Nutshell
pp. 30-31 · Read in the full issue
In a Nutshell
• Western Samoa’s police, using a 1961 ordinance, have shut down public entertainment after 12 mid night. This follows complaints by residents of noisy clubs and rowdy behaviour up to four in the morning.
Permits for public entertainment are now issued on condition that entertainment ends at midnight unless otherwise authorised. The new permits became effective in early April and almost immediately it was obvious that one person’s poison is another's freedom.
Critics said individual freedom was threatened by the decision and that tourists would want to continue after midnight. • “It will be the last,” they keep saying about New Guinea’s Mt.
Hagen Show. “It will become too civilised and it’ll die”. It isn’t dead yet, and the 1971 Hagen Show is scheduled for August. • Dr. M. Y. Ali, who has held teaching posts in universities in the US, Sudan and Singapore, and is cur rently Senior Lecturer in Pathology at the University of Tasmania, has been appointed Professor of Pathology at the University of Papua and New Guinea. • Norfolk Island’s Kingfisher Airtel was virtually destroyed by fire in late March. Thirteen people stay ing at the hotel escaped injury but the fire brigade was unable to stop the blaze from engulfing the com plex. The hotel site is part of Norfolk’s history. It was a station for the Pacific cable link built early in the century. • The huge Bougainville copper project has finally attracted a surfeit of labourers. New Guineans who have been making their way there in their hundreds, attracted by the good wages and conditions, are not now welcome unless they are skilled, be cause the construction phase of the project is now near completion. • Speaker of the P-NG House of Assembly, Dr. John Guise, said in Port Moresby in April that the pace of localisation in the territory should be speeded up, as it had been in Indonesia. He made his statement after having led a parliamentary
delegation to Indonesia in early April.
He said he hoped there would be further visits between the adjoining territories soon, and that he hoped Papua-New Guinea would include the study of Bahasa-Indonesia in its teaching syllabus. Dr. Guise said the visit, which was a most successful goodwill tour, made him more con fident about Indonesian-P-NG rela tions. The Indonesians had seen for themselves that New Guineans had the future of the territory in their own hands and that independence for P-NG was inevitable. The mission had shown the Indonesians that both P-NG and Australia were friendly to Indonesia. Dr. Guise added that he was proud to have led the first P-NG delegation to another country.
A member of the delegation, Mr.
Patik Nimabot, said in Port Moresby that before his visit he had felt that densely-populated Indonesia might one day take over P-NG, but Indo nesians during his visit had not ex pressed any ill-feelings towards the territory. • Mr. I. W. Weeden was visiting Papua-New Guinea in April to col lect facts to enable him to report on the future of the Australian School of Pacific Administration. He has been commissioned by the Common wealth to make the investigation. • Mrs. Makitinopara Moeareone was found dead in bed in her Mangaian home, Cook Islands, after the house was struck by lightning on April 20. None of the other oc cupants of the house was hurt, and an inquest found she had died of acute heart failure and shock. • A lightning strike in the Noumea Customs Department at the end of March brought a speedy reaction from Paris.
The striking Customs employees demanded an increase in their depart ment’s budget, to cope with the ever increasing imports handled through Noumea—and they got it. (The Noumea Chamber of Commerce last year began paying the salaries of two extra employees in the Customs Department because the State had not provided the finance).
In addition, the Customs Depart ment workers demanded opportunities for Caledonians to be promoted into the top grade of their department, and this request was also met by Paris. Until now, all top division posts in the Customs Department have been occupied by Metropolitan French. The successful strike lasted four days.
• The Hotel Mendana in Honiara is to undergo a $500,000 expansion, starting July. Additions will be built in three stages; the immediate erection of a three storey block with 36 rooms front ing the beach, together with new kitchen and dining room, and a swimming pool. The further accom modation blocks with 60 rooms then follow. The completed hotel will total 102 bedrooms, and a new company, Mendana Hotels Ltd., will shortly be incorporated to carry out the development. Participation in the equity capital will be offered to BSIP residents, while a substantial minority holding will be taken by an “international hotel group”, as yet unnamed, • New Zealand’s Minister of Maori and Island Affairs, Mr. Duncan Maclntyre, in April completed a 14 day trip to the Tokelaus during which he discussed the setting up of a pearl industry and turtle farming.
On his return to NZ he said the gov ernment now felt it better that the Tokelauans should help themselves rather than come to NZ; for that reason only 15 secondary school-age children would come to NZ each year from now on, instead of whole families. • Few people in Apia in April knew why the Western Samoan Cabinet had undergone a major reshuffle. Prime Minister, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, was generally tight lipped about the changes and the Samoa Times was left to comment, “it is generally taken that they [the changes] have resulted in a better allocation of duties”.
First indication of the reshuffle came in late March when Minister of Post Office and Radio, Fatialofa Momo’e, resigned without public ex planation. It was announced he was to be replaced by Vaai Kolone, representative for Vaisigano, and brother of Lesatele Rapi, Minister of Works in Mataafa’s old cabinet.
Instead, Kolone became Minister of Health in the place of Fuimaono Moasope, who became Minister of Post Office and Radio.
