Purse For The Islands

Australia Opens Its

Fiji, Western Samoa, and the Solomon Islands are among 13 nations due to receive more than $1,000,000 each from Australia in the next 12 months.

The $5,300,000 allocated to Fiji in 1976-77 is part of a programme for South-west Pacific nations for the year totalling $11,000,000 in direct or bilateral aid.

The Australian High Commission in Fiji said that $3,700,000 of the Fiji programme for next year was for projects proposed by the Fiji Govern ment, including the integrated rural development programme for housing, electrification, water supplies, and jet ties in rural areas. Extension of Suva’s water supply and sewerage and the development of beef cattle farms were proposed also as part of this “project aid”.

Australia had offered Fiji wheat worth $BOO,OOO to be milled into flour under the International Food Aid Convention.

An allocation of $500,000 was to be made for training Fiji people either in Fiji or abroad, and $150,000 was to be allocated to the Fiji Government for the staffing assistance scheme which is designed to meet the difference between Fiji salaries and the salaries needed to employ suitable Australian experts.

Australia was to lend Fiji $1,220,000 to help finance the Nadi- Suva highway, part of a $2,700,000 loan made for the highway on more generous terms than were available commercially.

This year $lOO,OOO was being allocated to the Australian fund for the preservation and development of South Pacific cultures, which was launched at the South Pacific Forum in 1974.

Australia would contribute an es timated $128,000 to the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation and $132,000 to the South Pacific Air Transport Council.

The release said that Australia’s commitment to assisting developing countries was reflected in its decision to increase its aid programme for 1976/77 by 15 per cent at a time when

growth in government spending at home was being curtailed.

The total $398,504,000 Australian aid programme was estimated to represent 0.49 per cent of the forecast gross national product for the year, which compares with the average for member countries of the development assistance committee of the Organisa tion for Economic Co-operation and Development of 0.36 per cent in 1975.

Jobs: Lord

Howe shows how

While places elsewhere in New South Wales have unemployment rates as high as 10%, tiny Lord Howe Island has jobs going begging.

The NSW Minister for Lands, Mr Crabtree, discovered the strange Lord Howe scene on a visit to the island in September.

He said: “They don’t know what unemployment is. The Island Board has jobs for six men that it can’t fill because of the full employment situa tion. Works programmes such as the foreshore protection planning scheme are being delayed.”

Mr Crabtree visited the island for talks on amendments to the Lord Howe Island Act, which will be in troduced in the NSW Parliament before Christmas.

The new legislation will preserve the island as a natural tourist resort with strict controls on future develop ment and careful preservation of flora and fauna.

A ‘Nauru’

in Lau Group

Phosphate deposits in Lau could be large enough to supply Fiji’s agriculture with most of its needs for the fertiliser for several years.

According to the country’s Mineral Resources Department three islands in the group have a total of about two million tons, with Tuvuca alone hav ing about 1,400,000 tons of clay con taining an average of 10% of phosphate.