Picking up Australia's

Png’S 10 Years Of Independence

Picking up Australia's Burden

In the deluge of con gratulatory statements on September 16, 1975, the Australian prime minister and the Australian governor general both chose to speak of their personal roles in the pre cipitating events and of their confidence in the foundations of the new nation. It was a final overseas harmony between Mr Gough Whitlam and Sir John Kerr before massive Canberra discord.

In a day of public euphoria, praise and optimism were ex pected; and there was much to applaud. The Australians had taken their political leave quick ly, peacefully and generously.

There were no political prison ers to be released; no freedom fighters to emerge from the hills and take their uniforms, guns and anger into office; and no smoke from the burning of the outgoing government’s files to drift among the celebrating crowds.

But 10 years have revealed defects and rigidity in the legacy left by the Australians in Papua New Guinea. The easy asser tions about finding anew way and Sir Julius Chan’s simple statement, “Now it’s up to us,” seem to have been too optimis tic.

The weight of the past has been heavy on Waigani and village. And the gentle transi tion in which Australians changed their nominal image from paternity to fraternity did not provoke the fire and cohe sion in Papua New Guineans which might have enabled them to be more efficient and innovative. Australia was right to move with and ahead of demand in the early 19705: the defects in Australia’s legacy have other and deeper roots.

Proximity confused Austra lians about whether deve lopment in Papua New Guinea should be any different from that in the other great Com monwealth land, the Northern

On September 16 Papua New Guinea celebrates the 10th anniversary of its independence from colonial rule. By most standards, the run-up to self-rule was smooth, the transition friendly, and the aftermath stable and responsible. But, as DR HANK NELSON, Senior Fellow at the Australian National University’s Research School of Pacific Studies, argues in this article, while much was good, and dedication notable particularly among Australians charged with administering the territory out in the bush, a lot was also lacking in that which Australia gave to the incoming leaders.

Territory. Perhaps both were to be made Australian. From annexation many of the basic institutions of British New Guinea were deliberately Aus tralian. Where in Fiji Dr (later Sir) William MacGregor had worked with Sir Arthur Gordon to integrate Fijian custom and organisation into the colonial order, in British New Guinea he imposed Australian laws and practices wherever practicable.

The same assumption about Papua’s constitutional destiny was accepted by the committee enquiring in 1939 into the possibility of amalgamating Papua with Mandated New Guinea (Eggleston, 1939). If Australia’s policy then was to prepare Papua to become an Australian state it follows that those charged with im plementing that policy should be judged on how well they prepared Papua for integration in the Australian federation rather than on the extent to which they built for an indepen dent nation. But, in fact, Austra lia was always uncertain of its purpose in Papua.

Uncertainty As the day when Papua might make the transition to state seemed so far away, Aus tralians did not have to think about the contradictions inhe rent in the notion of adding half a million black people to a white Australia. They continued

to avoid the problem, and the uncertainty persisted.

Australians in Papua were not colonists: they were still in Australian territory. But the Pa puans were not Australians, although they lived in the same place. The Australians in Papua were on the Australian frontier.

They expected the credit that Australians had given other pioneers,and were hurt when they were regarded as adventurers and exploiters in “the islands.” Yet they were likely at other times to see themselves as builders of points of civilisation in what was clear ly another and different part of the vast British Empire. The Union Jack, rather than the Australian flag, was flown out side Government House, Port Moresby, until the 19505.

In the Mandated Territory the uncertainty took a different form. New Guinea was part of the compensation paid for 60,000 Australians killed in World War I; and those ex servicemen who took up posi tions in the government and on plantations did not expect their reward to be temporary. But, at the same time, Australians were conscious of obligations that they had accepted under the Treaty of Versailles; and they did not doubt that they would be more benevolent than the departing Germans. There were gross inconsistencies be tween the “sacred trust” and a

prize of war; but they, too, could be left to that misty future that clouded Australian policy in Papua.

The lack of a clearly defined policy coupled with the mis leading belief that Papua New Guinea would somehow con tinue to have a formal associa tion with Australia, stopped Australians from developing or allowing to develop institu tions and procedures in law, politics, education and adminis tration that were appropriate to a separate nation. The policy adopted by MacGregor con tinued; it was desirable if the territories were to become part of Australia or even just “run parallel.” That confusion of policy sprang easily from the contradiction contained in Aus tralia’s perception of New Guinea - it was their frontier and where overseas began. The perception and policy in turn help explain why Papua New Guineans came so suddenly to power and at the same time struggled to define the basic institutions of government. It was a fundamental deficit of Australian rule that they allowed Papua New Guineans to take office so inexperienced in executive government and with some organs of govern ment either breaking down or being changed.

