vanced coastal people.

Regionalism and secession mania will be a self-governing New Guinea’s supreme problems.

A great deal of sensible talking will be required . . . and this is where Administrator L. W. John son will be in his element.

Johnson’s extraordinary return to New Guinea (and Whitlam’s news conference concession that “Johnson is the best Australian available for the job”) and retiring Administrator D. O.

Hay’s transmigration to Canberra as departmental secretary, almost certainly means one thing: Between them, Johnson and Hay are going to be responsible for getting rid of New Guinea.

Johnson is the man Whitlam demanded of Gorton.

New Guinea is financially and poi.tically uneconomic for Aus tralia. Even Labour Opposition hierarchy concedes this—quite unofficially, of course.

Minister for External Territories C. E. Barnes will be leaving

shortly. This leaves Hay in Can berra with a new and younger minister, and Johnson and a New Guinean “cabinet” in Port Moresby . . . and a Westminster parliamentary system in the balance.

It’s the first really significant “new deal” for New Guinea since Eddie Ward’s in 1945. But John son’s new deal is purely political.

Decisions that count

Let’s hope Johnson, where oc casion demands it, will tell Hay in Canberra that the decisions that count will be made in Port Moresby. And let’s hope Johnson takes the decision to bring the lofty post of Administrator down to the village level.

It will be interesting to watch him in action; hopefully, without police, without financial black mail, without the guise of ultra diplomacy.

What New Guinea so des perately needs now is a sensible, down-to-earth Australian prepared to give, bargain, horse-trade . . . and to talk.