Footnotes

This month’s “Footnotes” are rather difficult to write as they have to be sent on their way in the middle of what promises to be a four-week meeting of the House of Assembly—the longest ever. Moreover, the two most important issues, the 1970 Budget and the govern ment’s contentious Public Order Bill, are still only part debated, and in the case of the Public Order Bill its fate is still anyone’s guess.

During the two weeks of meeting which, as I write, are behind us, there have been a couple of motions which have had me thoughtful and worried, though neither of them could be described as of major im portance.

One of these, from Sabumei Kofikai, member for Goroka, called for better designed and more com modious low-covenant houses. It was defeated, though only by a narrow majority. The other, from Tom Koraea, member for Papua’s Kikori electorate, called for the issue of refrigerators to public servants oc cupying low-covenant, as well as to those occupying high-covenant, houses. The occupants of low-covenant houses are almost exclusively indigenes. Most, though not quite all, of those who occupy high-covenant houses are expatriates. This motion, too, was defeated.

The answer of government spokesmen generally and

of the Deputy Administrator in par ticular to these demands may be summarised as “People brown or white can only have what they can afford to pay for. If indigenous public servants can afford the rent of a high covenant house they can have it, and the refrigerator which goes with it”.

It is, of course, true that in the long run all of us can only have what we can afford to pay for, and for myself I have made it a life-long rule to do without what I can’t afford to pay cash for. Perhaps it’s just as well that every one doesn’t follow this rule, or the hire-purchase firms would go broke.

“People can only have what they

can afford to pay for.” True enough, but the argument has rather a hollow ring in a com munity in which most of the people who can only afford the bare necessities have brown skins while most of those who can afford luxuries have white skins.

Many expatriates who come to this country not only live at a level to which few Niuginians can ever hope to attain, but live ostentatiously at that level.

I remember a few years ago going to a cocktail party given by a senior Administration official, and held in a garden illuminated by coloured lights. It was a largish party, and during the hour and a half that it lasted the liquor consumed must have cost the equivalent of a month’s pay of a medium-salary-range Niuginian.

As I came away I noticed a small group of poorly dressed Niuginians standing on the opposite side of the street gazing with impassive faces at the brightly lit scene. A fellow guest walking beside me said, “I wonder what they are thinking”.

Every Saturday morning big sedans and station wagons tow trailers bearing gleaming white speed boats powered

by monster outboard motors from the high-covenant suburb of Boroko to the yacht club on Moresby’s harbour side. As they drive through Badili and Koki the seven dollar a week brigade watch them from the pavement and from the doorways of shabby trade stores.

What are they thinking? How long will they con tinue to be the patient, friendly, good-humoured folk that they have been in the past?

I don’t know. I know of one Papuan who said, “We watch you driving past in your cars and we hate you in our hearts”. Was he typical or atypical? Papuans are normally a polite people, and to me they are almost invariably polite. But what do they really think of us?

Yes, I know, I know—we who come from an affluent society can’t be expected to sit down to boiled rice and bully beef. As a matter of fact, I’ve just bought myself a new car. It’s a very small car, hardly more than a motor-bike on four wheels. I feel that it’s a necessity, not a luxury. But most of my Papuan friends have to get around on foot or by bus.

In a book called The Transformation of the Chinese Earth, Keith Buchanan writes: “Finally the Chinese, in the very process of down-grading the importance of

the very process of down-grading the importance of material incentives, are, consciously or unconsciously, introduc ing a vision of the future which is far more realistic than the vision purveyed by the West. The conditions which made possible the contemporary affuence of the West, conditions which included and include the plundering of a great deal of the world, are not going to be repeated; that we should purvey our Way of Life to, that we should imply our levels of wealth are attainable by, the peoples of the emerging countries is either downright dishonest or irresponsibly naive”.

Which have we been—dishonest or naive?

Buchanan continues: “The types of development these countries will need are those which will put a sufficiency of food into the belly of each of their citizens and which will absorb all their labour—and this means a pattern of high densities of population, producing their own food, running small factories when they’re not working on the land, and with a limited number of large capital-intensive modern industrial centres. The Chinese experience in these things is important; even more important is the realism with which they accept that the most that can be aimed for is a meagre and modest level of living ... no one rich, no one starving.”

This may be the message we should be trying to convey to Niugini. But it can’t be conveyed with any hope of acceptance from the tiller of a fibre-glass speed boat.

With Percy Chatterton

in Port Moresby