* Footnotes

“WeTe all cargo culters at heart,” said the new Administrator, Mr. L. W. Johnson, according to New Guinea News Service. He was looking back at his work as Director of Education and Assistant Administrator for Services at the time when he thought, and we all thought, that he was leaving Niugini for good.

He was defending the Administra tion’s “all English” education policy.

He continued, “We’re all looking for the key that unlocks the cargo door, and there is no doubt that English is one of the keys that unlocks one of the cargo doors”.

So it is. But the increasing numbers of Niuginian youngsters who graduate from our primary schools but fail to gain entrance to high school soon discover that their all-English primary education is a key that doesn’t fit any of the cargo doors. There was a time when it did unlock the doors of one or two of the lesser treasure rooms. But not now. And alas, it doesn’t even fit the door that leads back to village contentment, which was, in its time, quite a good sub stitute for cargo.

AFTER I had written July’s “Foot notes” and before they appeared in print, Mr. Johnson, by now back in Niugini and ensconced in the Administrator’s chair, indicated the Government’s acceptance of a three tier, or as he called it a three layer, system. His proposed Local Govern ment Area Authorities are very similar to what I had suggested might be called “provincial councils”.

What’s in a name.

But I would be sorry to see “areas” created at lower than district level.

And I would hope that, though he doesn’t seem to have mentioned it, he intends to associate the MHAs for the area with local government council representatives in forming an “area authority”. This is very im portant if the Authority is to be an effective link between local and central government.

I would hope, too, that the establishment of “area authorities” will halt, and perhaps even reverse, the tendency to amalgamate small councils into bigger ones. The natural organisational unit in Niugini is the village. Ideally, local govern ment should be in the hands of village councils and, indeed, the first councils to be formed in post war Papua-New Guinea were village

councils, set up under an ordinance called the “Native Village Councils Ordinance”. If this approach is no longer possible, then there should be village committees in every village, operating as “ward committees” under the present Local Government Ordinance.