New Guinea

Diary

With John Ryan

The Mataungan Saga

Papua-New Guinea’s “Political Headsman” is carrying out four executions at Rabaul in what appears a vain attempt at restoring harmony among the 70,000 Tolai tribespeople violently split for so long over multi-racial local government.

The headsman’s blade was honed by the Tolai Minis terial Member for Education (and MHA for Gazelle) Mr. Matthias Toliman, and the execution order was authorised by Mr. Toliman’s native and European colleagues in the Administrator’s Executive Council.

The non-voting Australian members of the AEC naturally showed some reluctance, because the heads they’re helping to despatch belong to the innocent three Europeans and one Chinese elected legally, along with 34 Tolais (in an electorate totally dominated by Tolais), to the new Gazelle Multi-racial Council in 1969.

But the four heads must roll . . . because Mr. Matthias Toliman believed their sacrifice was the only positive, remaining method of trying to break down the final plank in the violent Tolai Mataungan Association s plat form of absolute opposition to the idea of foreigners the Europeans and the Chinese having any part in governing Tolais. . .

Local Government began in P-NG m 1950 and within two years, it made its first appearance among the Tolais in and around Rabaul. Local Government was expanded dramatically from January, 1964 (the result of UN political pressure) and 147 councils now cover nearly two million of P-NG’s 2,300,000 villagers.

Bv political edict from Konedobu a couple of years ago (largely as the result of further UN and other pressure) the Australian Administration here began a campaign of turning the one race Native Local Govern ment Councils into multi-racial councils, as the founda tion for truly multi-racial local government ... and to make Europeans liable to pay for local government services bv paying council taxes.

The word multi-racial was probably unfortunate Certainly there’s been publicly-voiced criticism of it by native leaders, some of whom see the word as the thin edge of the wedge allowing Europeans to gradually take over and control local government. Such are the misinterpretations in P-NG.

At Rabaul at least two years ago, Australian patrol officers suggested to the Gazelle Native> Council that: it might be an advantage to make it a multi-racial council, so as to rope in the many Europeans in Rabaul and close environs. The native councillors agreed, and the multi-racial proclamation was made . . • and John Kaputin’s Mataungan (“Alert”) Association emerged almost overnight as a powerful, emotional anti-council, anti-European pressure group insisting that Tolais should be governed by Tolais not by ‘foreigners already controlling Rabaul’s retail empire. .

There were immediate protest marches involving up to 10 000 Tolais; in December, 1969, the Mataungans began bashing Gazelle Multi-racial Council native members; there were recent Mataungan death-threats against

Tolais (Mr. Toliman included) who were supporting the Administration.

Mataungan waged economic and death-threat black mail against the Gazelle Council, against the central government; and political threats against the AEC, Canberra; and threatened secession from P-NG.

Strangely enough, the Mataungan v. Gazelle Council war is largely a local power struggle ... the 70,000 Tolais are splinter groups; some support Mataungan, others the council.

Some support nobody . . . they simply use the existing powerplay as a good excuse for refusing to pay their annual Sl6 council tax, thereby proving their complete failure to understand the fact that the P-NG Welfare State has disappeared and that everybody with an income is now expected to help pay for local services.

The AEC has decided that the Gazelle Multi-racial Council will now revert to a native local government council. It’s a political victory of some importance for Mataungan as a pressure group, but also possibly a tragedy for the apparently laudable idea of multi-racial local government now embraced by nearly 130 of the other 147 councils in P-NG. .

But the real tragedy is the virtual certainty that the reversion to a native Gazelle council will do little to solve the real problem at Rabaul: Mataungan is already committed to establishing its own system of local govern ment in direct opposition to the Administration-sponsored Gazelle council. . . . .

In the Rabaul powerplay, the opposition to the three Europeans and the one Chinese on the Multi-racial Gazelle Council was simply a political vehicle tor Mataungan; with that vehicle now removed, Mataungan (according to the best available reports from Rabaul) has found another; i.e., the new native Gazelle council is still the result of Australian Government sponsorship, and therefore must be opposed just as vehemently as it was when still multi-racial. , , , Mataungan therefore, remains an emotional local independence movement.

The only really significant developments recently in the Rabaul saga are Mataungan’s decision (after promp ting from a senior Papuan politician) to rely m future on passive resistance rather than violence; and Mataungan s uphill battle to talk Tolai supporters into putting up the money to finance John Kaputin’s basically good idea oi a Mataungan Economic Community aimed at keeping Tolai earnings within the Tolai community, rather thar allowing them to go out of the area across Europear and Chinese shop-counters.

"Separate Currency" Panic

The big private enterprise companies in P-NG hav< something like SI.OOO million invested in tangible asset! here and because they’re so important to publi< financing, these companies are extremely good extremely unofficial lines of top-level information ou

of Administration headquarters at Konedobu.

When wild rumours of an almost immediate new banknote issue for P-NG began sweeping P-NG mid- November, the big companies weren’t too worried. If Canberra or Port Moresby had been planning a new currency, devaluation of the existing Australian dollar used here, or a freeze on the repatriation of foreign capital, the big companies would have been quietly tipped off well in advance.

The secret would have leaked out to lesser individuals as well, because it’s well-known at Konedobu that the bigger the secret, the more likely that somebody will let it out.

But the ordinary “foreigners” public servants, pri vate enterprise employees and the smaller companies have no such immediate access to Konedobu’s “secrets”.

When the rumours began flying, the “little” investors and the employees began to panic.

One Port Moresby bank lost 19 per cent, of its European private savings . . . and the rumours were regarded by some as so strong, that one bank accountant felt obliged to send his own personal savings back to the relative safety of Australia to beat any “freeze”.

It was a highly damaging flock of rumours, and Administrator L. W. Johnson, Treasurer J. E. Ritchie (he called the private bank managers together to re assure them) and Federal Treasurer Bury and Minister for External Territories Barnes, were forced to issue statements denying categorically that there was any such plan to tamper with the dollar.

Even touring Labour Opposition leader Whitlam found it necessary to say publicly that among the four things P-NG’s first independent government should think about after Labour’s proposed independence for them in 1976, would be to think about the possibility of a separate currency. Whitlam’s backhanded favour to Prime Minister Gorton’s Liberal-Country coalition government took the heat out of further rumours that if Whitlam became PM in 1972, then a P-NG currency change would follow quickly.

The rumours proved one thing conclusively: there are a lot of foreigners in P-NG who’ll quit the country overnight if there’s even the faintest risk of their Australian dollar being devalued or “frozen” here. For village people beginning to realise the value of foreign investment, it was a sobering and perhaps cynical lesson n money-politics. 30ING public Danny Leahy Jr, 40, of the famous pioneering Leahy amily in the P-NG Highlands, is going to turn his retail rade store empire into a public company with share loldmgs for the village people he’s grown up with n Gorokas beautiful Asaro Valley.

Danny Leahy started in 1949 in a grass-thatch hut vhen there were only 13 houses at Goroka in New jumea s Eastern Highlands District, and with partner :ddie Collins he now runs 60 trade stores with annual umovers running over $1 million. Largely because the wholesale service he offered native would-be •usmessmen, the Asaro Valley now has 1,500 other illage tradestores scattered around a network of 860 rules of roadway.

He concedes that native store operators have still got o learn the hard facts of stock-accounting. “They’ve een how my show has grown up ... and I think lot of the old-timers, the blokes who are about the ame age as me, know that they could have a business ike mine if they’d been prepared to work too ”

Now, the Collins and Leahy trade store business is omg to be offered 49 per cent, to Asaro Valley people d further involve them in the business of the rigidly-run nvate enterprise they need so badly.