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Constitution

By Percy Chatterton

The second meeting of Papua New Guinea’s third House of Assembly, held in June, was a short one, lasting only nine sitting days, but some very important developments took place in that time.

In the first place, there was a change of Speaker. Speaker Perry Kwan, who was elected by a majority of one at the first meeting in April, stepped down in the face of mount ing dissatisfaction with his perform ance in the Chair, and, after the names of several indigenous members had been canvassed for the job, the House’s choice went to Tasmanian Barry Holloway, member for Eastern Highlands Regional, earlier a member of the first, but not the second.

House, and a foundation member of the Pangu Party.

Mr Kwan extracted himself with dignity and humour from an em barrassing situation in which he should never have been placed. Re marking that he had been the Com monwealth’s youngest Speaker and its most ephemeral in length of tenure, he anticipated and short circuited moves to unseat him by tendering his resignation.

For most of its performance to date the National Coalition deserves high marks, but for its maladroitness in forcing a deeply divided House to accept a young and inexperienced new member as its Speaker I can only accord it a C minus, and extend my sincere sympathy to Mr Kwan.

Of the important steps forward taken by the House at this meeting perhaps the most important was the decision to set up an all-party com mittee charged with the task of shaping a draft constitution for a future independent Papua New Guinea. The step was not taken without some dissention.

The United Party opposition wanted the committee to include outside experts; the government was determined to have a home-tailored constitution, though it conceded that a point would be reached at which it would be necessary to call in the experts to put the committee’s ideas into formal shape and legal language.

It is to be hoped that the fact that the members of the committee have

Quick dollar principle

been so recently elected to parliament by the people and represent a very broad spectrum of political opinion will encourage them to get on with the job without messing around with extensive and expensive tours aimed at “consulting the people”. Consult ing the people is all very well, but it can be overdone. It can also be ill done.

Consulting the people can best be done by giving them an opportunity of voting in parliamentary elections, and occasionally perhaps on very important issues in properly con ducted referendums. It is ill-done when it consists of stumping the countryside seeking answers to badly formulated and half - understood questions from casually assembled groups of people who may or may not be representative of the people of their areas as a whole, and then dishing up their uninformed, ill considered and possibly unrepresenta tive answers as “the wishes of the people”.

A second important decision reached at this meeting was that of calling for a commission of inquiry into land problems. This step was first proposed in 1971 by Julius Chan, parliamentary leader of the Peoples’

Progress Party, when the second House stone-walled the efforts of the administration to win approval for the new land laws it had drafted; but at that time the official benches, although not able to bulldoze their legislation through, were able to muster sufficient support to defeat the proposal for a commission.

Now it has been accepted, and the Administrator, who alone, as the law stands at present, has the power to appoint a commission of inquiry, is faced with the embarrassing task of appointing one which the Adminis tration docs not want, or still more embarrassingly of refusing to appoint it.

The third event of importance was the tabling by Chief Minister Michael Somare of a white paper entitled “A Programme for Development: Principles, Choices and Priorities”.

Very general in scope, and seeking to ask questions rather than to answer them, this document may be regarded as a warming-up exercise for the preparation of Papua New Guinea’s second Five Year Plan, due in 1973.

It is chiefly notable as indicating belated abandonment of the principle, wished on us by the World Bank in 1964—the principle of the quick dollar, in other words, of maximal development of the most econo mically promising areas with con

comitant neglect of the less promising ones, regardless of social and political factors and consequences.

It has become increasingly evident during the last few years that the implementation of this policy would lead us headlong into national dis unity. In this white paper it is formally interred, and I for one will shed no tears over its grave.

For the rest, the National Coali tion appears to have consolidated its position. Its component parts have held together when the division bells have rung, though some of its non party supporters have not been averse to criticising it in debate.

Its next testing time will come at the end of August, when it will have to commend its first budget to the House.

During the course of the meeting the chief minister announced the National Coalition’s target date for full internal self-government—De cember, 1973, or as soon as possible thereafter. Then, when the House had adjourned "to a date to be fixed by Mr Speaker”, Mr Somare, with con siderable courage, set off on a tour of the Highlands to commend his timetable to the areas in which it is least likely to be acceptable.

The reception of his plan there has ranged from resigned acceptance of the inevitable to threats of secession if the plan is implemented, and even in one place to a threat that if it were they would kill their own local MHAs and throw their bodies into the river.

If and when Mr Somare visits the Gazelle Peninsula and Bougainville, he will no doubt be met with threats of secession if the plan is not im plemented. He will then be in a good position to divine the true nature of that elusive entity, “the wishes of the

people”.

I can think of one person whose neat coiffure will be unruffled by threats of secession. Miss Josephine Abaijah, MHA for Central Regional, wouldn’t care a hoot if not only the New Guinea Highlands but the whole of New Guinea decided to secede from Papua. • A transport company wholly owned by Nasioi villagers has won a big contract for the disposal of garbage and sanitary waste from Arawa town in Bougainville.

The company, Pikonova Transport, tendered successfully for the three year contract which is worth more than $186,000.

Under the terms of the contract the company had to have bulldozers, trucks and all other necessary equip ment.