Pacific Islands Monthly

Vol. 59, No. 17 ( Jun. 1, 1989)
1989-06-01 · uncorrected OCR from NLA scans

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHY American Samoa USS2.OO Australia A 52.50 Cook Islands NZ$3,OO Fiji F 51.75 Hawaii USS2.SO Kiribati As 2 00 Nauru A 52.00 New Caledonia CFP2SO New Zealand NZ$3.OO Niue NZ$2.5O Norfolk Island A 52.00 Papua New Guinea K 2.00 Solomon Islands 552.00 Tahiti CFP3OO Tonga P 2.00 Tuvalu A 52.00

Usa Uss3.Oo

USTT and Guam USS2.SO Vanuatu VT2.00 Western Samoa T 2.75 ♦Recommended retail price only JUNE 1989 Bounty on display Vanuatu | tourist I push mghtpage | business I section

It takes a measure of innovation to make a classic statement .

To set new standards, one must have e healthy disregard for timeworn formula and a genuine respect for innovatio The kind of innovation that went into the Honda Legend Sedan, a car that has the automotive world reevaluating its standards of quality, design, comfor and value.

With functional elegance drawn to exacting specifications, the Legend has lean looks that speak of serious drivinj potential. Looks that do not deceive.

Beneath the Legend's low aerodynami . s'* . -• i AUSTRALIA: Honda Australia Pty., Ltd. Lot 95 Sharps Road, Tullamarine, Victoria 3043/NEW ZEALAND: Honda New Zealand Ltd. P.O. Box 97-340, South Auckland/PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Toba Pty„ Ltd. PO. 503, Port Moresby/TAHITI Honda Distribution S.A. R.L. B P 1665, Papeete/KIRIBATI: Atoll Motor & Marino Services PO. Box 49. Bairiki Tarawa, Republic of Kiribati/U.S. TRUST TERRITORY: United■M'cron Development Association P O Box 235, CHRB Saipan CM 96950/COOK ISLANDS: Cook Islands Motor Centre Ltd. P O. Box 74, Rarotonga/GUAM: Mark’s Motor Co., Inc. P.O. Box DV. Agana/WESTERN SAW Motor Distributors (Samoa) Ltd. P.O Box 576, Apia/SOLOMON ISLANDS: Lee Kwok Kuen & Co.. Ltd. PO, Box 537, Honiara/NAURU: Nauru Cooperation Republic of Nauru/FIJI: Coral Island Motors Ltd P a 12052 Suva Fiji/AMERICAN SAMOA: Holiday Motors, Parts and Service P.O, Box 968, Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799: Heleck’s Service Center Ltd. PO, Box 1 138 Pago Pago American Samoa 96799/TON Tonga Industrial Traders P O Box 1035, Nukualofa, Tonga/NORFOLK ISLAND; Duncombe Bay Garage P.O. Box 220, Norfolk Island South Pacific 2899/VANUATU: Honda Farm Ltd. P.O. Box 1031, Pori Vila, Van

hood beats the heart of a high performance 2.7-liter V 6 24-valve engine with race-bred PGM-FI programmed fuel injection. A sophisticated 4-wheel double wishbone suspension is teamed with an advanced 4-wheel Anti-Lock Braking system to give new meaning to the words "comfort" and "precision".

Inside, you will discover luxurious surroundings without ostentation a world of rich leathers* and woods that accentuates your driving pleasure and inspires a mood of quiet relaxation.

The Legend Sedan, in short, is the standard bearer of a new era that combines luxury performance with unrivaled comfort and distinctive styling E with timeless elegance. A car that makes a classic statement by departing from conventional wisdom. ’Leather seats are optionally available.

SEDAN ' V - 'l*'.' f jg/, 7 ’’V A*. -AT ' <L/>i fry mV < f nekiu &&&#*-■ x J /./ • ;* Vr; " ■ X o*h , ' $ f<S&r ' > » „ Specifications and equipment may vary in some countries the 1988 Formula One Constructor's Championship, anda engines powered the HONDA Marlboro cLaren to victory, as they did the illiams HONDA team in 1986 and 1987.

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PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY Vol. 59 No. 17

Voice Of The Pacific

June, ’B9 Cover Story i 6 Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene are the latest victims of the clash between European and Pacific cultures and aspirations. Their deaths strike at the heart of the Matignon accord and threaten the stability of the Rocard Government. David Robie and Nicholas Rothwell report on events in New Caledonia and Paris.

Cook Islands Pearl Industry Under Threat 8

Cheryl Lilly reports on a dispute that could cost the Cooks millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Zeder Under The Spotlight 16

An old friend of US President George Bush aims for high Pacific office but allegations of impropriety may halt his bid.

The Healers Of Tonga Are Tired 18

The doctors and surgeons of Tonga are over-worked and face a frightening lack of resources.

Pacific Treasure In Europe 20

Papua New Guinea artwork goes on display in Budapest.

In Search Of Silver Galleons 22

An Australian group is hot on the trail of sunken treasure.

Canoes Are Back In Style 24

Auckland plays host to an exhibition of rare canoes and prepares for an international canoe sprint championship.

Special Eight Page Business News Section 27

Bounty Sets Sail

AGAIN 39 A London exhibition puts Bligh and Christian on a high-tech stage and does them both justice.

Acting Editor Richard Dinnen Editorial Adviser John Carter Art Direction Adam Brooke Richard Dinnen Art Adviser Warren Scott Contributors Robin Bromby Chris Ashton Cheryl Lilly Sarah Kennett David Robie Nicholas Rothwell Diana McManus John Hunter lan Downes David North Ed Rampell Publisher Geoffrey Hussey Advertising Sales Sydney & Melbourne Fergus Maclagan (02) 412 3918, Brisbane Robert Walker (07) 371 0533 Adelaide Hastwell Williamson Representations (08)79 9522 Our editorial office is now located at 20 Gordon Street. Suva. All editorial material and correspondence should be sent there and not to our old Sydney address.

Cover prices are recommended retail only Registered by Australia Post, publication No NBP 1210, Copyright Pip Times Limited, Suva, Fiji Departments OPINION 7 TRANSITION 47 ISLAND PRESS 46 PACIFIC REPORT 42

Shipping Schedules 50

OUT OF THE PAST 54 5 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989 A Fiji Times Limited Production.

Founded 1930 (USPS 952480) 20 Gordon Street, Suva, Fiji; Telex; FJ2124; Fax: (679)314 111 Pacific Islands Monthly (APPS No. NBP 1210) is published monthly by Fiji Times Limited, a division of Nationwide News, 2 Holt St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010. Second class postage paid at Honolulu, Hawaii, POSTMASTER. Send address changes to PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY, PO Box 22250, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. Typeset and printed by Fiji Times Limited, 20 Gordon Street, Suva, Fiji.

Good Looks Ron In The Family

World’s No.l Family of Multi-valve Automobiles Toyota introduces the all-new Corona. A sweeping beauty that slips through the wind with its powerful 2.0-litre 16-valve engine. Aerodynamic. Luxuriously appointed. And Corolla. The car of preference for more drivers in the world than any other. With sleek, spirited looks and a new 1.6-litre 16-valve engine. Two outstanding members of Toyota’s multi-valve family. With over 5 million multi-valves produced and driven daily on roads throughout the world.

TOYOTA

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PACIFIC SLANDS I MON T H L ~n FIJI: Distribution, subscriptions and advertising; Fiji Times Limited, GPO Box 1167, Suva, Fiji. Phone 31-4111 telex FJ2124 FRENCFI POLYNESIA: Distribution: Hachette Pacifique 10 Ave Bruat, Papeete. Phone 25-610 HAWAII: UNITED STATES: Distribution: PIM Hawaii, PO Box 22250, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822 Advertising: Brian C Asgill, Apt 1308, 1676 Ala Moana Blvd , Honolulu Hawaii, 96815. Phone (808) 955-9718 JAPAN: Advertising and subscriptions: Universal Media Corporation, GPO Box 46, Tokyo Phone 666-3036 cable UNIMEDIA Tokyo, telex 2524665 MALAYSIA: Advertising and subscriptions: Worldwide Media Services, 57-B Komplex Damai, Jin Dato Haji Eusoff, Kuala Lumpur Phone 63-9340, cables WORLDMEDIA Kuala Lumpur, telex 31533 VANUATU: Distribution: The Vanuatu Stationery and Book Centre, PO Box 557 Port Vila Advertising: Norman Bros Bookshop Port Vila Phone 2232 NEW CALEDONIA: Distribution: Depot Centre de Presse Michel Pentecost CBP2, Noumea Phone 27 2434, 27-4729 NEW ZEALAND: Distribution: Gordon & Gotch, PO Box 584, 2 Carr Road, Mt Roskill, Auckland 4 Advertising: McKay International Media Reps Ltd, C/- Albany PO, Auckland 10, New Zealand Phone 413-9119.

Telex NZ22701, FAX 413-9110 WELLINGTON: Ross Quaid Media, 1 Scholes Lane Petone (04) 68-7593, PO Box 38699, Petone PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Distribution: Gordon & Gotch PO Box 3395, Port Moresby Phone 25-4551 25-4855 Advertising: Robert Walker, PO Box 600, Indooroopilly Old Australia 4068. Phone (07) 371-0533 SOLOMON ISLANDS: Distribution and Advertising: The Bookshop, (Norman Bros ) PO Box 503, Honiara PHILIPPINES: Advertising: The GF Group, 12 San Ignacio St., Uroaneta Village, Makati, Metro Manila Phone 817-7299, telex 45950 and 4233 UNITED KINGDOM: F A Smyth and Associates, 23A Aylmer Parade, London N2OPO, England. Phone (01 )340 5088, fax (01)341 9602.

UNITED STATES MAINLAND: Advertising: Joshua B Powers Jr , Powers International Inc , Suite 708, 271 Madison Ave , New York, NY 10016 Phone 867-9580, Subscriptions PIM, Hawaii, PO Box 22250, Honolulu Hawaii, 96822 SUBSCRIPTIONS American Samoa US$45 Australia AUSS3O Canada US$45 Cook Islands AUSS46 Fiji F $24 French Polynesia US$45 Guam US$45 Hawaii US$45 Japan US$3B Kiribati AUSS46 Micronesia US$35 Nauru AUSS42 New Caledonia US$32 New Zealand AUSS42 Niue AUSS46 Norfolk Island AUSS42 Northern Marianas US$36 Papua New Guinea AUSS42 Solomon Islands AUSS46 Tonga AUSS46 Tuvalu AUSS46 United Kingdom Stg£2B US (Mainland) US$45 Vanuatu AUSS42 Western Samoa AUSS6O Elsewhere AUSS63 Payments to Pacific Islands Monthly: Subscriptions Dept, GPO Box 1167, Suva, Fiji.

Subscriptions rates includes the cost of airspeeding to all destinations set out above Direct airmail rates on application OPINION From the Bastille to Ouvea THE MURDER of any individual is a brutal crime, always tragic and never justified. When a muraer has a political motivation, it becomes an assassination a word that seems to offer some justification for the crime. Pundits and opponents will suggest that victims knowingly put themselves at risk by taking a public stand. Such killings are lamentable, they say, but are part and parcel of politics. Leaders who attempt to change their society may encounter the ultimate resistance; it is a risk they recognise and knowingly take. The pages of modern history bear the names of many such victims Gandhi, Kennedy, King, Sadat.

They become martyrs to their cause, martyrs to change and progress that is often abruptly and permanently terminated by the assassin’s gun.

Two more names are now added to the list; Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene were gunned down on Ouvea on May 4 as they left a ceremony to mark the end of mourning for 19 Kanaks killed a year ago during an assault by French paramilitary forces. The unlikely assassin, Dioubelly Wea, died of wounds sustained during the attack. As leaders of New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement, Tjibaou and Yeiwene had been at the forefront of the push for change. Were they victims of the inevitable struggle between ELNK elements unwilling to trust the French and their Matignon accord? Were the killings master-minded by the French right wing in an attempt to discredit the Rocard Government? The speculation continues and may never end.

The killings caused deep concern in Paris where politicians saw them as a renewed threat to the Matignon accord, and thus their own slim mandate. It is unlikely the Rocard Government could survive the electoral damage of a new wave of violence in its Pacific territory.

These murders carry special poignancy for France as it prepares to commemorate its bicentenary the 200th anniversary of the storming of the underpopulated and poorly defended Bastille that marked the beginning of the revolution. Edmund Burke wrote with alarming insight in 1791 that France had, by the Revolution, overthrown legality, traditional loyalty and religion as the basis of governmental authority. Reason the professed oasis of authority, was too contentious and so the Frencn would come to rely more and more on armed force to command obedience until a powerful dictatorship took control. The course of the Revolution followed Burke’s prediction almost to the letter, with the tyrrany of the Jacobin reign of terror and the eventual rise of Napoleon.

The French Revolution was proclaimed in the history books as the birth of enlightened European democracy. This may well be so but it is unlikely that the tens of thousands who went to the guillotine would agree. For them and the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Revolution, the period was nothing more than a bloodbath of rape and carnage. The common people were being encouraged and organised to take a direct and influential part m politics, but few could afford the price.

The lesson of history is seldom learned. France now has an opportunity to heed the lesson of the event it is about to commemorate. Independence in New Caledonia is inevitable. It can be achieved by two paths peaceful negotiation or bloody uprising. The slaying of two FLNK leaders is early warning of an impending uprising. Such violence can be avoided if all interested parties commit to and work toward independence and self-determination. The only alternative is the carnage of the French Revolution or the murder of New Caledonians be they leaders or innocent bystanders.

It falls to Prime Minister Rocard to take the sort of step into the unknown that has sealed the fate of many a world leader. He must demonstrate France’s respect for the integrity of New Caledonia’s journey to independence and facilitate every step along that twisting path. The French must recognise in the FLNKS’ struggle the same desires that inspired their own forefathers in 1789 and realise the danger of inaction in the face of such energy.

France must relinquish the colonial days and treat the nations of the Pacific as equal partners in global co-existence. The mid-May detonation of a French nuclear device at Muroroa was an unnecessary step in the wrong direction one that will earn the enmity of an increasingly environment-aware world community and encourage violent uprising in its Pacific territory. 7 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Cook Islands

Pearls in peril Cheryl Lilly reports on a row that threatens a lucrative pearl farming industry.

THE PAST year the M W small island of Manihiki in the northern Cook Islands hasbeen the centre of a bitter conflict between its traditional Island Council and the Cook Islands Government in Rarotonga, over the issue of who controls ana administers Manihiki and thus an emerging multi-million dollar black pearl industry.

Threats of violence have been made against individual pearl farmers and the Government has closed Manihiki to all shipping and air flights, saying the restrictions will remain in force until the Island Council realises who runs the country and begins to act accordingly. It has been estimated that a well-managed local pearl farming industry would yield the Cook Islands |NZ4O million over a 10-year period, yet Manihikian pearl farmers are being denied the chance to participate fully in an exciting new industry that has the potential to play a significant role in salvaging the Cooks’ financial situation.

Much of the blame for the current situation has been levelled at the previous Government, which persisted in what many saw as support for a foreign investor over local pearl farmers.

In 1981, the administration approached French Polynesia to allow officers within the Ministry of Marine Resources to study pearl farming in that country. Their visit convinced the Ministry it was imperative that the Cook Islands implement a pearl culture programme at the earliest opportunity.

Since the first private farm was established in 1982, the Ministry has assisted by providing both technical information and pearl farming materials to that farmer. In 1987, following an arrangement made by the Minister of Marine Resources (at that time the former prime Minister, Dr Pupuke Robati), Japanese pearl technicians seeded 10,000 oysters belonging to private farmers om Manihiki. The Japanese experts were so impressed by the quality of the oysters in Manihiki that they recommended two seeding programmes be undertaken each year.

As a result of their recommendations (and to coincide with the optimum seeding period) two Japanese technicians arrived in Rarotonga in March 1988 to seed 40,000 oysters but for more than a month were denied access to the island by the Manihiki Island Council, which declared that it would not be dictated to bv the central Government some 1000 kilometres away in Rarotonga. It was estimated that local pearl farmers have lost a potential revenue of SNZ2.4 million of the council’s decision.

Manihiki MP Mr Ben Toma, who resides for most of the year in Australia, reported that the people of Manihiki wanted nothing to do with the Department of Marine Resources scheme. He explained that the problems surrounding the two Japanese technicians were caused by the Department of Marine Resources entering into an illegal arrangement that was “not in line’’ with the legislated definition of the management of Manihiki lagoon.

This legislation, which provides for the management of Penrhyn, Rakahanga ana Manihiki lagoons, was passed ny Parliament in 1982 and grants power to island Councils over the pearl shell and pearl farming industries. In essence, it states that no-one may seed, cultivate, collect or harvest any pearl or pearl shell in or from the lagoon unless a permit has been applied for and granted by the Island Council.

In denying the two Japanese technicians access to Manihiki to seed oysters, the Island Council argued that no local farmers had applied for licences and that therefore seeding could not take place. Many farmers disputed this claim and subsequently the Council admitted that all local farmers involved with the programme had applied, but while tne licences had been granted in principle they had not been signed.

Manihikians also appeared to be misinformed at various public meetings as to the role of the Department of Marine Resources. Island Council members did not trust the Department, which they felt had given nothing to the Island Council in more than 30 years of operation in the lagoon. The island’s people were asked if they wanted the Department of Marine Resources to manage the lagoon . . . and were told that if the visit by the two technicians went ahead, the allegedly iniqitious arrangement would continue.

Marine Resources Secretary Julian Dashwood was quick to point out that the Department was simply negotiating and facilitating the seeding and technical expertise for the local Manihikian farmers. It also appeared that many of those who opposed the technicians’ visit believed they would only seed one farmer’s shells and that the technicians somehow ‘belonged’ to the farmers, Tekakae Williams.

This belief was encouraged, in September 1987, by the fact that the technicians had seeded 10,000 oysters ... of which 6000 belonged to Williams. However, Williams had more than 50,000 oysters prepared while all other farmers had between 500 and 2000 each, of which 500 were seeded under a formula agreed on at a meeting attended by all the farmers involved in the programme.

Williams was one of the first to begin farming pearls in Manihiki lagoon at a time wnen there was no legislation covering the use of the lagoon. He is a well-known fisherman and pearl farmer in the Cook Islands (and in 1957 held the record for the world’s deepest skin dive). There is no love lost between the Island Council, MP Ben Toma and Tekake Williams, who has expressed his unwillingness to accept what he sees as the Council’s victimisation of himself and his family when they simply want to get on witn their business of farming pearls.