Orderly The self-congratulations of Australians about the orderly transfer of power and the appa rent rationality of the con stitutional steps disguised the reality. In 1951 the Legislative Council was established with three nominated Papua New Guineans; in 1961 its member ship was increased to include six elected Papua New Gui neans; in 1964 the House of Assembly first met with full adult franchise for 44 open electorates; in 1968 the House of Assembly was expanded and Papua New Guineans with the

required educational qualifica tions could stand for regional electorates; and in 1972 the House was again enlarged. At the same time members were apparently being given experi ence in the executive as Under secretaries, then Ministerial Members, and as members of the Administrator’s Council (later the Administrator’s ex ecutive council).

But, in fact, when the So mare coalition government was formed in 1972 only three members (Lapun, Guise and Diria) had had any experience of nominal executive govern ment, and within 20 months the coalition ministry ruled a self governing Papua New Guinea.

The constitutional changes of 20 years effectively had been compressed into less than two.

During the three years of Papua New Guinean initiation into national government, the executive faced successive crises while the Constitutional Planning Committee, and the parliament as a whole, consi dered the form of government to be adopted by an indepen dent Papua New Guinea. The results of those deliberations came into force with independ ence. The new nation then came into existence under an untried constitution with its new definitions of relations between the various levels, offices and arms of government, and its new procedures, for example, on how to secure a vote of no confidence in a prime minister.

Although there was obvious continuity between the central governments of pre- and post independence, the provincial governments bore little re semblance to the old District Advisory Councils. It could be said that Papua New Guineans, having made the decision to establish the provincial assemb lies, should accept responsibility for their creation and perform ance; but provincial assemblies arose in part from regional feelings stimulated by Austra lian administration and they were established to contain secessionist forces that the Aus tralians had been unable to moderate.

Great hope At the third level of govern ment that of the local coun cils Papua New Guineans

inherited a system that had partly broken down. The coun cils had once been the great hope of Australians in their endeavors to implant traditions of orderly western-styled gov ernment. In 1962, after a de cade as minister, Hasluck wrote a minute stressing that each council was to be “a school of political advancement.” Fifteen years after the war, 39 councils had been formed and they covered only 14 per cent of the total population. From 1960 growth was rapid, with the number of people in councils tripling in the next three years so that just under half the population were formally under council rule by 1964. Asa result, most people voted in the first general election for the House of Assembly before they had a local council, and another 30 per cent had only recently been included in council boundaries. Rather than the councils being training grounds, most people were initiated into the mechanics of voting at national elections before they had participated in formal local government.

In the early 19605, when the councils were being spread rapidly, disillusioned villagers in the older council areas were already turning away. The councils did not give them what they wanted: the dignity that went with understanding and controlling their own affairs, an entry into bisnis and a means of settling disputes. In the 19605, too, the councils were enlarged so that some 40 or 50 council lors might be elected to administer 30,000 people: it was no longer a village govern ment and no effective village institution had been created to replace it.

This was the situation inher ited by a self-governing Papua New Guinea in 1973: a minor ity of the people were within the authority of vigorous local gov ernment councils, and the rest were in areas where either the council worked fitfully to carry out minor public works and welfare projects or it had vir tually ceased all effective opera tions. Even where the councils worked they tended to operate at a level that left many villages with no formal institutional ties to the national system. In the main towns local governments

that covered squatters, suburbs, business districts and traditional villages were new and in flux.

To put the worst case: Australia relinquished power to inexperi enced Papua New Guineans, and at neither the local, provin cial nor national levels did they move into systems of govern ment which were efficient, tested and doing what Papua New Guineans wanted.

Another major, and related, deficiency was that Papua New Guineans did not inherit an effective formal method of set tling disputes at the village level.

For over 20 years of Australia’s postwar administration there was sustained debate between those who as Sir Paul Hasluck has said wanted “a single system of courts administering a single body of law” following procedures identical across the Territory and all presided over by “pro fessional” appointees, and those who made the pragmatic case that as 75 per cent of all causes were currently being heard by unofficial tribunals there was an immediate need to bring them within the formal judicial system.

