Up Front

with the Editor

According to Governor Eriau of New Caledonia there are hard times ahead for Caledonia in 1975. And he’s talking for only one Pacific territory. Whether they have said it or not (and some of them have) other Islands leaders will be thinking the same thing. Myself, I don’t like the smell of 1975.

Economically, all Islands groups are suffering from inflation and a down-turn in the economy. Some high prices for produce help mask the situation in some places in 1974, but there are no guarantees for 1975.

Inflation is, unfortunately, not Islands-made, and therefore the Islands groups have less opportunity to control it than has say, Australia, which is strong in production and has some economic independence.

Not so the Islands, which import somebody else’s inflation every time a ship arrives with foodstuffs and household goods.

The effects are as serious on the small islands as on the large. For an example you need only to turn to p 78 and read how irate Wallis Island ers removed their French adminis trator and demanded the withdrawal of a shipping line in protest at the soaring price of imported goods.

The Wallis Islanders achieved something—a 20 per cent cut in freight rates and a 20 per cent cut in grocery prices on the shelves. But they were extraordinarily lucky. It is not happening anywhere else.

The effect of government wage and price restraints is never as suc cessful as governments hope. What usually happens, as in Fiji, is that wages are repressed but prices con tinue upwards uncontrolled since most goods have to be imported. To overcome their wage restraints skilled Fiji workers are changing jobs, be cause wage restrictions don’t apply to new positions. But what happens then is that job competition becomes keener and wages go up as firms compete with each other to buy and sell the trained people available, all adding to the inflationary spiral. No body benefits.

Politically, 1975 will be confused.

New Hebrides has finally won for itself some political progress, although it has to be made to work.

In the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony this is the year when the

Ellice Islanders learn whether they really can break away from the Gil berts; in Micronesia this is the year when the Marianas break away from the rest of the Trust Territory. In Papua New Guinea this is the year when the nation gains independence —but what it will look like with so many districts already talking about their own independence, I can’t try to predict so early in the new year.

In French Polynesia and New Caledonia there will be greater pressures for more self-government, and Paris will be kidding itself if it believes otherwise. In the Cooks, Sir Albert Henry has got back into power and is talking openly about being a dictator—and he’s capable of being one. In Western Samoa it is election year with some growing confusion about who is capable of leading the country out of the econ omic doldrums.

In the British Solomons the first Chief Minister, Solomon Mamaloni, has been appointed after many months of behind-the-scenes efforts to get some political unanimity, the result being that the Chief Minister has not got the political support any body in his position should have, and thus 1975 is a difficult year for the Solomons too. There are also some unpleasant reactions in the Solomons oyer the Chief Minister’s attack on his own Information and Radio ser vices, which has resulted in censor ship and the loss of his principal in formation officer, allegedly accused of bias. Denis Fisk, the information officer, in a piece which he is writing for PlM’s February issue, claims that the only bias the Sblomons in formation services have indulged in is the bias of attempting to provide balanced news, and that freedom of the Press and freedom of speech is in danger in the Solomons.

Anyway, let’s all give a big hand to 1975! The year, after all, is inevitable.

Stuart Inder