For most of 1988, local pearl farmers waited for the Council to issue their licences but were given no explanation for the apparent delay. The legislation covering the management of the lagoon makes it possible for any person dissatisfied with a decision of the Island Council to appeal to the Minister of Marine Resources who, after consultation with the Island Council, may affirm, vary or reverse the Council’s decision. Unfortunately for the farmers, the prolonged delays meant there was no decision and thus there was nothing to appeal against.

The Manihiki Council’s decisions were supported strongly by Ben Toma and appear to have been influenced by the activities of another company operating in the Manihiki lagoon, Cook Islands Pearls Limited. While Williams and other Manihiki pearl farmers spent most of 1988 waiting for their licences to be issued, Cook Islands Pearls Limited continued to farm 200,000 oysters (the firm was established in 1986 and is owned by Tahitian Yves Tchen Pan, who also operates a farm in French Polynesia).

Mr Toma maintains that the Island Council has a 30 per cent share in the company, but a search of the company records in Rarotonga indicates that 8 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Yves Tchen Pan holds 95 per cent of the company with the remaining 5 per cent being neld by his wife Henrietta.

Over an eight-month period in 1988 an estimated SNZI.S million was injected into Tchen Pan’s Manihiki operation, from which locals derived ancillary benefits in the form of air travel (Yves has his own private plane and no local airline flies regularly to Manihiki), employment and an outlet for the sale of pearl shell. However, the Department of Marine Resources as well as local pearl farmers had expressed concern last year following a report from EVAAM (French Polynesian Fisheries Agency) questioning Tchen Pan’s pearl farming practices in French Polynesia and alleging that his farm has suffered oyster mortality in excess of 60 per cent.

EVAAM also stated that it has had no co-operation from Tchen Pan and that as a result there had been overexploitation of the whole lagoon, with widespread disease. Tchen Pan denied the allegations and labelled the report a “mistake”. His solicitor at the time, Mr Reuben Tvlor, suggested that EVAAM may have haa an ulterior motive in its “deliberate interference with the black pearl industry in Manihiki; that of protection of their own pearl industry’'.

According to the Department of Marine Resources, Manihiki is a highly productive lagoon perfectly suited to oyster farming, but there is a limit to the number of farmed oysters the lagoon can sustain. The Department estimates it could not support in excess of 400,000 and has recommended responsible and co-operative management of farming to ensure disease problems and depletion of the natural pearl oyster stocks do not arise.

However, the Department’s advice has been ignored and under present management there is no control over pearl farming practices. If the Department’s concerns are realised, the future of this emerging industry is threatened.

The dispute has now broadened to a conflict between the traditional Island Councils and the central Government, as demonstrated by the Manihiki Council’s recent decision to refuse an official visit by Education and Civil Aviation Minister Ngereteina Puna.

The Minister’s visit was unrelated to the dispute over the management of the pearl industry, but the Council demanded that certain requirements be met by the Minister before it would permit him to visit the island.

Island Council elections are to be held in the outer Islands in the near future, and many Cook Islands hope some changes and that the conflict will be resolved by a new atmosphere of co-operation. □ Rarotonga rorts by Robin Bromby A MEMBER OF the former Coalition Government in the Cook Islands claimed SNZ9IS a day in meal and incidental expenses during a visit to Sydney, according to the country’s premier, Mr Geoffrey Henry, in a recent Parliamentary speech broadcast over Radio Cook Islands. The prime minister was explaining to tne House the problems laced after his Government took office last February.

By August last year, he said, the budget deficit totalled $2.5 million, compared with $0.25 million when his Government had left office in November 1983. The high deficit run up by the Coalition had sparked a financial crisis for the Cook Islands: the overdraft on the government bank account amounted to $1.17 million, on which 21 per cent interest was being charged on the amount over one million dollars.

Mr Henry accused the former administration of serious financial mismanagement. Part of the problem had arisen from the over-estimation of receipts due from customs duty, touristgenerated income and sundry government trading activities. In customs revenue alone, the shortfall came to $776,000. Former Minister of Customs Norman George should have reviewed the estimates calculated by his own department, he said, “In particular, he might have queried how a significant increase in levy revenue could possibly be expected in light of he himself having successfully promoted an order in council in 198/ reducing import levies on numerous commonly imported items such as building materials,” said Mr Henry. “It is, of course, irrelevant that Mr Norman George began construction of his own house around the same time.”

Mr Henry said the ultimate responsibility lay with the former Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Dr Pupuke Robati, to have examined all departmental plans before framing the annual budget. Even when the cabinet was aware there was going to be a serious shortfall in excise receipts, it took no action to find replacement revenue such as an increase m the import levy on petrol. He said that Mr George has also allowed many partial or complete exemptions from import levy.

Mr Henry then detailed the foreign travel of various members of the previous government. While the customs crisis was coming to a head, he said, Mr George was at Expo in Brisbane and then at a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference, while Prime Minister Robati visited Tonga, spent 17 days at the Olympics in Seoul and then time in Australia for the bicentennial celebrations.

“Major areas of growth in expenditure were personnel and overseas travel,” said Mr Henry. It was in these areas that integrity crumbled in the lace of greed. Just before the last elections, hiring of wage workers blew out the Government’s payroll $278,000 above the budget estimate, with hiring on some islands resulting in as many as 39 per cent of the adults being on the public payroll. “Investigation has revealed that the majority of such workers were collecting their wages for little or no effort,” says Mr Henry.

Since his Government came to power, some wage workers on the outer islands had been laid off.

He then detailed travel expenses of ministers of the Robati Government.

One minister and his wife, as part of a trip that included Manila, Cyprus and Berlin, claimed $5191 in meal allowances and incidental expenses for five nights’ stay in Hawaii. This minister claimed an additional $lOOO in entertainment allowance.

The Minister of Customs, Mr George, stayed at the Park Royal Hotel in Auckland for one night — his room cost $250, meals and incidentals another $375. “In Paris, the minister was accommodated at his instructions at one of the more exclusive hotels.

The tariff for his double room was $5OO per night. The three nights he stayed at the hotel he received $1875 for meals and incidentals, or $625 per day,” said Mr Henry. “No doubt caviar and champagne [were] more his style by now. □ PM Henry - paying Robati's bills. 9 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

SPEC

Forum Secretariat

Senior Petroleum Officer Economics And Statistics

Applications are invited from citizens of ‘member countries for the position of Senior Petroleum Officer Economics and Statistics, in the newly-established Regional Petroleum Unit within the Forum Secretariat (formerly the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation). The Secretariat, based in Suva, was established to encourage co-operation between island member states and between those states and the more industrialised countries on all aspects of economic development, trade, transport, telecommunications, tourism and energy.

The Regional Petroleum Unit (RPU) was created under the auspices of the Secretariat to provide specialist assistance to its member governments to improve existing petroleum supply and pricing arrangements on an on-going basis. The RPU will assist in ensuring that the costs of supply and marketing arrangements, in and between member countries are minimised. It also aims at harmonising the relationship between Governments and the oil companies represented in the South Pacific region, and at reducing the dependence of governments on short term consultancies.

The Senior Petroleum Officer Economics and Statistics will be required to establish and maintain an economic and statistical data base for the RPU and provide analysis and advice on economic matters and matters relating to petroleum. Duties will include providing advice on trends in world oil prices and oil industry developments, particularly in South East Asia and the Pacific, advice on freight rates and shipping trends, including charter rates, and advice on policy developments in countries of the region. The officer will also be required to provide an annual overview of the Pacific petroleum supply system and the regional petroleum energy balance as well as provide advice to island countries on oil supply tendering and contract negotiations and administration.

It is anticipated that the successful candidate would have relevant tertiary qualifications in economics, science or engineering with a minimum of 5 years experience in the petroleum industry or a related field. It is also expected that the SPO-ES will have experience in establishing data bases and analysing petroleum data. He/She must also have the ability to manage and relate to people from a wide range of backgrounds, to train Forum Island personnel, have good written and oral communication and be willing to travel throughout the region.

This senior appointment will attract a substantial remuneration, payable in Fiji dollars. For non-Fiji citizens this is tax-free and includes housing or housing allowance, education and child allowances. Superannuation, medical, life and travel insurance benefits apply to all staff. The appointee will be based at the Secretariat’s Headquarters in Suva, Fiji. Appointment would be for three years initially, renewable for one term by mutual agreement.

Applications close on July 8, 1989. As it is intended to make the appointment as soon as possible, the successful applicant must be able to take up the appointment shortly thereafter.

Applications should contain full information on education and career background and should list names, addresses and telephone numbers of at least three referees with whom the applicant has been associated in a professional capacity.

Applications should be addressed to: The Secretary General Forum Secretariat GPO Box 856 Suva, Fiji Tel: 312600 Fax: 302204 All enquiries should be addressed to Mike Lawrence, Manager, Regional Petroleum Unit. *Member countries: Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Western Samoa.

Film Review

Joe Leahy's neighbours THIS 90-minute gem of a documentary, set in tne Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, is the work of husband and wife film-makers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. It is a slice of life, fly on the wall glimpse of the fractious no-man’s land between the Western capitalist world and a tribal community grappling to understand and acquire its material culture without discarding its own customs and beliefs.

Anderson and Connolly camped on the border of the two societies for 18 months, living in a bamboo and thatch house as they filmed the Ganiga peopie and their mixed-race kinsmen ineluding Joe Leahy the son of a local woman and Mick Leahy, one of the first white explorers to reach the Western Highlands, loe Leahy is a self-made man, a hard-working coffee planter who has prospered from his labour. He lives in a large house, drives a Mercedes and a Range Rover, watches Australian television via a satellite dish and sends his children to Australian schools.

Joe bears an uncanny resemblance to his father and reflects the pioneering spirit of the early Australian explorers in the Highlands. But he’s also half-Ganiga: he speaks their language, knows their customs and has turned the Ganiga’s claim of kinship to advantage, buying clan land on which he has built a thriving plantation. Now he walks the fine line between supporting the local community and suecumbing to blandishments to share all his wealth with his wantoks. The pressure is relentless: for money, cars, lifts to town, even for the return of his plantation land with all its improvements because his kinsmen feel they cannot be adequately compensated by Joe’s prosperity. Envy and avarice coalesce with bewilderment at his reluctance to share his largesse.

The mist-shrouded mountains and valleys, the red earth and undulating grassland are the stunning backdrops to Joe’s story. The pigs, clogs, women and children are background chargeters as the men, heirs to a warrior tradition, strut, threaten, plan intrigues and press their claims to power, money and authority.

Joe Leahy emerges as a shrewd and tough businessman, more than fair in his dealings, at least by Western standards. His patience is sorely tried by the claims and expectations of his wantoks and he is a reluctant foil in their power struggles. He is a compelling figure, apparently free from the identity crisis afflicting so many mixed-race people in the competing claims of disparate cultures, Joe Leahy’s Neighbours is a significandy better film than Anderson and Connolly’s previous documentary, First Contact, the story of Mick and Dan Leahy prospecting for gold in the Western Highlands in the 1930 s and the impact of their arrival on the local people. Documentary makers attempt to hold viewers’ attention by giving a dramatic form to otherwise shapeless material and thus giving a point of view. The temptation to go on from there and “play God” is not often resisted. It is rewarding to see the makers of this documentary have resisted the temptation.

The documentary is being screened across Australia this month and is available on video cassette through Ronin Films, PO Box 1005, Civic Square, Canberra, Australia, 2608. 10 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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Did Wea gun down the Accord?

Like Chief Atai in 1878, New Caledonia’s pro-independence architect of peace Jean-Marie Tjibaou, has been slain by a fellow Kanak. David Robie, who knew the main characters in last month’s tragic events, reports on the killings and their background and profiles the three men who died.

PIERRE DECLERCQ in 1981, Eloi Machuro in 1985, Alphonse Dianou last year . . . and now Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene. The list of political assassinations among Kanak independence leaders continues to grow.

Last month’s double murder of Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) president Tjibaou and his deputy, and the death of their assassin, Pastor Djoubelly Wea a maverick but respected political leader on the island of Ouvea was particularly devastating however; these killings were the first assassinations of leaders in modern political times that were committed by a Kanak. The tragic slaughter recalls the ignominious end of High Chief Atai during the Great Insurrection of 1878, when he was betrayed by rival tribesmen from Canala, executed and his severed head sent to Paris.

But this time Tjibaou and Yeiwene were slain by men who felt a bitter sense of betrayal at the hands of the FLNKS leadership and who believed their struggle for the independence of Kanaky had been cynically compromised. It was a cruel irony that Tjibaou, the man of conciliation and negotiation, should die at the hand of Kanak: he had seemed, if anything, a prime target for the right wing extremist’s bullet.

The deaths of all three men were a savage blow to peace in the South Pacific, shattering attempts to heal the growing differences between the four political parties, the Kanak and Exploited Workers’ Union (USTKE) and the militant Kanak women’s group GFKEL that together comprise the FLNKS, threatening the future of the Matignon peace accord and leaving a power vacuum at the centre of the FLNKS.

Father Walter Lini, Prime Minister of neighbouring Vanuatu itself once burdened not only by British but also by French colonialism called for immediate independence in Kanaky. “The slayings represent more of a fundamental process of reaction against the imposition of different forms of French colonialism,” he said.

“Vanuatu continues to believe that only independence will prevent a new chapter in the long bloody history of New Caledonia.”

Deposed Fiji Prime Minister Dr Timoci Bavadra, currently president of the South Pacific Progressive Parties Association (which includes the FLNKS as a member), described Tjibaou as a “political giant” in the South Pacific.

Recalling his “huge personal sacrifice” two of Tjibaou’s brothers died in a massacre by mixed race settlers at Hienghene in 1984 Bavadra added: “Yet Tjibaou remained always a man of peace, one who believed in dialogue and compromise to achieve the aspirations of his people while minimising the personal cost to them.”

RPCR leader Jacques Lafleur said he had only recently warned Tjibaou to “be careful”. Speaking on radfio, he said “a certain number of individuals live in New Caledonia who have only violence, vengeance and death in their mouths, hearts and spirit ... I regret that Tjibaou did not take precautions.”

Slain leaders Tjibaou (top left) and Yeiwene (above). Djoubelly Wea an unlikely assassin (right). The funeral procession (top centre) - a solemn day attended by world dignitaries and grieving New Caledonians. 12 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Tjibaou 53, a poet, author, sociologist and former Catholic priest led a small core of Kanak intellectuals, mainly Catholic, who dominated the FLNKS through the major member party, the Union Caledonienne.

He was expected to become president of the future independent republic of Kanaky.

Yiewene 44, recently reappointed to the board of Air Caledonie International was Protestant. Tjibaou’s loyal deputy since the FLNKS formed out of tne old Independence Front in 1984, and representative of an entrepreneurial group of Kanaks.

Both men were also struggling for their survival against younger hardline leaders equally representative of the Catholic and Protestant churches and less partisan about their party affiliations in the complex FLNKS structure.

Wea, also 44, was in the same age group as his victims, but was more typical of the new generation of leaders who have adopted a nocompromise policy over independence. A former Protestant pastor and journalist, Wea led by personal example and was regarded hy friends and colleagues as a dedicated and courageous leader.

Likely to emerge as the new leader with the difficult task of uniting the fragmented FLNKS is former schoolteacher Leopold Joredie, from the pro-independence stronghold of Canala, or possibly Francois Burck, a mixed-race politician and one of the founders of the Union Caledonienne.

Both are from the old guard leadership.

At the root of the crisis is the accord itself, which has been preparing the way for elections for three autonomous provincial governments on June 11 (now going ahead as planned, despite an earner attempt to postpone them) and for a referendum on independence in 1998. It has also frozen the electoral rolls and halted the implementation of a development plan designed to boost poor rural and urban Kanak areas and to train Kanaks in professional, managerial and technical skills.

While the peace plan has been welcomed throughout the Pacific as a hopeful and significant step forward, several minority groups of Kanaks have become bitterly opposed to it, regarding the accord as a sellout by their own leadership. Many opponents of the accord have personally Blamed Tjibaou, one of its chief architects, and to a lesser extent, Yeiwene. Ironically, while Tjibaou was alive he could be challenged over the accord: now that he is dead, the pact could become even more solidly established.

“We will stick with the accord and honour Jean-Marie’s vision,” said .Gerald Courtot, Tjibaou’s personal assistant.

Last July, France and most South Pacific countries hailed a news photograph of Tjibaou shaking hands with his opponent Lafleur, leader of the anti-inaependence RPCR, as symbolic of a major change in direction toward peace in New Caledonia. During negotiations on the pact the FLNKS had called for a “real” vote on selfdetermination in five years’ time, to be limited to Kanaks ana first-generation settlers. However, the RPCR wanted the vote put off until 1998 and kept open to all residents with French nationality.

Prime Minister Michel Rocard’s final Matignon agreement on August 20 last year established direct rule from Paris until this July, granted an amnesty that would see up to 200 Kanak political prisoners excluding those charged with murder released from jail by the end of the year and offered a limited form of self-rule within the three provinces, two of which are likely to be ruled by the Kanaks.

Among other measures planned were euros on immigration; gradual removal of more than 4000 metropolitan French public servants from the territory; the eventual relocation of the territorial capital of Noumea to the northern province; adaptation of business law to Kanak needs such as tribal co-operatives; and tax law reforms.

While the agreement appeared to promise peace after the turbulent events of the past few years in which more than 50 people (mainly Kanaks) have died, it seemed a compromise on the FLNKS long-standing objective of “Kanak socialist independence”.

Tjibaou faced bitter recriminations from militants who claimed he had pushed through the accord with little consultation.

He eventually persuaded a majority of the FLNKS to support the accord after several heated congresses, but some grassroots “struggle committees” remained hostile. The radical left-wing minority party, Kanak United Liberation Front (FULK), led by Yann- Celene Uregei, stubbornly opposed the accord while remaining with the FLNKS.

In recent times, terms such as “collaborator” had been bandied about by many Kanaks when discussing their leaders. Suspicion about the dominant UC (to which both Tjibaou and Yeiwene belonged) grew when it presented its own separate candidate list in March’s communal elections. Some communes, including Ouvea, alleged that the UC had forged deals with the RCPR to win mayoralties. In the commune of Ponerinouen, mayor Fidele Ayava was elected with combined UC and RPCR support but was forced to 13 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

resign in favour of Richard Poarairiwa, of the Melanesian Progressive Union (UPM). But the most fierce resistance to the accord came from Ouvea, which has the least development of any part of New Caledonia. It has a population of fewer than 3000 and only a handful of telephones none north of the chief town of Fayaoue.