Stewardship At the end of Australia’s stewardship it was still probably true that most disputes were being settled and most trans gressors of locally accepted law were being punished by indi viduals and groups beyond the supervision of official courts.

When considering postwar political change in Papua New Guinea the 1950 s seem the period of inactivity. The same sense of a lost decade can be illustrated sharply by looking at education. Unlike the haze that clouded their constitutional goals, Australians expressed a precise educational target.

J.K.Murray said in 1946: “The first requirement is universal literacy ... ” Changes in the ministry and at the top of the public service brought slight redirection. There was also no doubt that this was one Austra lian policy in accord with Papua New Guinean aspirations. Yet Australians maintained a policy in terms of teacher training, school curricula and buildings that made it impossible for them to come close to reaching their goal of universal literacy.

Twenty-five years after the end

of the war and on the eve of self-government, about half of all children of primary school age still had no school to go to; and while opportunities even within small areas were grossly unequal, in Port Moresby over 1000 children between five and 15 could not get into any school and about three-quarters of the potential school population in the Highlands had no place in a classroom. Those lucky ones entering the system had little chance of staying long enough to acquire a qualification to obtain jobs demanding literacy in English. About one-third of the students who began pri mary school could find a place in higher education.

Clearly Australia ought to have either changed the aim or adopted radically different means of reaching it. The in coming Papua New Guinea government still faced fun damental questions of how to distribute limited resources to achieve the best and fairest return. Had more Papua New Guineans entered the schools in the first 15 years after the war, and had higher education developed correspondingly ear lier, Papua New Guinea might now have a few men and women over 45 holding higher degrees. It is impossible to say what influence they would have had in the late 19605, and what they would be doing now, but Papua New Guinea would be the richer had they been around.

Violence One of the most pressing and publicised problems faced by the post-independence govern ment has been that of violence in the Highlands. Two myths are gathering about the antece dents to the present waves of turmoil. Firstly, it is said that in the days before Australian in tervention tribal warfare was marked by ceremony and re straint. Traditional leaders could, according to this view, control the “hotheads” so that once an aggrieved clan had secured a token of redress peace would be obtained through exchanges of wealth.

No doubt that did happen sometimes; but warfare in the Highlands was also as unre strained and ruthless as it has

Continued on page 54

once worked as the First Lord.

A pleasant, middle-aged Brit ish woman thumbs through her pencilled FCO telephone book, maintained in an alphabetically tabbed journal (no computers here); the receptionist dials him and he appears a few minutes later, tall, serious and apologe tic for the brief delay. He suggests we avoid the lifts and we walk up several flights of steps in an open-air stairwell, the kind that have long been banned in the States as fire traps.

Paul O’Connor is not an empire-builder, his task is main tenance. Although the popula tion of Pitcairn is small, everything that needs to be done by and for the residents is labor-intensive and awkward.

There is no harbor, and long boats must come alongside ships standing offshore. Medical and dental care and post primary education must be se cured hundreds-to-thousands of miles away, often in New Zealand. If a piece of equip ment needs to be delivered, O’Connor must try to persuade some shipping company to go out of its way to take it to the island. “It is much harder now than it used to be,” O’Connor explains, “the tramp steamers of the South Pacific used to have cranes and carry mixed cargo but now most of them are container vessels.”

One of O’Connor’s (and the government’s) current projects is the new £2,000,000 jetty being constructed in the island’s Bounty Bay. The contract has been let and work is proceed ing, but the logistics are difficult.

At one point in the not-too distant past a bulldozer was needed on the island and it was parachuted in; O’Connor was not sure whether it was dam aged in the course of delivery.

The island, for internal pur poses, is largely self-governing.

The residents elect an Island Council and a Magistrate, who apparently has both executive and judicial functions. Next up the ladder is the island’s Com missioner, in the British Consu late-General in Auckland. He arranges for shipping, for medi cal evacuations, and raises most of the island’s public funds by presiding over the relationship with the world’s stamp collec

tors. Then there is the Gov ernor of the island who lives in Wellington; he is a career diplo mat who also serves as High Commissioner to New Zealand and Western Samoa. The Gov ernor, unlike O’Connor, visits the island occasionally; both of them read the island’s monthly newsletter often months after it appears on Pitcairn.