Tuala Paulo then moved from the Justice Department to the Education Ministry, having changed places with Amoa Tausilia, while the rest of the ministers retained their portfolios. • The Fiji Rugby Union has been urged to seek more major inter national matches and visits by leading overseas sides. This follows a series of losses on overseas tours, culminat ing with a $3,000 loss on last year’s tour of New Zealand. The Fiji Rugby
Union secretary Derek Robinson told the union’s annual meeting in Suva recently that the international tours agreement was working against Fiji.
The agreement provides for the home country to take all profits from tours and is based on the supposition that return tours over the years would even expenses out. Mr. Robinson said that over recent years Fiji played 128 games overseas and had two major internationals (Wales and NZ) and four NZ Maori team tours in return.
He said last season’s loss had only been offset by the generosity of the Hawkes Bay Rugby Union of NZ.
A tour by its Saracens side had given the union more than $6OO. Sir Maurice Scott, stepped down after 23 years as president of the union, and is succeeded by Ratu Penaia Ganilau, Fiji’s Minister for Defence and manager of Fiji touring teams in NZ in 1957 and England and Wales this year. • Legislation designed to improve the economic development of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was approved in April by the US Senate Interior Committee. Among other things, the bill would imple ment a US-Japanese agreement to provide $5 million by each country to compensate inhabitants of the islands who suffered damages during World War 11. It would also set up a Micronesian Claims Commission to handle such claims, and increase from $1 million to $5 million an existing authorisation for funds to assist the area’s economic develop ment. • The Marshall Islanders are counting the days until the new
SUS 2 million-plus Majuro airfield will
be operational reports the Micronitor, published in Majuro. Future plans call for the extension of the runway to 10,000 ft to accommodate larger jets, including the Jumbo 7475. Mean while the construction site is a hub of activity where man and machines are clawing the landscape. • This year’s Town and Country Planning Overseas summer school, to be held at Southampton University, UK, in September, will discuss “management in the planning process”. Those interested in plan ning problems in developing countries can get further information from Mr. P. R. Rathbone, Town and Country Planning Summer School, c/o Town Planning Institute, 26, Portland Place, London WIN 4BE. • The Australasian Petroleum Company in April announced plans to drill an oil well in the Southern Highlands of Papua. The well, the
27th drilled by the company in the territory, will be on the Mananda anticline some eight miles south of the Komo-Mananda patrol post and airstrip. A base camp has been set up at Komo and areas of ground are being prepared for storage of materials, helicopter pads and for the eventual camps for the personnel who will live at Komo during the drilling operation. • A Sydney-based mining com pany, Southland Mining Ltd., has been granted permission to apply for prospecting licences and mining leases in the New Hebrides. The three-year old company is interested in manga nese production and minerals explora tion. It already has an interest in the French company mining at Forari, Le Manganese de Vate. The authorisation does not aply to Tanna, which is not open to prospecting for the time being. • George Barley, a Fiji representa tive Rugby player, has signed up in the cash ranks with the Balmain (Sydney) Rugby League team. Bar ley, a part-European, started his career with the Cadets club in the Suva European competition, and from there graduated to top rank in the Army. More than a decade ago, Fiji Rugby writer, the late Frank Ryan, tipped Barley as one who would have a successful career. He toured England and Wales with Fijian teams, and in April was one of two Fiji players chosen to go to England to take part in the Rugby Union centen ary celebrations. He has signed a con tract to play for Balmain for three years. • A new terminal has been com pleted at Bauerfield airport, Vila, and its facilities are already being used by overseas carriers, UTA and Pacific Islands Airways. • The senior New Guinean officer in the Australian Army, Captain E. D. Diro, has been promoted to the rank of major. He is now com manding officer of C Company, First Battalion, Pacific Islands Regiment, the first New Guinean to be a com pany commander. • Sixty-one Tongans will arrive in New Zealand in May to work in Wellington’s Hutt Valley industrial area. They are all aged between 21 and 45, and they are the first under a new scheme to give Tongans employment in NZ. • Papua-New Guinea has become a full member of the Asian Develop ment Bank and the Assistant Ministerial Member for the Territory,
Mr. Oala Oala Rama, has been ap pointed territory governor of the bank. The bank will provide tech nical assistance and access to soft loans at an interest rate as low as H per cent., as well as loans at com mercial rates. In April Mr. Rama spoke at the ADB annual meeting in Singapore and said PNG people realised that political independence must be accompanied by economic and financial self-reliance. He added that as local resources of capital and skilled manpower were scarce, economic development would depend heavily on continuing investment.
Seventy-five per cent, of the people were still involved in subsistence pro duction, but agricultural production for export was still the basic monetary activity, he said. • An influenza outbreak over Easter filled the Nukualofa hospital.
Although there were no deaths, the public were told there was no room for further admissions. • Papua-New Guinea’s new national flag, approved by the House of Assembly at its March sitting, made its international debut in Singapore in April, when it flew alongside flags of other nations at a meeting of the Asian Development Bank, attended by P-NG delegates.
The flag has been flown publicly in P-NG for some weeks, alongside the Australian flag. • The New Zealand Leper’s Tmst Board in April gave a record SNZ 188,000 for the relief of leprosy and other tropical diseases in the South Pacific. Among the grants was $3,000 for occupation therapy facilities at the P. J. Twomey leper hospital in Fiji and $40,000 for a new lecture theatre at the Fiji School of Medicine.