Historically, the Loyalty Islands were never subjected to the wholesale land seizures and repression that followed the Kanak insurrections in 1878 and 1917, and Ouvea is the least affected of New Caledonia’s islands by erosion of traditional culture. When the FLNKS decided to boycott and obstruct the French presidential elections last May, tactics were left up to local “struggle committees”: Ouvea militants staged a dramatic raid on the Fayaoue gendarme barracks, killing four gendarmes and seizing 27 as hostages.

The militants abducted most of their prisoners to a cave in rugged bush country near Gossanah and, as gendarmes searched for them, they demanded that regional elections be abandoned and that a mediator be flown from France to negotiate for a real referendum under United Nations supervision. They threatened to kill their hostages if their demands were not met and the rest of that tragic action has passed into Kanak history, forming part of the separatist movement’s mythology of struggle and martyrdom.

At dawn on May 5, 1988, French military and secret service forces launched an attack on the Ouvea cave and killed 19 Kanaks in what was officially described as a “fierce battle”. The hostages were freed for the loss of only two French soldiers . . . but evidence indicated that they had been on the verge of being freed anyway.

Tne assault came just three days before the crucial presidential vote in which President Mitterrand defeated the challenge of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, and hours after three French hostages had been freed in Lebanon following the Chirac government’s reported payment of a massive ransom. To top it off, convicted Rainbow Warrior bomber Dominique Prieur was repatriated to France. ‘Operation Victor, as the cave assault was dubbed, was widely condemned as a cynical political ‘adventure’ by Chirac to gain the presidency but the move backfired.

Reports of summary executions and torture of at least three and possibly as many as nine of the militants, including leader Alphonse Dianou, were published by De Monde and other leading French newspapers. One of the executed was a 19-year-old ‘tea boy’, Waina Amossa, who had been delivering food to the hostages. Defence Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement ordered an inquiry, saying that former Overseas Territories Minister Bernard Pons had not used “all possible means” of negotiation witn the nationalists. However, while the French Government later admitted “excesses” had occurred, no judicial action has so far been taken.

After the cave assault, Ouveans suspected of helping the militants were harassed and assaulted. Thirty-two prisoners, including Djoubelly Wea, were flown to France. After a legal battle, Wea was released and returned home to a hero’s welcome; the rest were eventually freed as part of the Matignon accord.

Wea bitterly resisted the linking of the prisoners to the accord, but was ignored by Tjibaou when he wanted to take part in the peace negotiations.

The FLNKS failed to act over the Ouvea islanders’ major demands, such as an international inquiry into allegations of atrocities perpetrated by the military.

Media reports following last month’s killings incorrectly claimed Wea was a member of FULK. He had previously belonged to the radical FLNKS member party Palika, but was dumped in 1980 when he stuck to his nocompromise stand. He later became undisputed political leader of the Ouvea militants and worked through the local FLNKS “struggle committee”.

Wea was deeply bitter about the treatment given to his father and uncle by the French authorities. His elderly father, Gogny Wea, died shortly after last years hostage crisis; he had been beaten and left tied up in fierce sunshine by the military, and was soon regarded as the “20th victim” of the Ouvea massacre.

Wea’s uncle, Maki Touet, was put in a cage and displayed as a ‘cannibal’ in a Paris colonial exposition in the 19305.

After first meeting Wea in 1981, following the assassination of Frenchborn ‘white Kanak’ Pierre Declerq, I recently met him again in Manila, sharing a hotel room with him during the Asia-Pacific Peace and Development conference. He was thoughtful, warm and dedicated to the cause . . . and though he passionately discussed New Caledonia several times and stressed his bitter opposition to the Matignon accord, he never gave any hint of the explosive anger that would lead to the assassinations.

During Wea’s last conversation with me he said that last November’s referendum on the Matignon accord overwhelmingly endorsed overall in the French republic showed that most settlers in Noumea rejected the agreement and Kanak independence. (On November 6, 1988, more than 80 per cent of French voters approved the agreement in an unprecedented national referendum, but 63 per cent of all voters did not cast a ballot. In New Caledonia, where the participation rate was twice as high, tne agreement won 57 per cent of the ‘Yes’ vote but was strongly rejected by the largely white population of Noumea). “For us this raises the question of whether the accord has already been broken.

These Caldochcs are already coming up strongly; racism and fascism are growing and will continue to grow.

Kanaky is already in a state of colonial war,” ne said.

Weeping as the procession passes (top) - some fear they will soon mourn the accord. French PM Rocard - deaths spell political danger. 14 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

The Victims

Jean-Marie Tjibaou was elected first President of the FLNKS in 1984. He was expected to become the first leader of an eventual independent Republic of Kanaky.

During the 1917 rebellion Tjibaou’s grandmother was shot dead by a French soldier, and his east coast village of Tiendanite was razed. Later, his father joined the embryonic autonomy movement that eventually led to the formation of the Independent Front coalition in the 19705, shaping the young Tjibaou’s political consciousness.

A poet and sociologist, Tjibaou abandoned the Catholic priesthood for a political vision an independent Kanaky. “You cannot take up a stand for your brothers,” he explained, “without questioning the role of the official church.” His rise to political prominence dated from the Melanesia 2000 Festival he organised in 1975.

Ironically, he was bacled by Noumea’s right-wing mayor at the time, Roger Laroque, and the ultra-conservative business establishment in staging the celebration of Kanak culture.

I first met him in 1981 and interviewed him on several occasions since in New Caledonia, Fiji and New Zealand. Always he struck me as a spiritual man, a visionary; no matter how turbulent and violent the events around him, he seemed an oasis of calm and inspiration. He was determined to achieve independence . . . but with the minimum sacrifice for his people.

Yeiwene Yeiwene , of Mare Island, formerly president of the Loyalty Islands regional government, was a loyal deputy to Tjibaou. But he faced increasing criticism from some FLNKS members who regarded him as being full of platitudes and reluctant to take action.

At the end of 1987 he was jailed two days before Christmas; like Tjibaou, he had been charged with “incitement to violence” by appealing to Kanaks to take up arms to defend themselves. Yeiwene was freed on probation by an appeals court a week after being imprisoned.

The Assassins

Djoubelly Wea was an unlikely assassin: a respected and long-time advocate of non-violent action in the struggle for an independent Kanaky, he was a passionate believer in educating young Kanaks in the context of their own traditional culture and, as one of the few Kanak leaders with an excellent command of English, he sought to forge better links between the Kanaks and the English-speaking Pacific nations.

When I first met him at a protest rally outside the Territorial Assembly in Noumea during 1981 he was working as a journalist. He had not long abandoned the church, frustrated with its inability to articulate the grievances and suffering of his people.

Journalism was no better.

He was a man of humility, preferring to live simply and to conduct his activist life by example. Unlike some other elected Kanak leaders, when he became a regional councillor for the Loyalty Islands in 1985, he shunned the use of his salary for personal benefit; instead he paid for young Kanak students to travel to Western Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu to learn agriculture and other skills and to learn English.

During his studies at a seminary in Fiji during the 19705, he wrote a thesis on tribal Kanak culture titled An Education for Kanak Liberation.

Later, he expanded his education philosophy to develop the EPK ‘Kanak Popular Schools’ designed to “decolonise” Kanak children in New Caledonia. The EPK school at his home village of Gosannah was a source of great pride to him.

Four months before the assassinations, Wea travelled to Manila to talk about the Kanak struggle at the Asia- Pacific People’s Peace and Development conference. He appealed for conference delegates to lobby for French compliance with the United Nations resolution on decolonisation in New Caledonia; to support the popular schools and FLNKS political structures; and to call for an international rather than a domestic inquiry into the killings of the 19 islanders during the assault of the Ouvea cave in 1988, the alleged torture of families in Gossanah and the deportation of 33 prisoners to prisons in France.

Reaction in Paris Nicholas Rothwell reports on reaction in Paris to the killings THE SHOTS that claimed the lives of Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwene Yeiwene present French Prime Minister Michel Rocard’s Socialist government with a new set of problems in the Pacific territory. New Caledonia was in mourning and thus calm in the weeks following the killings, but in Paris the initial, and near-unanimous, fulsomely expressed grief gradually gave way to an increased anxiety over the future of the territory and the viability of the all-important Matignon accord.

Rocard flew to Noumea both to pronounce an address of tribute to the slain Kanak leaders he had been especially close to Tjibaou and to reassure the territory’s two main communities of continued French commitment to the place and development process enshrined in the accord.

Rocard and his advisers at first announced the postponement of the June regional elections so the customary period of lamentation for the dead could elapse. After his 13-hour visit to the territorial capital Rocard decided to proceed with the poll that will select officials for the regional institutions called for under the Matignon agreement. The regional governmen will come into force, as Tjibaou had wished, on July 14, the 200th anniversary of the focal point of the French Revolution the storming of the Bastille.

While the killings appear to have paradoxically confirmed the importance of the accord and the process of reconciliation between the European and Kanak communities, the effect in France remains less certain.

The killings may jeopardise the always-fragile Paris consensus on Rocard’s approach. A France-wide referendum held last November to ratifv the accord was widely ignored bv mainland voters; the Kanak community voted for it while the Europans of New Caledonia ignored the advice of their leader, Jacques Lafleur and rejected the plan by a large majority. A consensus in Paris on the course being pursued is essential. There is no guarantee the Government in Paris will remain in power until the crucial 1998 referendum. Nor is there any guarantee that the conservative opposition, once elected, will feel bound to respect Matignon, especiallv with the two most prominent Kanak politicians departed from the scene. 15 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

The Region

Zeder under the spotlight Allegations of impropriety dog the US President’s old friend.

By Ed Rampell NEWLY ELECTED US President George Bush has nominated former United States Ambassador to Micronesia Fred Zeder to head a federal development agency though the ex-diplomat played a key role in a power deal in Palau that is currently under investigation by the US Congress’ watchdog agency. Senate confirmation hearings are currently under way regarding Zeder’s nomination as chairman and chief executive of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

OPIC is a well-sustaining government agency that facilitates American investment m development projects in the Third World, including Oceania.

It assists US investors primarily by insuring investments against political risks and by financing such investments through direct loans and/or loan guarantees. OPIC also aids investors with investment information on development countries, via a computerised data system called the Opportunity Bank. Another service provided by OPIC is feasibility studies of proposer! projects; according to William Paupe, the former Suva-based regional director for USAID,OPIC has country agreements with Tonga, Kiribati and Fiji and projects already established in Papua New Guinea. £eder has an impressive career resume that parallels that of his old friend and longtime political associate, George Bush. Like Bush, Zeder was a Pilot m the Pacific during World War I, serving in the Aluetians, and flew in the first air strikes launched against Japan. In the Postwar era, Zedar Rico, the Virgin Islands and Japan, worked with Chrysler and his Hydrometals firm was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Friends with Bush since the 19505, Zeder hails from Connecticut but moved to Texas. He served during the Ford administration as the Interior Department’s director of Territorial Affairs, while Bush was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. More recently, he was one of the Bush campaign’s top 10 fund raisers and one of the highest paid membrs of the president’s transition team thougn he reportedly took less than was allocated to him under budgetary restraints.

In 1982, Bush was instrumental in arranging the appointment of his old friend as the President’s Personal Representative to Micronesia. As the US ambassador to Micronesia, Zeder presided over the disputed termination of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI): his gruff demeanour stirred controversy and Palau’s former Senate President, Isidore Rudimch, was quoted as saying that Zeder was “a pain in the ass'’ whose “cowboy diplomacy” led eventually to involvement in one of the Pacific’s biggest fiscal fiascoes one that has me potential to cause severe embarrassment to him during the OPIC Senate confirmation hearings.

In 1983, during a crucial moment in the negotiations of a power project for the Republic of Palau, Zeder intervened m the discussion with the result that, while Palauan representatives negotiated with financiers in London over the terms for a 16 megawatt IPSECO power plant and 24million-litre fuel storage facility, Zeder and US Interior Department officers dispatched an official cable to the Unitea Kingdom that deliberately or uninternationally misrepresented a proposed Compact of Free Association between Palau and the US as having been “approved by the people of Palau in a February 10, 1983 plebiscite”. The cable goes on to contend that the proposed Compact’s funding could be used as collateral for IPSECO.

The multinational banking cartel that financed IPSECO later told the American Broadcasting Corporation’s 20/20 news program that Zeder’s cable played a pivotal role in convincing the financiers to back IPSECO. On the strength of the cable, Her Majesty’s Government guaranteed, the IPSECO loans with Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD) funds.

Hence, the micro-nation of 15,000 people with limited resources and assets, totally dependent on US government aia of about $2O million a year received more than SUS 24 million in loans from the consortium.

IPSECO proved to be a debacle, and the over-sized, over-priced project has bankrupted Palau. In early 1985 the Republic defaulted on its national debt for IPSECO, in late 1985, IPSE- CO’s financiers countered by suing Palau in a New York federal court. In early 1986 IPSECO itself, a British Eower firm, declared bankruptcy in ondon and last year IPSECO’s bankers won a $44 million judgement against Palau ... one that remains to be paid. The Republic s political ‘reign of terror’, which includes the gunshot deaths of two presidents has been speculatively linked to the IPSECO scandal.

Despite Zeder’s assertions that the Palauans electorate has passed the Compact (with a 61 per cent vote), the ROP Supreme Court ruled twice in 1986 that the Compact required 75 per cent approval to override Palau’s anti-nuclear constitution. The Palauan people have so far refused to pass the Compact and the treaty has not been implemented six years after Zeder’s fateful cable. (There is even dispute, should the Compact ever be passed, over whether or not the accord s funds can be used for the staggering IPSECO debt. Former Palau Vice President Alfonso Aiterong claims that though the Republic asked Zeder to assist it in obtaining IPSECO loans, the thenambassador was specificallv requested not to indicate that Compact funds could be used to pay for the plant.) IPSECO proved to be such a major controversy that the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, has already sent two missions to Palau to probe the power project. The GAO has charged that top Palauan politicians, including late President Lazarus Salii, former Speaker of the House Carlos Salii and Palau National Development Bank chairman Polycarp Basilius received about $1 million in kickbacks. IPSECO critics including former Speaker of the House Santos Olikong and the American Civil Liberties Union have charged that in addition to being a poor business deal, IPSECO was in fact designed to destroy Palau’s nuclear-free constitution.

The conspiracy scenario is as follows: the Repuolic’s representatives were ‘deceived’ into believing that the power plant and fuel storage facility could pay for themselves by selling fuel and electricity. Trust Territory High Commissioner Janet McCoy approved a special law allowing IPSE- CO exemption from most business norms, including a feasibility study, despite protests from Palauan leaders and the US Interior Department’s auditor. The facility created a devastating debt burden for Palau, which was faced with an enormous economic dilemma: the only way it culd possibly pay off its debt would be by entering 16 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

into the Compact with the United States.

The Compact would provide substantial funding, replace Palau’s status as a United Nations trusteeship with limited home rule, and grant tne US military access to up to 3o per cent of the strategically located archipelago.

Should U§ bases in the Philippines close the Pentagon has prepared a contingency plan, called tne Western Pacific Defence Arc, that has Tinian and Guam as its northern angles and Palau at the south.

In six referenda the treaty has failed to garner the mandated 75 per cent vote required to overrule Palau’s anti-nuclear constitutional stipulations, and according to the conspiracy thesis IPSECO was intended to create such economic distress for the Republic that Palauans would vote for the Compact under duress. Once 75 per cent of the people approved the Compact (or an appropriate constitutional amendment was passed) and the treaty ratification process was completed, the US could transit nuclear craft within Palau and build military bases there.

And that would be waiting for the Pentagon? A brand new power plant and fuel facility, already constructed ... and conveniently too large for the miniscule Republic’s needs. It would also represent a facility for which the military would not have to pay a cent and with so much of the Compact’s funds used to pay off IPSECO and other outstanding debts, Palau could remain perpetually dependent on America.

In a Washington telephone interview, Zeder dismissed the conspiracy theory and asserted that IPSECO critics “follow an old Marxist line”. Pointing out that the facility is currently on line (thanks to Japanese aid) and in operation, Zeder contended that ‘TPSECO is not a scandal at all” and that a smiliar IPSECO plant in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (which did not approve the Compact), is currently running without any problems.

Nevertheless, the situation could cause Zeder’s nomination serious harm. It raises important questions about the business acumen of the man who would head OPIC. As the agency’s key function is risk insurance and loan guarantees for overseas investors in developing countries, it is curious that somebody so closely associated with the IPSECO fiasco would be considered to head OPIC (especially since Zeder asked the UK to use ECGD funds, earmarked for supporting development projects, to back the IPSE- CO bankers loans with what is basically a loan guarantee or risk insurance).

Is it appropriate for somebody responsible for arranging a loan for such a development project to be appointed the head of a government agency in charge of making loans, loan guarantees and risk insurance for US investments?

It is also curious that Zeder would be nominated to head an agency involved with feasibility studies when IPSECO lacked such a study as well as other normal business practices. But purely economic bungling aspects aside, it has yet to be demonstrated whether or not ISPECO was a politically motivated action and, if so, whether or not Zeder knew this.

In 1976, fresh from his Watergate exposes, Bob Woodward revealed in a front-page Washington Post scoop that the CIA had bugged that Micronesia status negotiations for four years.

Then-Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had ordereo the surveillance of America’s United Nations wards during the Nixon administration in order “to assist the possibility of exerting convert influence on key elements of the Micronesian”.

President Bush recently named Scowcroft as his National Security Adviser and the agency’s chief during the final year of the ClA’s surveillance of Mirconesia was none other than George Bush himself.

In 1985, then Vice-President Bush returned after 40 years to Saipan enroute to China, where he had previously represented the US. Bush travelled with Zeder and his Office of Micronesian Status Negotiations (OSMN) about three months after the still unsolved investigative reporter Jack Anderson, a number of US politicans whose careers have been linked with the Trust Territory have profited from their association with the Islands, primarily through IPSECO. “First you start with Fred Zeder,” Ohio Democrat John Seiberling told Anderson.

“He had business interests in Hawaii. 1 didn’t feel he should be able to profit from any of his activities in the negotiations.’' OMSN legal counsel John Armstrong’s law firm received a $20,000 retainer from the British power comfany and was paid more than 135,000 for defending IPSEC in a law suit at the Marshall Islands. Former TTPI attorney general and high commissioner Daniel High received $50,000 from IPSECO for acting as the firm’s Honolulu agent and former TTPI director Governor Peter Coleman of American Samoa served on IPSECO’s board of directors and received payments from the power firm.

Zeder denies that IPSECO paid for his airfare from London to Scotland in 1984 to attend a golf tournament, though IPSECO’s bankruptcy records indicate otherwise. According to Anderson, the ex-ambassador also denies that he supported IPSECO’s business venture ... [Daniel] High recalls that it was Zeder and Armstrong who introduced him to IPSECO’s president and convinced him to work for the firm, a decision High says he now regrets.

