Do-Gooders Rock The

Torres Strait Boat

Public controversy in Australia is driving Papua New Guinea to aban don its negotiations with Canberra to fix a Torres Strait border between the two countries.

The alternative is a World Court action in which PNG will go over Australia’s head and lay claim to a border of its own choosing.

PNG’s mounting impatience with the situation emerged in mid-March through a statement made in Port Moresby by the Foreign Minister Sir Maori Kiki.

Sir Maori disclosed that the only reason PNG had not made legal claim to a border at independence was because it believed a negotiated solution could be reached with Australia as a “friendly neighbour”.

But the incessant and mounting public controversy in Australia, in cluding the activities of well-inten tioned organisations, was fast ex hausting PNG’s patience, Sir Maori said.

Sir Maori lumped together the political attitude of the Queensland Government, the well-meaning in tentions of do-gooders and the pre cedents quoted by researchers as factors in the mounting pressures on his country.

“There are just no precedents,” he said.

He said he did not advocate that Australians and Papua New Gui neans should be kept in the dark about what was being negotiated, but public interference in Australia was taking the matter out of the do main of government-to-government talks.

Sir Maori said Papua New Guinea was prepared, if necessary, to “con test the matter with every legal means at our disposal even if we have to spend money we can’t afford”.

The move which pushed Sir Maori close to the brink of calling off the negotiations was an invita tion to address a seminar in Sydney on March 18-19.

The seminar was organised by the Australian Council of Churches to examine all aspects of the Torres Strait border controversy, including

the rights of Islanders living in the area.

Sir Maori refused the invitation, but said he was fast beginning to doubt the wisdom of remaining quiet in the field of public debate when a one-sided picture was being presented with distortions from sources in Australia.

He said he felt tempted to con vene an international seminar in Port Moresby to discuss whether developed countries should be per mitted to rely on “alleged colonial boundaries at the expense of neighbouring developing coun tries”.

Sir Maori told of the restraint which he and his government had exercised in avoiding public debate and controversy on the border issue.

He said this was because the mat ter was between two governments, the people were being kept properly informed, and both governments had agreed that public debate would not assist a peaceable solution.

In a lengthy letter to the Council of Churches, Sir Maori made his strongest attack yet on Australia’s formal attitudes towards a border settlement.

He claimed moral justification for the border sought by PNG, and said that international legal opinion, as well as moral opinion, were swing ing in PNG’s favour.

PNG and Australia have been negotiating settlement of a border in Torres Strait for more than a year.

The talks came to a stalemate when PNG announced that it could not accept some of Australia’s de mands, but both countries stressed that the talks had not broken down and that negotiations would con tinue.

United?

Mr Anton Parao, Member for Enga in the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly, was expelled from the United Party in March. An official party statement said the expulsion followed Mr Parao's failure to act on a letter sent to him in February de manding his immediate resignation from the party. (In other words, he didn't fall, so he was pushed.)