Bishops Speak Out
p. 33 · Read in the full issue
For The Islands
Roman Catholic bishops from Australia and Oceania who got together in a series of meetings in Sydney in November during the Pope’s visit, concentrated most of their discussions on the problems of the South Pacific. And particularly on the relationship of Aus tralia and New Zealand with the developing Pacific territories.
It was hardly surprising, because majority of about 70 bishops present were from the Islands. The conference was such a success that the bishops decided that within a year or so they would hold another one in one of the Pacific territories.
The Sydney conference, although not open to the Press, rated a lot of publicity. Some of the bishops each day made themselves available for questioning at a news conference attended by many members of the big team of visiting journalists in Sydney for the Pope’s visit.
Lion’s share of the newspaper space was won by Bishop John Rodgers, Bishop of Tonga, who described as grave the overcrowded situation in Tonga, where few jobs were available and where, he said, the solution was emigration. Australia could assist the human development of the Tongan landless by accepting a quota of 200 families a year to begin with.
Australia had to change its attitude of accepting migrants only if they benefited Australia, the bishop said.
XTO^ h °P Albert Thomas, of the NSW area of Bathurst, at the same news conference did not agree that the time was ripe for Tongans, or Pacific Islanders generally, to come to Australia under such a quota.
Australians had to be educated to accept Islanders completely, otherwise ghettoes would be developed.
Bishop Reginald Delargey, Bishop of Auckland, said many of the bishops were attempting to draw attention to Australia’s immigration policy at the conference because the matter of Islands immigration was “a scandal on our doorstep”.
Bishop John Cohill, Bishop of Goroka, New Guinea, said half the population of New Guinea was under the age of 19, so developments in
the next few years would be crucial, His area was having a problem with school drop-outs, who had nothing to do.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands was the only country in the world which was getting poorer and poorer all the time, Bishop Pierre Guichet, of Tarawa, said. More than one-third of the islands’ resources would vanish when the phosphate deposits were worked out in five or six years, and then the situation would grow worse. Experts from all over the world had made recommendations for the islands’ economic future, but nothing had eventuated.
Bishop Guichet said the Gilbertese needed help and he would like to see them emigrate to Australia. He believed that some sort of organisa tion should be set up, perhaps in association with the SPC, to study emigration within the Pacific. As an example, Espiritu Santo, in the New Hebrides, had twice the land area 0 f the GEIC but a population of only 5,000. The island might be able to take 2 0,000 Gilbertese.
Emigration—or a grim future were alternatives for the GEIC. • Dr, W. D. Symes, 42, in November was appointed head of the Papua-New Guinea Department of Public Health, in succession to Dr.
R. F. Scragg. Dr. Scragg, who had held the post since 1958, has become Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine in the new Faculty of Medicine at the University of Papua and New Guinea. Dr. Symes, from Adelaide, South Australia, has been with the P-NG Health Department since 1954, after having spent six months as a medical officer on Norfolk Island.
• Although notice was short. Western Samoa wasted no time in having two postage stamps —8c and 20c —ready for the Pope's brief visit to the territory on November 30, en route to Sydney. He was to say Mass at a parish church in Samoa, and also be briefly welcomed at Pago.