Allegations of purported impropriety do not end with IPSECO. Zeder’s son Howard heads the Marshall Islands Maritime Authority, which registers foreign ships: Seilberling and other Congressmen have expressed concern over what Anderson calls Micronesia’s “revolving door” policy of US government officials going on to enjoy personal gain from their island service, and Seiberling sought unsuccessfully to block Howard Zeder’s appointment. Zeder Junior insists that his appointment is legitimate and contends that he is highly qualified for the position, saying v ‘my whole career has been in shipping ... I resent and totally disagree with the charges of neoptism and profiteering. The Maritime head claims that the registry “could be one of the single largest revenue makers for the Marshalls” and that it is “the first private sector initiative showing a return in Micronesia” albeit earning less than $1 million so far.

The irony is that Bush has called for stricter ethics legislations for government officials and has instituted the President’s Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform, saying that “current federal ethics rules do not serve adequately to eliminate use of public funds for private gains.” The President added that he favours “a code of conduct to ensure that those who serve the public trust avoid any actual or apparent conflict between their personal and public interests”.

It remains to be seen whether the US Senate will appoint a man to be the head of a federal agency while a project he promoted with such zeal is at the same time under investigation by Congress own investigations. □ US President Bush - his old friend strikes hard times. 17 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

TONGA The healers of Tonga by Robert Simms era of high-tech medicine is 1 well advanced in Australia and I New Zealand. Facilities and specialists are available to perform the most intricate surgery and treatment to correct problems that, until a few years ago, were considered terminal.

However, the reality in some of the Pacific island nations, only a short flight away, is quite different. A lack of funds that can be devoted to medicine, has led to a critical shortage of doctors, surgeons and specialists and has led to facilities that are inadequate by today’s standards.

The situation in the Kingdom of Tonga is as acute as any in the Pacific.

Although approximately 13% of the national budget is spent on health, this represents only $l2B per head of population. With fewer than 100,000 people living in the country, it means there is little money to spend on anything more than basic health and specialist care. There are less than forty doctors in Tonga to attend to a population that is spread throughout the island chain.

Consequently, a shortage of specialists has occurred because of the difficulty in releasing these doctors from duty to study overseas for perhaps four or five years. There is only one general surgeon fully trained to deal with all major operations ranging from motor trauma to peptic ulcer perforations and “diabetes foot”. A second surgeon, who recently graduated, will return shortly, but tne workload is unlikely to diminish.

Elective surgery and operations that the Tongan doctors are unable to handle, are referred to Australian or New Zealand hospitals, or are postponed until an appropriate group of overseas specialists visits the country.

Interplast, a plastic surgery team, ASPE f, an opthamology group, and the Seventh Day Adventist neart team go to Tonga from Australia. An American eye specialist group and individual specialists also visit regularly.

Dr lan Stratton, an orthopaedic surgeon from Australia who worked in the Kingdom between 1978 and 1980, returns for two weeks each year to operate on children with talipes (club feet). He has performed surgery on over one hundred and eighty five children, correcting deformaties known locally as “hape”, i.e. laugh at.

Dr Stratton said that talipes has been in Polynesian society for centuries.

The incidence of approximately 1% is Surgery in Tonga - doctors in demand 18 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

ten times higher than in western cultures. He attributes this to most probably a genetic trait, similar to that evident in the Navajo Indian which produces hair lip and cleft palate deformities.

Dr Malik Vitharana, a Sri Lankan ENT surgeon who is now resident in Australia, has been visiting Tonga with Dr Stratton since 1986. Tonga has a resident ENT specialist who has completed a six month basic course in New Zealand, but as Dr Vitharana explained, it would take far longer to learn the techniques of micro-surgery.

“To be able to operate successfully on an ear complaint like chronic mastoiditis, for example, would reouire training of at least four years/ he said.

It is this degree of specialised training that is lacking in most areas of medicine in Tonga.

Dr Supilio Fofiaki, the Director of Health in the Kingdom, said that many of the doctors would like to improve their knowledge overseas but cannot be spared.

“Their skills must be used to help the most people in a realistic way,” he said.

Dr Foliaki has been considering various possibilities for improving the provision of specialist care. An exchange system has been tried, whereby New Zealand RMO’s worked in Tonga and a local doctor was freed to gam experience in New Zealand. This program ran into problems because of the inequitable rates of pay. The Tongan Health Ministry could not afford to pay the New Zealand salary, which is more than five times higher than the Tongan equivalent. Moreover, the Tongan doctor working at the overseas income rate in New Zealand, resented returning home to work for much less.

Another program that Dr Foliaki prefers is one where overseas specialists travel to Tonga for short periods to train the doctors there.

New Zealand provides funding each year specifically for visits by their specialists and for the supply of equipment that will help improve the quality of medical care.

Australian medical aid is generally used in other health related areas, including the provision of water and sewerage facilities on the island of Ha’apai. However, Mr Arthur Birch, the aid development officer at the Australian High Commission in Nukualofa, said that if a proposal was submitted to the Commission that was designed to bring Australian medical specialists to Tonga to help to improve the knowledge and capabilities of the local doctors, funding would be favourably considered under the Small Grants Scheme. This scheme provides up to $50,000 for worthwhile projects and is in addition to previously determined aid levels.

Dr Bill Tangi, the general surgeon at Vaiola Hospital in Nuku’aiofa, agreed that a program like this would be very useful.

“There is a pressing need for the training of physicians, a radiologist and a pathologist,” he said.

Other programs being considered include one proposed by Dr Robert North of the Provincial Surgeons Association in Australia. This would involve the six week rotation of surgeons over a period of two or three years.

Dr Foliaki sees this as a practical way to ameliorate the present chronic shortage of surgeons and is awaiting comment from staff doctors before agreeing to proceed with the proposal, He said that it is far better for specialists to go to Tonga rather than padents going to Australia or New Zealand. ‘lf specialists come here,” he said, “they can not only treat a greater number of patients, but can also teach the staff some of their knowledge.”

“I don’t think that we will ever become fully self-sufficient in all aspects of medicine,” he said. “But within ten years, I think that we will have the necessary expertise from a cost/benefit point of view, as far as specialised services go.”

To help acnieve this goal, the Australian Anaesthetists Association’s South Pacific Aid Committee is endeavouring to co-ordinate the various medical organisations that operate in the Pacific. In the past, a number of services have tended to overlap, so they are trying to rationalize the systern and compile a database that would list the equipment and personnel available in each country. In this way, more effective assistance could be provided and vital equipment supplied to the hospitals that need it most. Dr Michael Logan, the anaesthetist who travels with Dr Stratton and Dr Vitharana to Tonga each year, said that often equipment is sent to Pacific Island countries by benevolent organisations, without consideration of its suitability and without the necessary technical backup to install it properly, “Through a co-ordinated body, Australia and New Zealand would share responsibility for providing and paying for a technician to service all the medical equipment at the hospitals,” he said. New equipment could be installed by him and the staff instructed on its use.

He added that a locum service would be established to allow local doctors to go on study leave or so that they will have time to learn from visiting specialists. Dr Logan said that, following discussion with Dr Foliaki, it is hopea that the service will be operating within twelve months, As these medical assistance schemes are implemented, the burden of providing specialist services in the Pacific will lessen. The islands may never become totally self-reliant, but the quality of health care will definitely improve.

Dr Foliaki said that in Tonga, every discipline of medicine is covered by someone who has at least some training in those areas. The call now is for full specialist training, he said, Healthy Tongan children - despite health care shortages. 19 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Pacific Art

Oceania on show in Hungary Examples of Papua New Guinea’s tribal art can be found all over the world. Nicholas Rothwell found some treasures in Budapest.

IN THE stately shell of Budapest’s old Palace of Justice, across a grassy square from the echoing Hungarian Parliament, reposes one of the world’s greatest, and least known, collections of Oceanian art, the jewel in the crown of the Neprajzi Museum, Hungary’s Ethnographic Museum.

Here, in a permanent exhibition of treasures from around the world, lurk some of the purest and best-preserved examples of the tribal art of Papua New Guinea. Everything in this museum is on the grand scale, from the size of its collection more than 150,000 objects to the number of volumes in its library 130,000 and the identity of some of its past researchers they include the composers Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly.

The Museum’s director. Dr Tamas Hoffman, presides over his charges with a country enthusiasm. Both a testament to nineteenth century Hungary’s desire for matchless museum holdings, and a tribute to the zeal of its first generations of scientists, the ethnographic collection contains a welter of fine works from every region Mexico to Indonesia, the Congo to the Australian outback especially well represented, thanks to the efforts of a pioneering Hungarian anthropological theorist, Geza Roheim. But the highpoint of the tribal art section, which is grouped in a permanent exhibition, New Ireland, S>epik and Huon Gulf masterpieces, remarkable both for their perfect preservation and their aesthetic originalities work in the museum’s display cases and cellars and scientists who made forays into New Guinea when the area was a German colony. He points out that the Museum of Mankind in London has holdings from a similar overall region, but dating from a later period of British control. ‘All the collections here were gathered by Hungarians, who were doctors, merchants, or natural scientists, in the period up to the 19305, Dr Hoffman recalls; The ethnographic museum itself was not up in 1872 was part of the National Museum, based on a humble collection of 92 pieces assembled by an enthusiast whose tastes focused on artefacts left by speakers of Finno-Ugric, the distinctive language group of which Hungarian is a member. The museum soon became a vast enterprise, fueled by the interest of the Budapest public in ethnography, a discipline which, it was once hoped, would shed light on the origins of the Hungarian nation. Folk songs were a special focus of attention and Bartok left thousands of recording cylinders of his work in the archives here. Inevitably, the collection broadened to include pieces from all round the world, and two great Hungarian collectors of New Guinea art, Samuel Fenichel 1868-93 and Lajos Biro 1856-1931 both donated their treasures to the museum. ‘These collections are a mirror of the interests of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, contends Dr Hoffmann in his cavernous offices, dwarfed by piles of academic texts. ‘We see here not only pieces of primitive art, but also objects used in everyday life; they are very well documented, and we have the original photos it is rare to find fieldwork of this quality from that time.’

Not only were Hungarian pioneer anthropologists and natural scientists voracious collectors they were also possessed of a streak of generosity peculiar to the fast-changing society of turn-of-the century Buaapest. It was the custom in those days to donate one’s collections to the great museums of the city, as a fine, nationalist gesture; ‘Hungarians, as you know, are great patriots,’ says Dr Hoffmann with a wry smile; The collectors would give to the National Museum, and they rarely sold their works it was a question of a certain style, a way of behaving, to make a donation and then reap the benefits of the public attention such a geasture would secure.’

Some of the Papua New Guinea pieces on display are undoubtedly well-known to connoisseurs of thefield, but nothing can prepare one for the experience of coming face to face with such a profusion of the most intense art-worlcs of Melanesian culture, secreted in such distant, such insistently central European surrounds. The Hungarians who visited the remote shores of New Ireland, the Huon and the Sepik brought with them western eyes, and each of the objects on view in Budapest exemplifies the convergence of ritual significance in tribal Female Melanggan figure featuring intricate inlay. Collected 1900.

Melanggan statue of kneeling man acquired by the museum in 1898. 20 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Ccop/Sopac

THE COMMITTEE FOR COORDINATION OF JOINT PROSPECTING FOR MINERAL RESOURCES IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC OFFSHORE AREAS Director Applications are invited for the position of Director of the Technical Secretariat of CCOP/SOPAC currently located m Suva, Fiji. The permanent location of the Technical Secretariat is under consideration.

CCOP/SOPAC is an inter-governmental organisation composed of twelve countries* of the South Pacific. Its constitution is currently under review. However, the primary objectives of the organisation are to survey the inshore, nearshore, and offshore areas of its member countries, to identify the marine mineral and other non-living resource potential within their Exclusive Economic Zones, and to assist members with their coastal development programmes by carrying out studies of the physical environment in coastal areas. The Technical Secretariat is the executive arm of CCOP/SOPAC.

The Director is responsible to the Committee for the overall management and operation of the Technical Secretariat of CCOP/SOPAC.

The post is restricted to nationals of the member countries of CCOP/SOPAC.

Applicants should have a high degree of ability and extensive experience in public relations and management, and a sound understanding of the Pacific Islands environment. They should be capable of developing effective relations with representatives of governments and scientific bodies.

The Committee will make the appointment during its Annual Session in October of 1989. The appointment will be for a three-year contract with effect from January 1990. Before the end of that term, when the position is readvertised, the appointee will be eligible to apply for a further three-year contract, provided that he or she may not serve for more than six years consecutively.

The remuneration and other terms and conditions of employment will be comparable to that of the chief executive of other South Pacific regional organisations, and as decided by the Committee.

All applications should be fully documented and include details of work experience and qualifications and the names of at least three referees. Applications, to be marked “Director Application”, should be addressed to the Chairman of CCOP/SOPAC and should reach the following address by 31 July 1989.

CCOP/SOPAC Technical Secretariat C/- Mineral Resources Department Private Mail Bag Suva, Fiji * Member countries of CCOP/SOPAC are AUSTRALIA, COOK ISLANDS. FIJI, KIRIBATI. GUAM, NEW ZEA- LAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, TONGA. TUVALU. VANUATU, WESTERN SAMOA. society with the aesthetic values of the European tradition. The forms and expressions of these supposedly primitive’ carvings recall with an oppressive immediacy the aspects of medieval statues resting in the great halls of Castle Hill just across the Danube. Among the most startling objects in the ethnographic collection is a set of three Huon Gulf totemic figures; one recently formed the centrepiece of a major American exhibition of Pacific tribal art. These fine carvings still bear the traces of their paint-coatings, which mimic the dancepaint of the cultures that produced them. They re dated to the late eighteenth century, and even glimpsed through a veil of plate glass, they bear, with their furrowed eyebrows, an air of sombre veneration.

But the piece de resistance in the ethnographic museum is the treasuretrove of Melanggan figure carvings, associated with tn New Ireland funerary cult. Much has been written of this scnool of art, among the most obscure, and the most intoxicating, of all tribal creations. Even in the Port Moresby Museum, a bare three Melanggan figures represent the grnre. Here a good fifteen are on display, and, according to Dr Hoffmann, five times as many are in storage. In the fine Quality of their carving, the richness of tneir paint-work, these figurines easily rival the holdings of the other great ethnographic museums of Europe.

The cumulative effect of carved lintels in this style, rows of carved faces with their superimposed, bright-hued mohican crops, and ranks of majestic totems, is, to say the least, disquieting.

In many instances, tribal art drowns by numbers in the case of this display of Melanggan figures, the effect is increased by duplication; the strange mingling of universal themes and individual vision in each piece stands revealed. The characteristic of the Melanggan figure is to fuse a human model and animals architectionally dispersed about his body, the whole richly painted with motifs. Some works in the Budapest collection take this expressive form of carving, in which the space within the carved structure is as communicative as the skeletal cage itself, to breath-taking extremes, ennanced by the quality of the staring eyes, hatched designs and vibrant red and blue pigments. In their state of preservation, these works are perhaps matched by another old public collection, the Melanggans in the Rietberg Museum on the shores of Lake Zurich. Pride of place in the Budapest exhibit is given to an extraordinary figure which can only be described as an anthropoid mask, its mouth terminating in a boar’s snout, its face wreathed in a sheath of curving horns and tusks, from which emerges a finely modelled bird’s head, joined in turn to a separate avian body. Even on the other side of the world from the sharp spine of New Ireland, it is hard to avoid the impact of this work, a kind of endless extension of the concealed symbolic meanings of the cult.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of years ago a Papua New Guinea political ‘big man’ dispatched a letter to Dr Hoffman, suggesting the return of this trove of artefacts to their original homeland. The letter was drafted by a German expatriate adviser not, perhaps, the best way to go about persuading a Hungarian to accede to a request of such a nature.

After lengthy consultations at the highest levels of the Government, Dr Hoffman drafted a reply of brilliant tactical simplicity, pointing out that the Soviet Union also held considerable stocks of Papua New Guinea tribal art in its museums, and it was not reasonable to expect Budapest to give the lead to Moscow in an area as sensitive as the repatriation of foreign works of art held in the museums of the Warsaw Pact member nations. The note was dispatched to Papua New Guinea, but answer from Port Moresby came there none.

Sadly, the world ethnographic collection of the Budapest Museum is almost static in size today. Built over the period of Hungary’s cultural renaissance by great collectors, it remains an adornment in an institution now largely focused on the forkloric traditions of the country’s immediate neighbourhood. This task also has its imperatives in adjacent Romania, ethnic customs are under a threat as urgent as any posed by changing conditions in Papua New Guinea. Dr Hoffman has arranged a striking exhibit recording the destruction of Romanian villages in favour of highrise modern apartments. Today’s museum also has some rather unlikely ghosts; its splendid, cavernous central hall, framed by a cieling fresco of the figure of Justitia, scores of metres above ground level, now serves as a formal meeting-place for the learned societies of Hungary. But these days, it is also doing double duty as a filmset for a movie treatment of the life of the Nazi propagandist, Jozef Goebbels, currently being shot in the Hungarian capital. By night, as Dr Hoffmann leaves his office and heads home, he finds himself bumping uneasily into crisply-uniformed officers of the Waffen-SS.

Nicholas Rothwell is the European correspondent for The Australian newspaper. He has written extensively for Pacific Islands Monthly and has a special interest in Pacific art.

Australians seek silver galleon off Guam By David North Ml SOUTH Australian syndicate has won the exclusive right to excavate a silver-laden Manila galleon sunk off Guam in 1690. The group, headed by John Bent and Paul Lunn, co-owners of the Adelaide Skindiving Centre, and backed by Australian businessman Anthony O’Grady, estimates there could be as much as SUSSOO million in precious metal and gems at the wreck site of the Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Zaragoza.

The 1200-ton vessel, mounting 50 cannon, was transporting the Royal Situardo, the King’s annual allowance to underwrite a year’s trading in Manila, including 1.5 million silver ‘pieces of eight’ as well as an unknown amount of gold coins and ingots.

The project, licensed to do business as Davey Jones Archaeology in the US territory of Guam, places a heavy emphasis on the proper recovery of the vessel’s historical treasure. “This is not a plundering mission,” says Lunn.

This will be a thorough archaeological survey and recovery exercise to present to the world for the first time not only the wealth of the vessel but priceless antiquities, and return to Guam its historic heritage.”

The group has already invested “a small fortune” over the past five years conducting historical research in Spain, the United States, the Philippines and Guam, mounting several exploratory dives on the del Pilar site and fighting a drawn-out but ultimately successful court battle with American treasure hunter and marine archaeologist Robert Marx over excavation rights.