One of O’Connor’s most re cent issues of Pitcairn Miscel lany was that of October, 1984, which told of the “Historic Visit by Norfolk Islanders,” a group of 28 members of families that had left Pitcairn for Norfolk Island some 128 years ago (PIM Apr., p 47). It was the “first” ever mass visit by that branch of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers. The Mis cellany’s readership is so small that people are rarely identified by more than their first names.

The October issue reported, for instance, that the Magistrate, IVAN, had to be evacuated to Dunedin for treatment.

The Nadi-based United Touring Fiji Ltd. has announced the appointment of former em ployee MACK IKEDA, as its tours manager.

Mr Ikeda rejoined the com pany after a three-year break and assumed responsibility for the active promotion of visitor arrivals from major markets in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

Mr Ikeda stated with UTC in 1972, when he successfully pioneered Fiji as a destination for the Japanese market. The subsequent ground operation of most Japan Airlines charter flights fo Fiji was also his pri mary responsibility for a num ber of years.

Continued from page 24

been in other parts of the world.

Andrew Strathem has recorded Ongka’s account of fighting near Mt Hagen when an alliance of clans caught an enemy group in boggy ground and slaughtered them. Ongka listed 20 of the most important men of the Tipuka and Kawelka clans who were killed and then asked how could anyone recall the names of the less important dead.

Secondly, it is said that the present violence has broken out with the transfer of control to Papua New Guineans. The truth is that the resurgence in tribal fighting began before in ternal self-government. In the year from July 1, 1972, 31 people were killed in inter-clan conflict in the Highlands, 489 were injured, 4709 arrested, and cash crops, food gardens, trade stores and houses de stroyed.

Beyond the particular faults of misdirection or omission, Australia’s intervention in Papua New Guinea has bound former subsistence villagers in the same net that holds so much of the world’s population.

Inequalities between groups and individuals have increased enormously. People have be come dependent on cash, and most can obtain it only by unskilled labor, selling com modites that the poor in other parts of the world are also trying to sell, or by trading away finite resources. Many have become town dwellers.

Ambush All this would have hap pened whichever western pow er had administered the area.

What was surprising was the rush in the final months of Australian control, and during the early period of self-govern ment, to engage selected Papua New Guineans in the world of expense accounts, hire cars, directorships, consultancies, franchise, shares, dividends, and foreign bank accounts.

There was no subtle entangling, but an ambush. (It is also true that some Papua New Gui neans have long resented their relative poverty and impotence and were eager to grasp the spoils. They wanted the style of life enjoyed by those foreigners who are now among their

strongest critics). 1 have no idea whether the process was as rapid, or as blatant, in other parts of the world. Only the scouts of the Papua New Guinea ambush were Austra lian; the main assault force was international. The result was that whereas in 1970 few Papua New Guineans had much financial stake in maintaining the current distribution of wealth this was not the case in 1980. There was still not much ideology; but there was certainly economic interest.

Australia left a daunting list of problems to Papua New Guineas, and gave them few efficient tools to use. But Papua New Guineans do have political and material advantages over many peoples made subser vient at the height of western imperialism. Most natural re sources remain to be exploited by Papua New Guineans; there was almost no tradition of politi cal harassment; there was little corruption; there were no in ternational enemies; a reserve of mutual goodwill remained in both Australia and Papua New Guinea; there was a tradition of frank, direct and generally be nign contact between govern ment officers and villagers; there was a record of getting benefits “to the bush”; the health service was innovative and appropriate; and Australia was served by many officers who were more talented and dedicated than their salaries or public estimation required.

Their attitudes have yet to be analysed and placed in the context of other Australian and other imperial racial values of the time. (Strangely, many of the best bushmen seem to have been born in the suburbs.) If we assume that the feckless and self-indulgent Australians had an influence, then we must accept that the behavior of these other Australians was also of lasting significance.

And those most ready to find fault with Australia’s record in Papua New Guinea rarely re cord the enormous size of the task. With few resources a small number of Australians tried to bring about massive social, political and economic revolu tion. The degree of success is more surprising than the fail ures.

Mack Ikeda ... back with Un ited Touring Fiji. Ramesh Studios photo.