New Guinea
pp. 30-31 · Read in the full issue
Diary
With John Ryan
PEOPLE in New Guinea are starting to look sideways at light aircraft pilots.
This has been a tragic year, probably New Guinea’s worst aviation year in peacetime history: Eight small planes have gone down since April, killing 35 people.
The toll: TAA Twin Otter near Kainantu (eight dead), a helicopter near Goroka (three), a missionary Cessna near Aitape (one), a Piper Aztec near Gurney in Milne Bay (nine), a Beechcraft Baron in Western Papua (six), a Port Moresby-owned Piper Aztec near Townsville in Queens land (two), a Piper Tri-Pacer between Lae and Gloucester (two), and a Piper Aztec near Kokoda, killing four.
For New Guinea people expecting—sometimes demanding—absolute aviation safety, the eight accidents are horrifying. But if the accidents arc measured against the tremendous amount of flying in New Guinea this year, and the conditions in which it is done, then the ratio of accidents to safe air miles is very favourable.
However, the man in the street doesn’t measure performance like this.
That’s why the Public Service Association has been demanding that its 13,000 native and European members refuse to fly in single engine planes, light twins—and even DC3’s!
The toll this year has been so regular and so heavy, that Regional Director of the Department of Civil Aviation Mr. J. E. Schofield has written to many of New Guinea’s 663 trained and student pilots asking them to round-table talks in Port Moresby, Lae and Mount Hagen with DCA teams to discuss “problems”.
If the majority of this year’s eight crashes were the result of pilot error —and DCA thinks it was—then light plane pilots in New Guinea are going to have to be re-trained for bad-weather flying; an extremely costly business involving heavy expense for training and instruments by small companies already pushing themselves to the limit to keep their financial heads above water. ★ Total discrimination against Australians, Chinese and native people from elsewhere in New Guinea: That appears to be the price demanded by the Tolai Mataungans in the attempt to bring peace among all 70,000 Tolais around Rabaul.
The Mataungan trouble began in May, 1969, when the Gazelle Council decided it wanted to exchange its exclusive “native” council system for “multiracial” local government, enabling it (like 124 of the other 145 councils in New Guinea at the moment) to take taxing and local govern ment control over all land (native, European and Chinese) in its council area.
Now, as the result of secret meetings between native members of the Gazelle Multiracial Council and leaders of the violently anti-council Mataungans, there’s been a joint call to the Administrator to change the “multiracial” council back to an exclusively native status.
It’s only since 1965 that councils have been allowed to go multiracial and the joint call from Gazelle councillors and Mataungans, causes the Gazelle Council, at least on paper, to revert five years.
Meantime, Mataungans are beginning to ask what’s happened to some of the $43,000 reportedly collected by Mataungans refusing to pay their annual tax to the Gazelle Council. On the credit side for Mataungans, the Supreme Court at Rabaul continues to uphold a number of appeals by Mataungans against the sentences meted out following the December 7 round of attacks against Gazelle native councillors.
Rabaul, in a nutshell, is still bubbling over . . . with the controversial Public Order Ordinance now law, and ready for use if violence erupts again among the Tolais.
Public Solicitor Peter Lalor has been causing the New Guniea Govern ment all sorts of problems for years, because he takes the legal briefs of native people confronting the government in court, particularly over land ownership.
Lalor had been putting Mataungans through the traditional means test in qualifying for free legal aid from his office, and the Mataungans have been getting off in court.
When the head of the Department of Law, Mr. Lindsay Curtis, wrote Lalor that he was to no longer offer Mataungans free legal aid, unless • they guaranteed to pay their Gazelle Council tax if found liable by the courts, and if • they could show that Mataungans could not afford to pay their legal costs, Lalor wrote heatedly to the Public Service Board demand ing to know if Curtis, as departmental head, had the right to issue such an order.
Canberra and Port Moresby intervened, and they’ve decided to remove the Public Solicitor’s Office and staff from the Crown Law Department and make it a statutory body, responsible presumably to the Minister in Canberra or the Governor-General. Justice must appear to be done, and if the legislation goes through in November then the Public Solicitor will not only be independent, but also clearly seen to be independent.
But will “troublemaker” Peter Lalor get the job? ★ After so much fuss for the past 18 months, the Papuan Medical College is about to become the cornerstone of the first Faculty of Medicine at the University of Papua-New Guinea ... and Director of Public Health, Dr.
Roy Scragg, is to become Foundation Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine.
Former Director of Medical Services, Dr. John Gunther (now Vice- Chancellor of the university), and Director of Public Health, Dr. Scragg have joined forces once again—this time to give New Guinea’s modern medicine man” a clear academic future, with progressively higher standards. ★ New Guinea’s Pacific Islands Regiment of nearly 3,000 men is not altogether happy; a much delayed superannuation scheme for native troops was approved in Canberra after six years and was handed out to the Press instead of being sent to the officers in New Guinea who’d pioneered the idea. And a senior Indonesian Government man has said some unkind things about soldiers’ literacy in New Guinea. . The superannuation scheme puts the troops ahead of most other organisa- Lions in New Guinea, and makes the PIR an even more attractive career The New Guinea troops may forgive Canberra for not telling them ibout the decision before Canberra told the Press, but the troops are un forgive Indonesia s Dr. Sudjarwo Tjondronegoro for his speech on 3iak Island, West Irian, marking the 25th anniversary of the Indonesian Armed Forces. . P r : Sudjarwo toured East Irian (Papua-New Guinea) this year and in us Biak speech said that self-government and independence for East Irian vas still a matter of discussion . . . there was a lot of talk, but not much £ a write° n 80 ” ’ And 90 PCr ° ent * ° f East f™ l1 ’ 5 soldiers cannot read That’s the phrase that annoyed New Guinea’s troops, especially Aus ralian officers who can’t see why the damned Indonesians have to try to ause trouble all the time”. ★ pie vagaries of world marketing and the problem of getting a buyer o offer the nght price on a safe, long-term basis, has become a headache or New Guinea, especially now that Britain’s on the threshold of the European Common Market. nH ma l n y New Guinea villagers growing copra, cocoa, coffee, tea nd pyrethrum, have no idea of world marketing and, quite often, they blame He European and other middlemen if the price into their hands, goes down. . ™ age ™ eri learning first-hand what it’s all about in a fil! 8 pv * Brusse . ls an( J London seeking special protection for New Guinea /hen Britain goes into the market. (See p. 108).