Now that US courts have sanctioned Guam’s right to enter an exclusive agreement with Davey Jones, the terms of the pact will grant the Government of Guam 25 per cent of the recovered items as well as an option to negotiate on any particular item of historical or commercial interest.

Davey Jones, which will finance the effort and carry it out under elaborate archaeological recovery rules, is entitled to 75 per cent.

The excavation team has its work cut out: the galleon slid down a reef face after grounding near Cocos Island, a spur of coral and sand spits jutting out from Guam’s southwestern coast. With a crew of 300 and another 200 passengers, the overloaded and ungainly ship built for cargo capacity and defensive strength was difficult to manoeuvre in the best of conditions.

Ending the tiring two-month, 7500nautical-mile crossing from Acapulco, the vessel (the largest commercial ship of its era) was attempting to skirt Cocos and make the galleon port of Umatac some distance further along the west coast, but the winds were light and variable, the current was running inshore and night was falling when the del Pilar struck at Bpm on June 2, 1690.

Despite attempts to lighten the vessel and row her off the reef, the behemoth would not budge and when the wind began picking up the del Pilar's passengers and much of its cargo were transferred by boats to its sister ship, the Santo Nino, which continued on to Manila the next day, anxious to cross the Philippine Sea before the typhoon season struck in its full ferocity.

All the next day the del Pilar was blown across the boulder-strewn reef and sucked down the steeply sloping face, breaking up and spilling its remaining cargo along the way. Contemporary reports indicate that much of the treasure slid beneath the reach of breath-holding native divers, and now lies strewn across several square kilometres of sloping sand-bottom and perhaps on shelves as deep as 100 metres. Heavier sections of the vessel are believed to have slid below that level.

Robert Marx, who was Davey Jones’ chief competitor for salvage rights, had listed the del Pilar as one of the 10 richest unsalvaged ships in the world. Davey Jones’ own estimates place the bullion value of the 1.5 million silver coins (about 47 tonnes of silver) at SUSI 3 million, but collectors’ condition Spanish coins of the era fetch up to |250 each.

The ship’s manifest only hints at the true value of the cargo, as has been demonstrated in the recovery of Spanish galleon treasure in the Caribbean.

The Manila galleon trade w'as constantly and severely restricted by Royal decrees limiting the amount of bullion that could be allocated to the Asian trade: Acapulco and Manila traders circumvented the decrees by simply not listing and/or by undervaluing their actual bullion and cargo on official manifests.

Historians estimate the galleons annually carried $2 to $5 million in Royal Situardo as well as the personal wealth of the merchants, noble sons, soldiers and adventurers who took passage on them to Spain’s colonial outposts. While treasure recovery of Spanish galleons in the Caribbean has a track record of high return on investment, there are few cases of successful recovery on the Pacific side of Spain’s trading empire. But the recent recovery of hundreds of gold artifacts from another Manila galleon off Saipan in the Northern Marianas has heightened interest and faith in the search for the del Pilar.

A Singapore-based marine construction firm, Pacific Sea Resources Inc, used a high-tech recovery ship and trained crews to bring up hundreds of gold articles, including coins, jewellery and plate from the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, wrecked off Saipan in 1638. The recovery also included dozens of clay storage jars, hundreds of cannon balls and ballast stones as well as a few anchors.

The del Pilar historical treasure could include ornately decorated bronze and iron cannon, ceramics and stoneware as well as metal tools and implements of everyday use. Intrigumgly, Lunn believes some of the ships timbers may still be intact. Parts of the vessel could have survived either by sliding below the habitat of the wood-eating teredo worm or by being buried under tonnes of sana.

One of about 80 Manila galleons built in the 350-year history of the Spanish colonial shipping line, the del Pilar was 52 metres (170 feet) long, with a 15 metre beam and masts rising almost 40 metres above the water. She was constructed (by a thousand workmen) entirely of Philippine hardwoods and christened in 1653. Her keel and ribs were mahogany, her decking teak and hull planking lanang-which was reputed to be impervious to cannon shot.

Whatever artifacts and treasure are recovered could help write a better version of this important early chapter in Pacific island interaction with the West. As Lunn said in describing the goals of the team: “We believe our project to excavate this important Manila galleon will help lift world recognition of this aspect of Pacific his- Manila galleon was a representative of the first trans-Pacific European trading line which lost at least |US6O million treasure in shipwrecks during the 350 years the route was used, a fraction of the fantastic wealth it carried from South America to the Philippines. □ 22 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

BIRD OF PARADISE.

LAP OF LUXURY.

I * • • ■ m BEAST OF BURDEN.

The Bird of Paradise, the new emblem of Air Niugini, can now be seen adorning the tail of another magnificent bird - the A3lO-300.

Air Niugini’s latest plane has launched a whole new era of comfort and cost-effective flying to and from Papua New Guinea.

Passengers sit in the kind of luxury that can only be enjoyed on a truly wide-bodied jet.

Whilst as a beast of burden the A3lO is incomparable. The underfloor cargo hold handles all current types of containers. And the increase of payload is a further source of revenue.

All this goes to show why Air Niugini chose this bird to fly to paradise.

When will you fly one? £ AIRBUS INDUSTRIE

New Zealand

Museum recalls the golden age of seafarers One of the world’s most important canoe collections, featuring rare Fijian, Solomon Islands and Polynesian craft is on display in Auckland.

By David Robie ANOE is derived from the ■ Carib word canaoa , and accordto historians was probably introduced to Europe by Columbus.

Since then, every craft in the New World and the Pacific has been labelled a “canoe” whether made of birch bark or wood; whether three metres long or 30 metres long; or whether double-hulled, single-hulled or an outrigger. It has always been, simply, a canoe. friere is an unfortunate notion that canoes evolved from floating logs, with outriggers or double hulls introduced to prevent them rolling over.

“ I his is one of those deductive absurdities that used to come so easily to early students of mankind,” remarks Edward Dodd in Polynesian Seafaring, one of the authoritative texts on Pacific navigation. “A canoe no more evolved from a non-rolling log than the wheel from a rolling stone.

“The wheel was the landsman’s wonder; the canoe was the waterman’s. They both got him up on the surface and sped him, not effortlessly, but wondrously well on his wandering way.”

One of the world’s most important Pacific canoe collections has just gone on display in New Zealand’s Auckland War Memorial Museum. The collection of 22 canoes includes rare examples of rigged sailing canoes from the Polynesian islands of Tikopia and Sikaiana in the Solomon Islands, a double-hulled, ocean-going craft from Atiu in the Cook Islands, a Fijian camakau and a range of San Cristobal bonito fishing canoes, Polynesian outriggers and Maori war canoes.

“Some ol the most important Pacific canoes in the world are nere, the only examples of their kind still in existence,’' says the museum’s curator of ethnology, Robert Neich. Several of the craft have been on display in the past, but the canoe hall was closed to museum patrons last November for vital restoration work.

Pacific islanders especially the Polynesian seafarers made many sorts of journeys in their watery world. For each purpose they evolved a particular design: so diverse were these designs, writes Edward Dodd, that it is far too superficial to describe him as ‘canoes’ or to think of them as ‘dugouts’.

“Actually, they were most indigeniously designee! and constructed to serve their several different purposes; so that taken as a whole they comprise a maritime body more varied and particularised than that of any other non-industrial culture, simply because the Polynesians were seafaring to a degree to which no other culture had adapted.” Though there was much overlapping, the main categories listed by Dodd and the 1936 bible of Pacific navigation, Canoes of Oceania, by A C Haddon and James Hornell, are quite distinct.

Small paddling outrigger canoes, vaa, in Tahiti, were three to six metres long and used mostliy for fishing within tne reef or not far offshore. Neat and delicateliy shaped, they were balanced with outriggers pegged and seized in many ingenious ways.

Smaller sailing outrigger canoes, known in Tahiti as vaa ta’ie, were generally six to nine metres long, sometimes larger. Described as “works of sea-going art”, they were used primarily for deep-sea fishing and for short inter-island voyaging.

Larger sailing outrigger canoes were mostly Micronesian and between nine and 18 metres in length. They were used for long-range, deep-sea sailing between island groups. As refined sailing machines, mere were the best of all: though they lacked the stability, strength and ability to contend with rugged deep-sea conditions that challenged the great ocean-going double canoes, they were the most efficient sailing machines ever designed for shorter distances in fair weather.

According to Dodd, “America’s Cup contenders are clumsy in comparison’.

Small double canoes, known as tahifa, were all-round work craft, sometimes rigged with one mast, more often with two vaa hara. Up to 12 metres long, they sported a flat prow and upturned stem and were used for ferrying passengers and cargo inside the reef or on shorter inter-island voyages, and often carried a shade house for sleeping and a sandbox for cooking.

Large single-hulled war canoes, or waka taua in Maori represented a high point in design for a specific purpose and a significant aspect of New Conservation restorer Dante Bonica at work on a Tongan canoe that features in the exhibition. 24 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Zealand’s pre-contact culture. Running up to more than 30 metres in length, they were the only non-outrigger or non-double-hulled craft in Polynesia: a late development whose beam was made possible only because of the hugeness of New Zealand forest trees such as kauri, kahikatea and totara and used for coastal warfare only.

As Dodd points out, “magnificent structures though they were, they cannot be classed as ocean-going vessels” . . . but they were nevertheless magnificent.

Large double-hulled war canoes or pahi tamai were the largest craft built m eastern Polynesia (mainly in Tahiti), being excelled in size only by the huge Fijian drua or Tongan tongiaki. Cook measured one of almost 40 metres.

Propelled by paddlers only, with upturned bows and high sterns, they were not true seafaring craft, though they did voyage more than a hundred miles of open sea between Raiatea and Tahiti.

Large double-hulled voyaging canoes designed for exploration and distant ocean transport were virtually extinct when the first Europeans arrived in the Pacific. Hawaiian double canoes are regarded as their nearest relatives, but by the time of Cook they were inter-island rather than oceangoing vessels, paddled as well as sailed.

The pride of the Auckland exhibition is Rakeitonga, a vaka tapu, or sacred sailing canoe, from Tikopia, believed to be more than a century old.

Built by Pu Auekofe for Te Ariki Taumoko, chief of the Taumako clan, it is famous in the Tikipian tradition and made long ocean voyages to Anuta and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu).

It was presented to the museum by Bishop Woods in 1916 and 1953 was rigged in the traditional way by Ra Rangimarepe, Pa Motuanga, Farava and Koroimoana, Tikopian crewmen from the Melanesian Mission ship Southern Cross.

“Named after an ancestor of Te Ariki Taumako, as a vaka tapu this canoe has its own spirit guardians,” says ethnologist Michael Pendegrast.

“In seasonal canoe rituals, appeals are made to these spirits to protect the fishermen and to ensure a successful harvest from the sea.”

A vakafaimanu , or outrigger canoe from Tikopia, is also of considerable interest. It was built by a group of Tikopians stranded on the Banks Islands during the World War II to take them home. This type of canoe is used in Tikopia for catching flying fish at night with hand nets, oy the light of coconut-frond flares.

For conservation restorer Dante Bonica, preparing the canoes has been a labour of love: “I’ve always had a passionate interest in Pacific and Maori culture, and in canoes. I built my first canoe with an outrigger when 1 was 16,” he says, “and ever since I’ve had a fascination with their technology.

Most of Bomca’s restoration work has involved cleaning and re-rigging.

With the vaka tapu of Tikopia he had to use a neutral detergent to clean off hand grease on the outside and some kind of slick “linseed or engine oil from the ship that brought it here” from the inside; indeed, the Atiu vaka katea was almost black from oil damage. □ Auckland to host Canoe Races Sarah Kennett previews the fourth World Polynesian Canoe Sprint Championships IN JANUARY next year, competitors from as far away as Canada, Ireland and Spain will gather in Auckland for the fourth World Polynesian Canoe Sprint Championships.

The canoe sprints are a ‘theme setting’ feature of the Festival of the XIV Commonwealth Games, and cultural exhibits will line the foreshore of the Orakei Basin where the sprints are to be held. The festival is being billed as a reflection of New Zealand s increasing recognition of its place as a Pacific nation, but outrigger canoes are an uncommon sight in New Zealand and racing them is a sport that is only now catching on.

The country’s first four clubs got together in 1988 to launch a national federation called Tatou Hoe o Aotearoa. At that time, several more clubs were in the process of formation; there are now a dozen or more scattered around New Zealand and more are being brought into being, in remote rural communities as wen as the cities, with Maori, Pakeha and islander members.

The dream of two of the founding members of Tatou Hoe o Aotearoa, Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell (a New Zealand Maori) and Pih Muaulu (a Samoan) was to see a revival of canoe culture in New Zealand: a recognition that the canoe is the connecting factor in all Pacific cultures. Herb Kawainue Kane, Hawaiian artist, carver, canoe builder and amateur anthropologist, says that among Pacific Islanders, the canoe is the symbol of their mutuality: “It lies at the heart of island culture, for without it neither the people nor their culture would have come into existence. It reminds them of the courage, resourcefulness and excellence of the skills their ancestors possessed qualities worthy of emulation today, and on which future survival may depend.”

Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell says his intention “is a family reunion between Polynesian peoples of the Pacific. New Zealand can find its identity in the Pacific through the canoe. Pakehas? They’re part of the Pacific; it’s only natural/ He agrees that the World Canoe Sprint Championships will do much to raise the profile of the sport in New Zealand. “After these sprints, the sport will rocket,” he predicts. It is also hoped that the sprints will help to present the canoe as a unifying symbol, “drawing people together with peaceful intentions toward each other and society.”

With the recent confirmation of sponsorship and the formulation of canoe designs, clubs affiliated with Tatou Hoe o Aotearoa are flat out building canoes. Nga Hoe Horo o Pawarenga Canoe Chib, situated in a remote Northland harbour, has built six-person and single prototype hulls and, unable to obtain official moulds from Tahiti due to transport difficulties, Tatou Hoe o Aotearoa used a 1984 World Sprints mould and adapted it to new specifications, including some New Zealand features since approved by the International Polynesian Canoe Federation.

An Auckland-based construction company, Wilkins and Davies, is a major sponsor of the fourth World Polynesian Canoe Sprint Championships and is setting up the venue for the sprints at Orakei Basin on Waitemata Harbour. Nestled beside one of Auckland’s most scenic seaside drives, Orakei Basin will be lined for the event with displays of visual, literary and performing arts and crafts from around the Pacific and the Commonwealth. Spectator accommodation for upwards of 2000 people will be constructed, and the races will finish in clear view of the shore. □ 25 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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Forum Secretariat

(formerly South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation [SPEC]) Applications are invited for the position of AID CO-ORDINATION OFFICER within the Forum Secretariat. The Secretariat, based in Suva, was established to encourage cooperation between island member states and between those states and the more industrialised countries on all aspects of economic development, trade, transport, telecommunications, tourism and energy.

The appointee will work principally on development coordination and liaison activities and on the preparation of project dossiers. Applicants should be well qualified in economics or a related field and should have a sound knowledge of the economies of South Pacific island countries.

Familiarity with donor government and agency procedures in the region would be an advantage.

We are also looking for a capacity to set clear priorities, to work under pressure, and to present work in a clear and concise manner. The officer will work as part of the team within the Secretariat’s Economic Services Division.

This appointment will carry an attractive remuneration package, payable in Fiji dollars. For non-Fiji citizens this is tax free and includes housing or housing allowance, education and child allowances. Other benefits for all employees include superannuation payments and medical, life and travel insurance coverage. The appointee will be based at the Secretariat’s Headquarters in Suva, Fiji, but will be required to undertake periodic duty travel. Appointments would be for three years initially, renewable by mutual agreement.

Applications close on 30 June, 1989. As it is intended to make the appointment as soon as possible, the successful applicant must be able to take up the position shortly afterwards. Applications should contain full information on education and career background and should list names, addresses and telephone numbers of at least three referees with whom the applicant has been associated in a professional capacity. Previous applicants will also be considered and need not re-apply at this stage.

Applications should be addressed to: The Secretary General Forum Secretariat GPO Box 856, Suva, Fiji Telephone: 312600 Telex: 2229 FJ; Fax 302204 All enquiries should be made to Mr Rene Wilson, Director of Services, on 312600 extension 202. *Forum Secretariat Member countries are: Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Western Samoa. 26 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

PACIFIC ISLANDS M q N T H L Y PACIFIC BUSINESS

Eight Pages Of Business And

Financial News From

Throughout The Pacific

Edited By Robin Bromby

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Tax havens threatened Australia has decided that its nationals companies and individuals will not benefit from using tax havens after June 30, 1990. In his recent economic statement to the Federal Parliament, Treasurer Paul Keating indicated that the Australian taxation office expected to collect an additional $B5 million in revenue each year as a result of the changes.

The move will be particularly felt in the Cook Islands and Vanuatu, both of whose financial centres get considerable business from Australia. The Australian government move followed revelations that companies run by Perth entrepreneur and brewer Alan Bond had been set up in the Cook Islands, and these had enabled the Australian-domiciled Bond Corporation Ltd to minimise its corporate tax liability at home.

The new tax system will be based on the accrual principle that is, income passing through foreign trusts or companies will nevertheless be taxed as if that money had entered Australia.

The accrual tax will apply to companies which have five or fewer Australian persons and entities in control, or where the control is clearly Australian even if the Australian-owned interest in the company is lower than 50 per cent.

However, companies which are deemed to have legitimate business interests in tax haven countries (Burns Philp in Vanuatu, the Australian trading banks in Cook Islands, would be two typical examples) will now be exempt from the accruals tax; there will be an exemption clause to cover those companies which are actively earning income in a country that is operating as a tax haven. But that company must be able to show that 95 per cent of its income derives from active business activity, which will close the loophole of using small local trading companies as a conduit for tax minimisation.

Foreign trusts will also be taxed.

It is known, for example, that many Australian family trusts are registered in Port Vila. Under the new rules, the accumulating income of foreign trusts will be subject to accruals tax where residents transfer value to the trusts. Australian residents can reduce their tax liability if they wind up the trusts before June 30 next year.

Tax experts believe the new Australian tax law will almost completely eliminate the use by its nationals of foreign tax havens.

Brewing on the rise SOUTH PACIFIC brewing has expanded rapidly in recent years, with beer being produced in many territories that once imported almost all their needs.

Now Western Samoa and Papua New Guinea are both to have new breweries one in Apia (an expansion of a local soft drink bottler) and one in PNG, which will involve a major investment by a Danish brewing company.

Western Samoa Breweries Ltd, which produces the Vailima export lager and San Miguel under licence, is to be joined in the local market by Apia Bottling Company (ABC). The latter company, founded in 1966, has supplied Western Samoa with soft drinks, extract cordials, party ice and fruit juice, as well as exporting purees from passionfruit, mango, papaya and bananas. It had tried to start a brewing operation in 1968 but the then government had refused a licence, says ABC general manager Mr Dick Carpenter.

Current growth in the local market has provided an opportunity for a second brewery, ana the minibrewery (which is oeing imported from the USA) can turn out six brews a day, each of which will produce 2400 litres. About 70 per cent of the output will be in the form of Alan Bond - Cook Islands tax haven threatened 30 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

lager beer in medium and large bottles, with draught beer available in kegs.

Because all the bottles are sold on a returnable basis, Apia Bottling will be confining its sales to the domestic market. Mr Carpenter says the company will be selling a traditional beer without additives or sugar and will promote it as a quality product. The brewery was Purchased from Red Hook Ale rewery in Seattle, and will initially employ about 20 people.

The agreement to permit the construction of a brewery at Kerowagi, in the Simbu Province of Papua New Guinea, was due to be signed in early May. The Danish company Danbrew Consult will put up most of the Kl 7 million cost of the new Highlands Brewery while each of the provinces involved (Southern Highlands, Simbu, Eastern Highlands, Enga and Western Highlands) will each pay K 300,000.

There had previously oeen differing opinions about whether the brewery should go ahead; for example, Southern Highlands Premier Yaungtine Koromba had previously opposed any rush decision on the establishment of the brewery, as had Egna premier Ned Laina. The reluctant premiers accepted the argument that they would need other Highland provinces to support future projects in their areas.

BBC targets Pacific IT HAS been reported that the British Broadcasting Corporation is planning to install new, high-powered shortwave transmitters m New Zealand in order to better relay its World Service programs to trie South Pacific region.

The BBC has been searching for a way to increase its coverage of the region since the Fijian military coup when it found that its signal could not be reliably heard in that country.

The British move follows decision by both Radio New Zealand and Radio Australia to improve their services to the South Pacific.

In fact, it is apparently the RNZ decision to develop a new shortwave transmitting base in the central North Island which has made possible the BBC extension it plans to erect its masts on the same site.

The South Pacific is the one major region without strong signals from London.

Forum slams wall of death THE SpUTH Pacific Forum’s fisheries committee, after a meeting at Majuro in the Marshall Islands, has strongly condemned the operation of Asian gill net fishing boats in the South Pacific. A meeting with government representatives from South Korea, Taiwan and Japan has been scheduled for Suva in late June, and if progress is not made it is expected that the matter will be discussed at the full Forum meeting to be held the following month on Tarawa in Kiribati.

Gill netting involves the use of nets of up to 56 km in length, which are designed to drift in the ocean and catch albacore tuna.

Most of this takes place in international waters east of New Zealand and in the Tasman Sea. The nets also catch sea birds, dolphins, and even small whales which led to the nets being dubbed the “wall of death” but the most immediate problem is that most of the catch is m the form of juvenile albacore tuna. This has resulted in depletion of the tuna numbers of adult fish in the economic zones of the Forum states. The Forum Fishing Agency in Honiara estimates the depletion already caused may take five years to be repaired provideo gill netting does not resume in the southern summer.

The Suva meeting will aim to seek agreement from the Asians that gill netting will be stopped, or at least wound down.

The meetings of fisheries committee in Majuro noted that the dramatic and unregulated increase in the number of gill net vessels from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan operating in the Pacific and the Tasman during 1988-89 posed a major resource and environmental threat. The meeting repeated an earlier call for distant water fishing nations to co-operate fully “in an international effort to prevent this random and unjustified plunder of the region’s marine resource”.

The Forum Fishing Agency will be putting proposals at the Suva meeting along the lines that the boats could be used for long-line albacore fishing further north, and even in some economic zones. The only catch is that the resource has been depleted by gill netting to the stage where there would not be enough adult fish to go around an enlarged long-line fleet.

The agency has been heartened by the growing concern in Australia and New Zealand. The political weight of these countries is considerably greater than that of the small island states. Also, the U.S.

State Department and the provincial government of British Columbia, Canada, have requested observer status at Suva, a sign the North Americans are alarmed by the damage being done to fish stocks in the Pacific Ocean.

There seems little question that the Forum nations are reaching a point where they want urgent action on the matter, and there is a growing body of opinion that should the distant fishing nations not curb and then eliminate gill net fishing the island states should threaten to close their economic zones to those countries. This is a potent weapon, as the only area outside the zones which is suitable for long-line tuna fishing is a narrow band between the outer limits of the Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands’ 200 mile limit.

□ Agbank Needs Bailing Out

THE AGRICULTURAL Bank of Papua New Guinea needs an injection of KlOO million to keep it out of serious trouble, according to chairman Fred Reiher. The bank’s expanding volume of loan commitments has far outpaced the growth of equity capital, says Mr Reiher, and the Agriculture Bank has failed to approve many genuine proposals, either because it nad run out of funds or because projected viability was limited by the interest rates currently being charged.

The chairman suggests that the National Government seek other sources of funding on cheaper or more favourable terms. Lower interest rates on money borrowed by the bank would mate low-interest loans, particularly for agricultural or fisheries projects more feasible.

Agbank is now approving loans at the rate of K3O million a year.

Mr Reiher says the mining sector boom will not be everlasting. 31 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Rural expansion a must The Solomon Islands Central Bank reports on strong growth during 1988 but sees population growth as a future problem.

THE FUNDAMENTAL problem confronting the Solomon Islands in the 1990 s is that population growth is outrunning both the formal monetary economy’s ability to provide employment and the government’s capacity to provide social and administrative services. This is the prognosis contained in the just-released 1988 annual report of the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands. Moreover, the report said, no foreseeable combination of investible resources will substantially change this trend by itself. If the underlying imbalance changes there would have to be a marked decline in population growth rates in the next five to 10 years.

To make provision for the rapid increase in population, the country will have to expand the rural and informal sectors of the economy, and the formal monetary sector must be encouraged to expand as rapidly as possible by a combination of sound macroeconomic policies and efficient use of public sector resources.

The Central Bank said the economy had grown strongly in 1988, the increase in GDP growth by 8 per cent reversing the decline of the previous two years. Output of primary industry was recovering from the price setbacks and cyclone damage of 1985-86.

There were important advances in Solomon Islander participation in all forms of business and in effective use of the financial system. Aid and private capital inflows offset the continuing large deficit in the current account.

On the downside, the Central Bank reported the need to finance a fiscal deficit running at 5 per cent of GDP kept interest rates high to encourage savings and dampen the effect on domestic demand of the rapidly growing money supply. The depreciation of the Solomon Islands dollar along with the appreciation in the Australian dollar drove up the price of many consumer goods while urban retail inflation hit 17 per cent.

But the bank’s major concern is clearly the years ahead. In order to meet the needs of the growing population, the bank urged the Government to reduce domestic borrowing so as to leave more resources to the private sector. A profitable environment has to be created for private investment and government enterprises should be required to perform efficiently and commercially.

The Central Bank wants a limit to external debt, private and public, a monetary policy that avoids increasing money supply and an exchange rate policy that preserves the competitiveness of the SI dollar. It identified a number of major ingredients for economic growth in the 19905: the tuna fishing industry, with greatly increased catching and processing capacity, based on major investments at Noro and Tulagi; the established palm oil industry, together with increased coconut and cocoa production from plantation and smallholders and a substantial move into diversified coconut processing; increased and betterpoliced log output from the natural forest, with more of it locally processed; greatly increased investment in plantation forestry, much of it commercially owned or managed, including planting on customary land; the opening of a small gold mine on Guadalcanal; expansion of tourism by investment in small resorts and improvement of existing hotels; continued investment in telecommunications and transport.

The bank said these elements are all established and the prospects for growth in the 1990 s are good. “But this will not be enough to raise living standards overall, perhaps not even to maintain them. A marked reduction in population growth and strong expansion of the informal sector are equally important if the welfare of the population as a whole is not to decline during the 19905,” the report said.

In a sector-by-sector analysis of the economy, the bank said the most striking feature of employment is that the overall total of formal salary and wage employment had remained virtually the same (about 24,000) for the past four years. This reflects the loss of 2300 lobs in agriculture during 1986-7 and tne almost equivalent increase in social and personal services. The aftermath of Cyclone Namu has resulted in 350 jobs being lost as a result of closing the government-owned rice farm, 450 when the LPT logging company closed and a decline in plantation agriculture. Only about 18 per cent of the 15-54 age group are m formal employment wnich, the bank said, highlights the importance of increased investment to create productive jobs.

Copra production totalled 29,000 tonnes, compared with a projected 33,000 tonne total. The shortfall was blamed on Cyclone Namu and the dry weather that followed it, but inter- Copra cutters - 1988 shortfall but growth expected. 32 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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The same weather factors were blamed for a big drop in cocoa production, Just 2759 tonnes for the year.

Recent planting should see production rise to 0000 tonnes within four years.

If yields can be kept high, cocoa production is still a paying proposition in the Solomons, despite lower world prices.

Palm oil and kernel production is expected to return to pre-Namu levels bv 1990-91 as new and replacement planting continues. Current world prices give a reasonable margin over production costs.

The two large fishing companies, STL and NFD, caught about 42,000 tonnes of tuna in 1988, up 30 per cent on 1987. A combination of a good catch and good prices took fish earnings to $7B million almost half the nation’s exports. A new cannery and fish meal exports should contribute to future growth. The Central Bank says other fisheries potential tends to be overshadowed by the tuna industry but progress in reef fishing, artisanal commercial fisheries and aquaculture is of potentially great importance to levels of income in rural areas to food supply in urban areas and to foreign exchange earnings.

Production of logs (290,000 cubic metres) hit its lowest level since 1981.

The bank said no customary landholding groups were presently replanting forest. Australia is paying for a forest inventory while New Zealand is financing the planting of trees on customary land in Malaita. The bank said the prospects for a permanent, environment-conserving forest industry had brightened in 1988 but there is still a long way to go before the latest initiatives become a coherent forest policy.

Minerals exploration declined due partly to problems obtaining permission from customary landholders.

There are also rumours circulating that gold has been illegally smuggled out to Australia, although the Government believes the amount is insignificant. New mining legislation has Teen mired in lengthy consultation processes.

Gathering of cocoa pods - still pays despite lower world prices. 33 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Business In Brief The latest trade and finance news from around the region.

□ Union Leaves Fiji

THE UNION Steamship Company is closing its operations m Fiji after more than 100 years connection with that country. The company is selling its Union Maritime Services Ltd operations in Suva and Lautoka to the Pacific Forum Line, although Union will continue to represent the Forum Line in Tonga.

Since the Union company had withdrawn the vessel Marama from the Fiji run in 1979 and Forum having taken up the route, the company had been dependent upon agency business alone. Now that the Forum Line had grown, there was no need for Union also to be operating in Fiji. But the vessel Union Auckland will still carry sugar between Fiji and New Zealand.

□ Pacific Stamps On Wane

THE FORUM Secretariat is organising a workshop on ways of reviving the region’s stamp industry.

The small island states are feeling the pinch as world interest in stamp collecting appears to be on the decline, but of the 15 South Pacific Forum nations, six depend on philatelic sales for a major proportion of their export earnings; in Kiribati and Tuvalu the stamp business is a major employer. Tuvalu, which has issued vast numbers of new stamps in recent years, has seen a devastating drop m sales and the workshop will loot at restraining the number of new issues as well as new market possibilities.

Most of the island nations involved have commercial links with British or other stamp companies and the stamps are often designed and printed overseas. Another problem is that stamps from Pacific countries frequently do not reflect the flora, fauna or social history of the countries concerned sucn as Tuvalu’s series of stamps featuring steam locomotives.

□ Hawaiian Airlines Change

HAWAIIAN AIRLINES chairman John Magoon Jr is also to become president of the company after the resignation of Paul Finazzo. Finazzo, who joined Hawaiian in 1982, will be retained as consultant by the airline for the next two years.

□ Solomons Postpones Forest

PLAN THE Solomon Islands government has suspended a forestry project due to go ahead in the country’s Western province. Prime Minister Mamaloni said the SSI 25 million earmarked for the forest scheme will be diverted to other development plans. He pointed to the dangers of having the money all invested in one project which could be lost in one of the frequent cyclones.

□ Tonga Price Index

THE consumer price index in Tonga rose by 1.6 per cent in the first three months of the year, with household products (firewood, gas stoves, posts, insecticides, mirrors) heading the list with a 2.5 per cent increase. Food increased by 1.7 per cent, with larger increases for most fresh vegetables and fish offset by the prices of bele, onions and taro leaves. Clothing and footwear rose 1.8 per cent, mainly for men’s clothing and footwear. Transportation actually dropped, with lower prices for bicycles, petrol and diesel fuel.

□ Hawaii Farms New Crops

WHILE Hawaii’s sugar and pineapple industries face increasingly difficult times, a report from First Hawaiian Bank points to the growing diversification in the state’s farming. Diversified crops’ share of total crop value rose from 24 per cent in 1983 to 32 per cent in 1987.

One of the more successful new crops is macadamia nuts, with production climbing 50 per cent in value since 1983. Kona coffee saw a 15 per cent increase in areaplanted between 1983 and 1987, and producers are aiming at the gourmet coffee market. Hawaii’s flower and nursery product industry is also doing well.

Several new crops are showing commercial potential: guava (crop value in 1987 was |US2 million) and cocoa (with a first harvest due this year), are the two most promising, especially the latter if the Hershey Food Company goes ahead witn plans to develop chocolate products using Hawaiian-grown cocoa beans.

□ Fiji Economic Summit

FIJI WILL this month hold its first national economic summit meeting in three years. Finance Minister Josevata Kamikamica said the meeting will help develop a consultative framework to further Fiji’s economic recovery, and leaders from a cross-section of the community will be able to express views and contribute their ideas. “Fiji’s economic recovery is still in its early stages and it is vital that the nation understands this,” the Minister said.

□ Nz Seeks New Fly Killer

NEW ZEALAND’S Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) is testing a new method to kill fruitflv in food imports from the Soutn Pacific. The new process is dry heat disinfestation, which uses warm air circulated at relatively low humidity to destroy the pest. The fruit is held at a temperature just long enough to kill the fly.

The research has been made necessary by New Zealand health regulations recently introduced requiring a reduction in the use of ethylene dibromide (EDB) traditionally used on fruit from Fiji, Niue, Tonga, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands. The lucrative fruit and vegetable export trade to New Zealana is threatened unless a new method is found to kill the fruitfly.

□ Png Needs To Process Goods

PAPUA NEW GUINEA’S Trade and Industry Minister Galewa Kwarara says his country urgently needs to increase the processing of its raw products. “Unless we set up companies which are willing to further process our goods, we will slowly lose whatever little market we have to our competitors in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines,” the Minister told a business lunch in Cairns, Australia.

About 40 per cent of the country’s gross national product derives from unprocessed products, including copper concentrate, gold, coffee, palm oil, cocoa, tea, copra, fish and timber.

Mr Kwarara said the government not only wanted the raw products to be exported as semi-processed but, if possible, to leave the country as consumable finished goods. He said that Australian companies investing in manufacturing would get preferential access to the Australian, New Zealand and European 34 PACIRC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

... Now from Suva to Auckland ... mm ofOhiM / Fiji’s famous Sichuan restaurant THE GREAT WOK of China Cnr. Bau St./Laucala Bay Rd., Flagstaff, Suva Telephone 301 285 Will be expanding across the ocean to offer Aucklanders a new era in oriental cuisine THE GREAT WOK of China will open in June 404 Khyber Pass Rd., Newmarket, Auckland Telephone 522-1752 Facsimile 608-488 Community markets.

□ Solomons To Privatise

THE SOLOMON Islands government will seek to privatise some of its major corporate investments in joint-venture enterprises or whollyowned government companies. Finance Minister Christopher Columbus Abe said the first property to be sold off is the governmentowned 101-bed Hotel Mendana, the nation’s biggest; the sale of the National Fisheries Development company will follow. The Minister said it was Alliance Party policy to encourage maximum private sector investment.

□ Oils Under Attack

THE SOUTH Pacific Forum Secretariat is concerned about the damage to the region’s exporters of coconut and palm oils caused by a US health awareness campaign.

Washington had prepared legislation aimed at introducing compulsory labelling on coconut oil and palm oil products. The two tropical oils came under the spotlight m a national campaign titled “the poisoning of America”.

The Forum Secretariat’s trade and investment division believes the two tropical products have been unjustly singled out in an emotive and unbalanced campaign that ignores other substances, particularly soya oil, produced in the US and not mentioned in the campaign. The division will consider ways in which the campaign can be countered.

□ New Png Shipping Service

THE JOHN Burke Group is to start a new service from Sydney to Lae, Madang and Port Moresby.

The company will use the vessel Sid McGrath ana will ship refrigerated containers, break bult and roll-on, roll-off cargo.

□ Miners Watch Solomons

POLICIES IN ITS latest quarterly report, the Australian mining company Magnum Resources Ltd reported to the Australian Stock exchange that no work had been carried out on its Solomons tenements during the March quarter. The company said that, as a result of recent elections in the Solomon Islands and the new government being in power, Magnum and other explorers were anxiously awaiting the new administration’s specific policies regarding exploration and mining.

Magnum said the new government was reported to be keen to encourage productive investment in the country, but “the extent to which this will assist exploration and overcome currently onerous (and often unresolvable) access problems remains to be seen”.

□ Bougainville Share Offer

THE PAPUA New Guinea government is to offer about half its shares in Bougainville Copper Ltd to local landholders in the North Solomons Province in an attempt to quell the violence surrounding the mining project. The National Government has a 19.1 per cent interest in BCL, and Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu announced that 4.9 per cent of the company will be available to the landholders at cost with a further 5.1 per cent to be sold to them at current market value.

□ Sugar Agreement Renewed

THE SOUTH Pacific regional sugar agreement has been renewed for a further three years after a meeting of Forum countries Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu and Western Samoa in Suva, a gathering that saw the admission to tne agreement of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Tne new agreement runs until 1992 and includes quota allocations and prices for sugar supplied for the 1989-90 season. 35 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Share market for PNG An exchange may be set up with assistance from the Kuala Lumpur share market.

But many insiders doubt the viability of the move.

Papua new guinea is to have its own stock exchange, though financial vers still question whether there are enough companies and investors to make it viable. The decision followed a visit to Port Moresby by the chairman and general manager of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) and the offer of that organisation’s assistance in setting up the Port Moresby operation.

This in itself caused some sur- &rise in Australia; it had always een assumed that the PNG bourse would be linked closely to the Australian Stock Exchange, especially since there are 16 companies listed on Australian or New Zealand stock exchanges that are either PNG domiciled or that conduct considerable business in PNG (in April, Pacific Islands Monthly reported the listing on the Australian exchange of Pc Arc Niugini NL, the first company owned in PNG to be listed since Independence).

The Australian exchange had stated on several occasions that it was ready to help set up a similar institution in Port Moresby and even in today’s difficult financial situation several major Australian broking firms have expressed a readiness to open offices there once an exchange is operating.

So the Australians were taken by surprise at the KLSE intervention.

It is regarded as part of PNG’s growing interest in further economic ties with Southeast Asia; Kuala Lumpur is a small exchange by world standards and its officials have made the case that they can offer the PNG financial world the benefit of relevant experience, but the possible tie with the KLSE is also being seen as a logical result of Australian lack of interest in Papua New Guinea’s economy. “Apart from the mining and petroleum sector, we’re just not getting any investor interest from Australia, ’ said one financial consultant in Port Moresby.

“Australians seem to have written off Papua New Guinea.”

In contrast, Asian companies appear to believe great opportunities exist to help restructure the country’s capital markets. One problem that has partially paralysed the PNG capital market is its lack of local institutional players: the nation’s major investment organisations (National Provident Fund, Public Officers Superannuation Fund, Motor Vehicles Insurance Trust) have been loath to make equity investments, partly because they do not possess the trained staff to do so.

While the stock exchange proposal has been talked about for several years, the issue returned in November last year when Finance Minister Paul Pora repeated during his Budget speech that the Government was reviving the plan. It is understood the Malaysian High Commissioner in Port Moresby saw the potential for his nation to be associated with the project and arranged for the KLSE delegation to visit in early April.

A few days later, the PNG Cabinet agreed in principle to establish a stock exchange m the country. Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu announced that a highlevel committee made up of government officials and private finance officials was to be set up to work out details of the proposal and a timetable for implementation. The committee is clue to report in July.

Mr Poras argument to his colleagues had been that companies within Papua New Guinea had to place excessive reliance on loan finance in the absence of raising money through equity placements.

“The local market is not well integrated with world capital markets, and thus misses out on significant capital flows seeking investment outlets in the more sophisticated markets of the world,’' he said.

“This includes the growth of markets in developing countries, especially in our own region.” Mr Pora said the exchange (to be capitalised in part by the KLSE) would be privately owned and set up at no cost to tne Government, though the Government would need to meet the initial costs of establishing a regulatory agency.

It has been estimated that as many as 270 companies might list their shares; private financial observers believe the likely initial figure will be between 30 and 50, but PNG’s larger private companies may be encouraged to ‘go public’.

The potential demand for holding listed stocks is currently estimated at KB4 million, and the existence of a stock exchange would be important for major floats such as that planned for MIM Holdings’ subsidiary Highlands Gold Ltd, one of the partners in the giant Porgera gold project.

The Port Moresby exchange could be in operation oy late 1990, but the Government will need to make major amendments to the Companies Act, including; drafting legislation for a securities agency and the licensing of stockbrokers; changes to legislation relating to the investment requirements of the National Provident Fund, Public Officers’ Superannuation Fund and Motor Vehicles Insurance Trust; alteration of the Income Tax Act to remove impediments to trading securities; and amendments to the Central Banking Act and foreign exchange regulations to allow for an easier flow of investment funds.

The big question, however, remains: is tnere adequate equity capital within PNG? Angco was badly disappointed when it tried to raise just K 5 million by a public float, and if local investments will not or, more precisely, cannot come up with equity capital, there will be a major dependence on foreign money. In the absence of Australian interest, this will be coming from the Asian capital markets and will thus take Papua New Guinea one step further from its traditional ties with Australia.

□ Nz Co Shifts To Fui

THE TRANSFER of garment firms to take advantage of low wages in Fiji continues with the decision of Hamilton-based New Zealand clothing maker Bruce Powell to shift his operations to Fiji. The move was made necessary by growing competition from cheap imported products that are driving New Zealand factories out of business.

The Fiji Times reports that Mr Powell plans to set up a factory employing 70 people to make garments for export to New Zealand, Australia ana the US. Mr Powell was reported as saying that other New Zealand firms will go out of business if they do not move offshore. 36 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Women who mean business Pacific societies are male-dominated bastions of chauvinism. But in Tuvalu women are breaking out vie business co-ops.

By Diana McManus PACIFIC does not exactly have a reputation as a bastion of I women’s rights: conservative and traditional societies exist in most Pacific nations, where male and female roles are clearly defined and women’s duties are primarily oriented to the home.

However, increasing numbers of the women are entering the workforce as the region develops, seeking to supplement family incomes and to try their intellects. Many are wage and salary earners, but some are branching out into small business individually, with the family or in co-operatives.

Even in the tiny nation of Tuvalu with a population of less than 9000, there are women who deserve attention for their business acumen and drive: who are redefining the possibilities open to Pacific women today and who are setting examples of wnat imagination and effort can achieve.

Marina Schupp is an extraordinary woman by anyone’s standards. Clever, energetic and practical, she also typified the Pacific woman’s modesty in her unassuming, friendly profile: you would never guess she’s tne proprietor and chief organiser of three thriving businesses and, more importantly, a pioneer in Tuvalu’s primary and secondary industries.

Marina is sole proprietor of a broiler chicken farm and of Happy Face Fashions as well as joint owner and director of South Pacific Apparels with her husband, David. Happy Face had its beginnings in 1984, when Marina bought four small sewing machines to make clothes from fabrics ordered from Hong Kong and Martin Fabrics of Suva.

She sold these from her house until new business premises were completed. Her factory/shop stocked garments for local sales only; mainly sulus, T-shirts and tops. With three other sewers, Marina made the articles and also did the organising and selling . . . and already haa a vision of turning her little business into something with a wider impact.

In 1985 Marina personally financed one of her employees to train at the Umtex factory, owned by the Rathod brothers, in Suva; by 1986 the business had expanded to the extent that shop and factory became split, with a new shop in Funafuti’s shopping area as a retail outlet. Marina’s and David’s thinkmg began to embrace the idea of exports, first suggested by the Rathod brothers.

With the Rathod brothers, they jointly registered as a company and approached the Australian Trade Commission which, through SPARTECA, offered assistance and advice in training, locating markets and in providing opportunities to compete with larger, better established businesses.

As the year progressed, however, Marina felt the partnership with Rathods was limiting, so the agreement was amicably dissolved and Marina decided to ‘go it alone’ with her husband’s support. The shop retained the name Happy Face Fashions and the new export company became South Pacific Apparels.

David attends to what he calls the “paper warfare”, while Marina organises the practical aspects of the businesses.

With a loan from Tuvalu’s Business Advisory Bureau, Marina bought 10 new industrial machines and sent employees on three separate training trips to Suva. In June 1987 the South Pacific Trade Commission advised the Schupps to contact Brisbane-based importing agent George Lock, who acts as mediator between retailers and suppliers; exports have expanded since then through George’s contacts and Marina has made several trips abroad to promote South Pacific Apparels’ products, the most promising being a visit last year to the Australian Bicentennial Trade Fair in Melbourne. The 200 Tshirts she took as samples all sold rapidly, and three Australian companies placed orders for 1989.

South Pacific Apparels now employs nine machinists and a printer at the factory, as well as a salesperson in the shop making it, apart from a couple of building contractors, some local cooperatives and the Handicraft Centre the largest private-sector employer in Tuvalu. According to Simeona losia of the Business Development Advisory Bureau, the company is at present generating the nation’s highest level of export income; even more than that from copra sales.

A recent diagnostic study of South Pacific Apparels was conducted at the Schupp’s request by Thomson Pacific Resources Ltd, on behalf of the Centre for the Development of Industry. Its findings were particularly positive, and it observes that the excellence of SPA’s export product and the success of the venture should be a source of selfrespect and fulfilment for the nation of Tuvalu as a whole . . . and that, “the success of South Pacific Apparels is due in the main to the entrepreneurial skills, capital investment and managerial motivation of a Tuvaluan woman, Marina Schupp.”

Marina is a fine example of a selfeducated and motivated business woman, with an impressive history of achievements. Born in Funafuti in 1946, when Tuvalu was known as the Ellice Islands, she was educated at the London Missionary Society School on the island and that was the end of her formal education.

Productive work - self respect and self sufficiency. 37 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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Prior to her first marriage she worked at the newly built Vaiaku Lagi Hotel and at the age of 20 accompanied her husband to tne Line Islands, where he worked for Burns Philp as manager of a copra plantation. While living on Washington Island she had two sons; while resident on Fanning Island a daughter. During these years in the Line Islands, Manna also found time to run an active social club, and her fundraising efforts eventually resulted in a large clubhouse being built on Fanning Island. To this day it is named the Marina Club, after tne energy and time she invested in its establishment.

In 1981, three years after the Ellice Islands became the sovereign nation of Tuvalu, Marina’s husband aied. She returned to Funafuti, where the following year she met Australian David Schupp, then working as an accounting adviser under an Australian air scheme. They married in 1984.

Marina was still restless for something to occupy her mind, at the suggestion of the Agriculture Office (which was trying to encourage individuals to take over egg production) became only the second Tuvaluan to establish a chicken farm.

She found the returns were not worthwhile so, with the help and advice of the Agriculture Office, switched to producing broilers with gratifying success.

In a remote island microstate that is classified by the United Nations as a ‘least developed country’, Marina’s contribution to her nation should not be underestimated. She is living proof that traditional Pacific roles and lack of formal education need not be barriers to personal development. Fler contribution to the economic life of her country bears testimony to the important role of women in the development of the newly emerging Pacific nations, and deserves special recognition in Tuvalu’s brief history.

No less inspiring is the story of Miliama Manapa, manager of the cooperative Tuvalu Women’s Craft Centre at Funafuti.

Miliama is 34 years old, married and the mother of five children three of whom were born since she became the Craft Centre’s manager. She was one of the first group of women to graduate from Motufoa High School on the island of Vaitupu in 1973. It was a bitter pill f or Miliama to swallow when, though she was very good at her studies and enjoyed school, her father called an end to her education because she was a girl. Her excellent English came later, she says, as a result of working and speaking with former expatriate craft centre managers, especially Amanda Courage and Jonathan Gaunt.

At first she was employed at the Centre on a casual basis, out was promoted to Assistant Craft Development Officer in 1982 when her predecessor moved to Fiji. After the business moved to its present location (an impressive builaing adjacent to Funafuti’s airport terminal) its administration was given a facelift and new names were accorded: The CDO became manager and the Assistant DDO (Miliama) became Assistant Manager. The last technical assistant to be appointed from Britain ended her term in March 1985, from which time Mili has been the official Manager. That year is one Mili will never forget: apart from the added responsibilities of the job, her eight-year-old son died of pneumonia while visiting relatives on an outer island.

Miliama’s managerial skills are contributing in no small way to the success of the Craft Centre, and her personal background reflects the determination and drive required to bring success: as well as a wife and mother, Mili has devoted immense time, energy and travel to the business and to her own education. The development of the Women’s Craft Centre owes a lot to this very modest, attractive and capable lady. Despite the obstacles created by tradition Miliama has established herself as a businesswoman, wife and mother within the traditional framework: a worthy exemplar for Pacific women searching for new forms of identity and expression. □ 38 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

London Exhibition does justice to Captain Bligh fust before Sun Rise the People Mutinied, seized me while asleep in ny Cabin tied my Hands behind my yack carried me on a Deck in my Shirt Put 18 oj the Crew into the launch and me after them and set us idrift.

SO WROTE Lieutenant William Bligh, RN, in despair and perplexity, on April 28, 1789 . Two inndred years to the day since Fletchr Christian and his men burst into High’s quarters on His Majesty’s trmed Snip Bounty, an extraordinary ommemorative exhibition was opened n Britain’s National Maritime Museum a display that traces in •unctilious detail the most famous lutiny in history, capturing not just lie record of events but their precise eel and texture.

Here, in the stately surrounds of a Greenwich mansion on the banks of the Thames. “Mutiny on the Bounty ” (April 28 to October 1) unfolds a dramatic series of tableaux, following the fortunes of the ill-fated breadfruit expedition to Tahiti, the crew’s rebellion, Bligh’s heroic voyage and the fate of tne mutineers on Pitcairn Island.

The story is familiar to every schoolchild, yet tne exhibition invests it with reality for the first time, thanks to an inspired, imaginative presentation.

Here are Bligh and his loyal followers, life-size, adrift in the Pacific; here is the sound of the wind and the roaring swell; here, a perfect replica of the Great Cabin in HMS Duke, where an ‘animatronic’ Lord Hood can be seen and heard pronouncing sentence on the surviving mutineers after their capture. “Mutiny on the Bounty is a masterpiece of the exhibition designer’s craft the work of Australian Des Freeman, with elaborate sets construtted by Kimpton Walker, builders of West End musical productions such as Cats and Starlight Express. At times, as the organisers explain, the Maritime Museum’s quest for the exact atmosphere of the Mutiny reached near-obsessional peaks: the effect of the storms the Bounty weathered as it rounded Cape Horn is recreated by flashing banks of lights and the sound of howling waves; Bligh’s boat floats in a sea mimicked thanks to detailed photography of wave patterns off the Australian coast, allowing the wavecontours characteristic of the swell in South Sea latitudes (and even the shapes and angles of wavelets within the waves) to be correctly reproduced.

But “Mutiny on the Bounty” is not merely a sensurround drama: this exhibition surrounds Bligh and Christian those much treated heroes of Hollywood with the context of their history. Bligh is presented in his correct light; this captain was no tyrannical overlord but a leader, a man of Bligh cast adrift. 39 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

“startling porcelain white skin”, capable of both great charm and great fury . . . and, above all, the greatest navigator in Western seafaring. It was with some justification that he wrote on disembarking in Timor, after 41 days at sea and a 3618-nautical-mile journey: “Thus happily ended, through the assistance of Divine Providence, without accident, a voyage of the most extraordinary nature that ever happened in the world, let it be taken either in its extent, duration, or so much want of the necessaries of life.”

Bligh is naturally the focus of the exhibition, given its host, the Maritime Museum: in a rather touching catalogue preface, Admiral of the British Fleet Lord Lewin of Greenwich speculates on what might have been had the Bounty captain’s life taken a different course: “An accomplished disciple of Captain Cook, a determined commander in battle, colonial administrator potentially a glittering career that should have assured Bligh of a respected place in history, but all overshadowed because of a quirk of character that led to his failure to command the respect and obedience of his men at a critical time . . . Evidently Captain William Bligh deserves to be remembered for more than the Mutiny on the Bounty .”

Fletcher Christian, for his part, stands forth in an essay for the exhibition written by his descendant, author Glynn Christian, as an equally complex and strong-willed individual: ? ‘Christian was a law-breaker, a mutineer, a pirate, a blackbirder and probably a fool. He was also an important, but unheralded explorer, the founding father of a unique people and, like so many of his powerful family* a courageous social pioneer.”

As this display intimates, Bligh and Christian were somehow oound together and never more so than in the climactic moment of the mutiny itself, when the ship’s captain entreated his officer’s mercy: “But you have dandled my children on your knee . .

“Mutiny on the Bounty ”, despite playing to the popularity of its theme (the exhibition is expected to attract some 350,000 visitors, and was opened by non other than the actor Anthony Hopkins, star of the 1984 film The Bounty combines dramatic presentation and detailed research. The thorough catalogue includes an authoritative overview of Pacific history by Professor Glyn Williams and Bengt Danielsson’s record of the most lasting effect of the mutiny the shockwave Christian’s followers sent through Tahitian society during the 18 montns they spent on the island after their rebellion.

In the gallery halls, ‘star’ exhibits such as Bligh’s notebook from his open boat voyage (lent by the National Library of Australia) or relics from the Bounty herself, which survived the vessel’s destruction by fire at Pitcairn, jostle with less-known items that summon up the kernel of the story. The fine portrait of Poedooa, “Daugnter of Orio, Chief of Ulieta in the Society Islands”, painted during Captain Cook’s third voyage, or a Tanitian mother of pearl and barkcloth mourning dress (also collected by Cook) are symbols of the mystery world Tahiti represented in the late 18th century: the unknown, the absolute other than confronted Bligh and his men, emissaries of Britisn order bent on their sternly economic task.

At this point, even an exhibition as comprehensive as this cannot take us further. The Mutiny retains its haunting mystique not only because of the clash of wills it marked not only because of Bligh’s heroics and Christian’s tribulations but because it symbolises the collision of Europe and tne Pacific.

Long before Bligh set sail, Western writers had been penning their fantasies about the ‘savage’ world, from The Tempest to Rousseau and Diderot. Cook’s tidings from the South Seas merely confirmed what Europe already knew: here was a world possessed by different spirits, a different sense of beauty. Even if it is true, as many authors have suggested, that Christian’s rebellion was not mounted primarily because of the lure of Tahitian sensuality, the Mutiny stands to this day as one of those rare cusppoints m history: the moment when British authority, stretched beyond the breaking point, snapped; when the siren songs of the Pacific sounded with a fatal insistence. Danielsson writes of the impact of Tahiti on the mutineers, and on many who have followed them: that the men “probably . . . were suffering from a form of wellknown and aptly named disease Polynesian paralysis which is still very common among European residents who have ‘gone native’ and manifests itself in a complete inability on the part of the afflicted individual to make the effort to board a homeward-bound ship or plane.”

The mere mention of the Bounty Mutiny is still sufficient to fascinate, perhaps because the drama has served as a convenient screen on which later preoccupations can be projected.

Historians by the dozen still pour out volumes speculating on Cnristian’s motives, Bligh’s conduct; efforts that testify to the pull of the event, which receives far more attention than its importance in British or colonial history merit. As Gavin Kennedy points out in his catalogue essay, “that the men involved can excite such passion after 200 years, that supporters and detractors mobilise behind one view or another of those involved, that pamphlets and letters of abuse cross the globe, with personal motives questioned indeed reputations rubbished and dark allusions made to personal dishonesty and scholarly ethics, is probably a greater mystery than the causes of the mutiny itself.”

In short, in this exhibition a scene of primal quality is being recreated; a drama whose power has much to tell us about ourselves. The climatic moment of the Mutiny itself has been frozen forever in the famous 1790 engraving by Robert Dodd, depicting Flogging - a regular event and cause of tension on the Bounty. 40 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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31 Viria Rd, Vatuwaqa, Phone 386000 Suva Suva, Fiji. 63477 Lautoka P.O. Box 1068 Telex 2346 CLYPAC FJ Suva Fax (679) 302-431 Fiji Christian’s men casting Bligh adrift in he launch. Christian and his band, urrounded by incongruous breadfruit terns, look on from the safety of the hip’s stern while Bligh, still in his lightshirt and leggings, stretches out a ist beseeching hand to his Nemesis, he gun-grey waters of the Pacific tretch all around.

This image now forms the heart of tie Bounty legend and, appropriately, Lands at the centre of the National laritime Museum exhibition. Elsewhere in Europe, a feast of Mutiny ommemorations is under way: chilren s books and scholarly tomes in •ritain, stamp issues on the Isle of lan there is even a larger-than-life eplica of the Bounty herself now priding in Jonkoping, Sweden. Could William Bligh and Fletcher Christian ver have imagined, that fine morning f April 28, that they would be numered among the most resonant symols of their age? □ The Bounty had embarked on a formidable voyage across largely uncharted oceans. Mariners of the day felt there was little hope of r escue or survival in the event of shipwreck or mutiny. Bligh’s stubborn manner may have cost him his ship and crew but it ensured his survival of the launch’s rugged ourney. 41 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Pacific Report THE VANUATU Government has launched a SALS million tourism marketing push aimed at Australian holiday-makers. The campaign presents tne theme “Vanuatu the untouched paradise” in newspapers and magazines and with a television campaign featuring the John Farnham hit “Touch of Paradise”.

Vanuatu’s latest Minister for Tourism, Edward Natapei, supported the push with appearances at travel industry functions in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

The decision by Ansett to cease flights to Vanuatu in February 1985 marked the beginning of the decline in tourism that hit rock-bottom after Cyclone Uma in 1987, the May 1988 riot and the shooting of an Australian tourist later that year. Then president Ati George Sokomanu’s failed December attempt to set up an interim government further discouraged intending tourists.

The campaign represents a first attempt at co-operative and cohesive marketing. Sources within the industry say the negative publicity of these events has never been counterbalanced by a united and concerted effort by the Government, the private sector, tourist operators and tne airlines.

Tourism was stumbling along during the 1970 s but the Santo rebellion and ensuing publicity was a formidable deterrent. Ansett began direct flights in 1981 but pulled out after the Government refused to drop a 10 per cent sales levy. The Ansett link provided tourists and an international marketing operation, both lost in the sales tax row.

Media coverage of events in Vanuatu is generally seen by ni- Vanuatu and local operators as the primary cause of the decline in tourism. One hotel owner blames the Australian media generally and one radio journalist in particular. But opinions vary considerately. Port Vila tour operator Frank King, 12 years in the business, says last year’s media coverage had an obvious negative effect. “But it happens to be a convenient fall-guy for the marketing problems. It’s convenient to be able to blame something on somebody from another country.

Others say the media coverage was largely the Government’s fault. Key Government figures refused to give media comment fearing public pronouncements would dignify Barak Sope. Journalists, under pressure from editors, delivered unbalanced stories because the Government had declined the opportunity to balance them.

The current marketing push is the result of a recent series of meetings of various industry operators in a “Tourist Committee” that includes the Minister for Tourism, airline and civil aviation personnel as well as hotel and public works representatives.

The Vanua’aku Pati policy at independence was that tourism should continue because the infrastructure was already in place and stopping it would cause more social disruption than continuing. Tourist development was to be kept in proportion with growth in other sectors of the economy to prevent an over-dependence on tourism. This policy is now being questioned as the general economy shrinks and pressure increases for more tourist development.

A major upgrading of Vanuatu’s Bauerfield Airport is planned for the mid 19905, with Australian and Japanese investors supporting the project. A new international terminal is planned, along with a 600 metre extension to the runway and renovation of the existing domestic terminal. The airport project does not necessarily indicate an intention to build more resorts. Rather it will allow airlines to land bigger aircraft, making services to Vanuatu a more profitable proposition.

More planes will not mean more tourists. That is very much “cargo cult” thinking, says Frank King. “The airport is not going to improve tourism by itself. You have to improve tourism first so that you can use an enlarged airport.”

But one Fort Vila tourist operator, who did not wish to be named, said tourism in Vanuatu had stalled because of “political appointments being put in charge of tourism”.

□ More Quality Needed

PNG LABOUR and Employment Minister Peter Garong has called on his country’s manufacturers to place more emphasis on quality. The Minister made the call while opening the new K 2 million Associated Mills Ltd flour mill extension at Lae. This will process Australian wheat for PNG consumption. Mr Garong said that while the Government wants increased food processing and manufacture, companies producing goods must ensure they maintain the highest standards of quality control.

□ Gloom For Cocoa

WESTPAC Banking Corporation’s latest tropical products survey says the likely collapse of the cocoa act spells gloom for prices over the next two years. Big production increases during the 1980 s have been caused by expansion in planting and greater use of hybrid varieties in Cote d’lvoire, Brazil and Malaysia. Ten years ago, Malaysia grew less cocoa than PNG but it has increased its output twentyfold to become the world’s fourthlargest producer.

Because cocoa trees take seven to ten years to reach full production, cocoa output is likely to continue rising in the short term, said the Westpac report. A major crop failure was the only hope for price recovery.

The current cocoa pact expires in September 1990, having operated as a buffer stock scheme. This buffer stock had risen dramatically in the last few years, almost doubling in 1987-88 because of the high levels of production.

At the same time producer nations failed to pay their share of the levies necessary to operate the scheme.

Westpac reports that members cannot agree on a new intervention price, meaning that a scheme to expand the buffer stock by 120,000 tonnes has been blocked.

□ Nauru Seeks Pilots

AIR NAURU has reportedly offered New Zealand pilots as much as SNZBO,OOO in an attempt to get the airline into the skies again. Most of Air Nauru’s experienced captains and first officers left the airline after last year’s dispute over safety standards.

The airline has been grounded since New Zealand and Australia civil aviation authorities withdrew airworthiness certification.

□ Fui To Join Apcc

THE FIJIAN Government has decided to join the Jakarta-based Asian and Pacific Coconut Community (APCC). The organisation was established to promote and co-ordinate coconut industry activities and now represents about 90 per cent of world producers. Current APCC projects include replacement of senile coconut palms in small holdings, copra stabilisation schemes. 42 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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Economies on the mend ECONOMIES of some South Pacific developing countries U showed signs of recovery in 1988, according to the latest annual report from the Asian Development Bank. It particularly identified Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea in this category.

Fiji’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by two per cent (following a decline of 7,8 per cent in 198/) due mainly to increases in sugar production, tourist arrivals and private investment. The report said there were indications the economy of the Solomon Islands also recovered from the decline of the previous three years due to the higher output and prices for fish, palm oil and timber. Papua New Guinea registered a GDP growth of 4.1 per cent compared to 4.8 per cent in 1987, due to reduced investment and poor performance of major agricultural exports such as sawn timber, rubber, cocoa and copra.

Tonga and Western Samoa registered a GDP decline of two per cent, mainly because of declining agricultural production resulting from a severe drought, and lower prices for their major export commodities. Cook Islands ana Vanuatu had not recovered from the considerable damage caused by cyclones in 1987 and 1988.

Inflationary pressures have been building up in the South Pacific states since 1987, the Asian Development Bank report said. This was attributable to increased demand as a result of the economic recovery, depreciation of currencies, excessive creak expansion and shortages of basic food items due to cyclones and droughts. Inflation reached 10.5 per cent m Fiji, 19.3 per cent the Solomon Islands and 10 per cent in Tonga.

Imports grew faster than exports, which led to a general widening of trade deficits. Fiji s rose from |U§l32 million in 1987 to $l5O million owing to the economic recovery and associated inflation. But income from tourism and transfers increased in the region.

The bank said the South Pacific member countries could be expected to improve their economic growth in 1989 as prices for their primary products and tourism sector recovered, and their economies adjusted to the destabilising effects of the cyclones and political developments in 1987.

In Fiji, the Asian Development Bank said it supported the government’s long-term objectives of economic diversification and employment generation. The bank would help Fiji to revitalise the economically productive sector in the wake of the slackening of private sector development after political upheavals. It would lend money and provide technical assistance to agriculture, the country’s main economic base.

In Papua New Guinea, the bank’s operational strategy is geared toward promoting growth of smallholder agriculture, fisheries and forestry; maintaining and expanding physical and social infrastructure which supports the productive sectors; broadening the industrial base by enhancing private investment in small and medium sized industries and agrobusinesses.

In the smaller states, the Asian Development Bank will continue to support new agricultural and industrial projects and, in energy, help to develop hydro power potential. Credit lines were being provided to national banks to allow them to assist private sector projects.

□ Rabuka To Step Down

FIJI’S ARMED Forces commander, Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka, has announced his intention to become a civilian political leader if necessary to achieve the aims of the two 1987 coups. General Rabuka told Radio New Zealand he would step down as military commander as soon as he could train his subordinates to take over. He said he has no personal ambitions to enter politics but would do so if that was the only way to keep his promise to the Fijian people.

Trie General’s decision follows the announcement by Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara’s of his decision to retire at the end of this year. Ratu Mara, 69, became caretaker PM after the two coups and was given two to finalise a new constitution and hold general elections. General Rabuka asked the PM to stay on until the work of the interim government is completed.

General Rabuka, the Home Affairs Minister in the interim government, says he does not favour his automatic appointment to a seat in Parliament and a place in Cabinet.

□ Png Fights Polluters

PNG Environment Minister Jim Yer Waim has hit out at mining companies who neglect their environmental responsibilities. The Minister was expressing concern over water pollution by wastes from mine construction on the island of Misima. A study of the area has shown that mine wastes are entering village water supplies.

A compensation agreement between the Misima Mine Ltd and the landowners requires the company to provide alternative water supply if the creeks become polluted by mine wastes. An investigation by the Environment Department has found that no alternative water supply has been provided. The department has sent a team to survey the affected area and attempt to resolve the dispute.

□ Fui Cops To Africa

FIJI WILL send another 30 police officers to join the Fiji contingent already in Namibia as part of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group UNTAG. The move will increase the strength of the Fiji contingent to 75. A departure date has not been announced but selection began almost immediately.

□ Us Trash For Marshalls

STUDIES will begin this month for an American garbage disposal project in the Marshall Islands. US company Admiralty Pacific proposes to export millions of tonnes of garbage from the American west coast beginning in 1991. The Marshall Islands authorities have granted permission for feasibility studies on a project to use the imported garbage to build a causeway connecting several islands. The waste is also expected to be used as land fill.

The studies will take about eight months and cost more than SUSS million.

□ Tonga Board Debts

TONGA’S King Taufa’ahau Tupou has hit out at the kingdom’s Commodities Board for running the organisation into debts worth millions of dollars. Opening the 1989 session of Tonga’s Parliament, the King said the Board is not capable of performing its proper tasks and is accumulating debts because it diversified to other ventures. He said it was morally wrong to make the nation’s farmers pay for debts they did not incur.

The general - a future MP. 44 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

i* ■ ■ • . 5 : v ■ SS il £*«* Si : m People said they were just dreamers, too.

Flying is for the birds. So said the world when Orville and Wylbur decided to build their ‘flying machine’.

Much the same reaction greeted many of our endeavours over the past 20 years, and like the Wright Brothers, we didn’t give up either.

When our peers shook their heads and said it was impossible to successfully ship apples and pears to the United States or grapes to the United Kingdom; when they said frozen meat couldn’t be transported by rail across inland Australia or onions wouldn’t keep in containers on the open sea, ACTA proved them wrong.

Through innovative research and countless tests and trials, ACTA developed revolutionary new methods for the transport of perishable as well as general cargo.

And this unfailing dedication to excellence is still very much a part of our philosophy today.

At ACTA, we’re not just dreaming of the future.

We’re creating it.

ACTA PTY. LIMITED ACTA HOUSE 447 Kent St Sydney N.S.W. 2000 Phone {02)2660633 Fax (02)2671148 Telex 121369 ACT 003

The Island Press Reports from the papers, compiled by John Carter THE POLICE Brass Band, recently returned from a trip to Hawaii, was named as most outstanding among the 11 in competition in Honolulu during the annual Pacific Basin Festival, March 28-April 4. It was the group’s first time to participate in the festival.

Among the 11 songs performed was ‘Katina’ composed by Queen Salote Tupou 111.

One of the judges gave the Tongan group a perfect score of 100 points, saying, “it was a very good performance . . . and sometime in the near future, please visit Japan . . . because you’re much better than the Japanese Police Band”.

From the Tonga Chronicle, Nuku’alofa THE AUDITOR General’s report into the National Provident Fund has revealed serious financial anomalies.

Part of the summarised report, revealed to the Press by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee at a news conference last Friday, states that in addition to his normal K4OOO yearly entertainment entitlement, NPF boss John Noel further incurred K 10,995 on entertainment in 1987.

The report also states that the Managing Director’s residence at Doreen Place, Korobosea, which was bought by NPF for K 138,000 in 1983, was repaired and maintained at a cost of k 30,000 three years later.

An expensive K 16,000 swimming pool was also built at the residence, purportedly to raise the value of the property.

From the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby A JAPANESE World War II veteran says he wants to make amends for what his country did to PNG particularly Rabaul.

“I want to have a clean heart, that’s why I must make amends,” said Mr Sadao Miyata. And one of his good deeds was the donation of 10 bicycles, at a cost of more than KlOOO from his own pocket, to Rabaul policemen last week. In his previous visits, he had presented books to the Rabaul Public Library and also did odd jobs like repainting of war relics.

From the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby A RESEARCH study is being conducted by Dr Ramesh Malik of the Department of Agriculture on the breeding of guinea pigs as a cheap source of meat supply, especially in the rural areas.

Guinea pigs are promising microlivestock in the developing countries because they are a cheap source of animal protein that can be easily produced under rural conditions. Their cost of production is low compared to other livestock including poultry, and they don’t compete with man for food.

From the PNG University of Technology’s The Reporter, Lae ACCORDING to the article, “New Royal Chapel Planned”, which appeared on Page 1 of the March 17 issue of The Tonga Chronicle, replacement of the Royal Chapel is being planned, and there is also talk of replacing the Royal Palace.

As a palangi and a visitor to Tonga during the celebration of His Majesty’s 70th birthday anniversary, I think I can speak for other foreigners when I say that the two structures are viewed by visitors as among the most distinctive and appealing features of Nuku’alofa. It would be a great loss to the Kingdom of these historic landmarks were to be replaced.

Too often, national treasures fall victims to “progress”. It has happened in America, and it can happen m Tonga. One of the strengths of mature leadership is the ability to rein in progress when it threatens such treasures.

I hope that the officials of His Majesty s Government have the wisdom to preserve these two monuments to the birth of the Tupou Dynasty and the establishment of Christianity and constitutional government in the Friendly Islands.

From a letter by R E Holmberg of Montana, USA in the Tonga Chronicle, Nukualofa.

A MAN was shot dead and seven others were seriously injured after an argument over a pancake erupted into a major fight in the Western Highlands at the weekend.

Many houses, some of them permanent buildings, and food gardens were also destroyed in the three-day fight, which started late on Friday at the Koban Plantation, near Banz.

The fight was between Enga and Southern Highlands labourers working at the plantation. It was later joined by relatives of both sides living in nearby settlements and blocks.

Police said a Southern Highlands man had bought a pancake from a vendor and when he aiscovered it was not properly cooked, returned it and asked for his lOt to be refunded.

The vendor an Engan, refused and an argument started.

It later developed into a major fight, involving about 500 men on both sides.

From the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, Port Moresby 46 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia

Joint Committee

On Foreign

Affairs, Defence

AND TRADE Australia’s Relations with Papua New Guinea The Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is conducting an inquiry into Australia’s relations with Papua New Guinea. The Terms of Reference for the inquiry are: To investigate and report on Australia’s relations with Papua New Guinea, with particular reference to: a. economic relations between Australia and PNG, including trade, investment and development cooperation; b. the implications for Australia of political, economic, social and security developments in PNG; and c. the implications for Australia of PNG’s role in regional affairs.

The Sub-Committee on Papua New Guinea, invites written submissions from interested persons and organisations by Friday 30 June 1989. The Subcommittee proposes to hold a series of public hearings and will invite selected persons and organisations to give evidence in support of their written submissions.

Submissions and inquiries should be directed to: Joanne Towner Secretary Sub-Committee on Papua New Guinea Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, « Defence and Trade | Parliament House S CANBERRA ACT 2600 !

AUSTRALIA < Telephone:(6l 62)77 2098 -^.AUSTRALIA viwww .W/////W TRANSITION Launched Papua New Guinea’s long-awaited 50 tina banknote, at a ceremony at Parliament House, Port Moresby. The new note features an engraved portrait of Foreign Minister Michael Somare. Bank of PNG governor Sir Henry Toßobert said the inclusion of Mr Somare’s portrait was a sign of respect for the of the nation” the first Chief Minister and first Prime Minister. The K5O note also bears an engraving of the Parliament building and the PNG national crest.

Launched Compensation proceedings in the International Court of Justice, by the Nauru Government m a bid to secure compensation from Australia for rehabilitation of lands worked out by phosphate mining. A Nauru Commission of Inquiry recently set a figure of SA72 million to cover the cost of damage caused by long-term mining on the mineral-ricn island.

Elected Francois Burck, as leader of New Caledonia’s pro-independence Union Caledonienne. Burck, 50, replaces slain UC leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou. Leopold Joreidie was elected deputy leader, to replace Yeiwene Yeiwene who died with Tjibaou on the island of Ouvea on May 4. While the killings were seen as a protest against the Matignon accord signed with France, both Burck and Joreidie were expected to hold early talks with French leaders to ensure continuity of the accord process.

Appointed Ilinome Tarua CBE, as Consul General in Papua New Guinea’s Sydney consulate. Mr Tarua is 48 and has pursued an extensive career in law, public service and the diplomatic corp.

Died Emos Raboni, softly spoken PNG radio broadcaster, of internal bleeding, at Nonga Base Hospital in East New Britain Province. Though only 33, Raboni was one of the National Broadcasting Commission’s longest serving staff members. He began his radio career at age 18 and became NBC’s co-ordinator of sport.

He had worked for Radio Rabaul for the past three years.

Papa bilong ol PNG stret - honoured on new bank note.

PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Pacific Stamp Box Edited by John Hunter I recently reported on the sale of Caphco Ltd (formerly the Crown Agent’s Stamp Bureau) to Westwood Rogers Marketing Group Ltd of Australia. Collectors of old Commonwealth stamps will be aware of the CA watermarks characteristic of the Crown Agent of long ago. Here is a brief history of the company.

The Crown Agents were set up initially to deal with the enormous volume of work generated by the British Colonies. By the 1830 s the work was too much for the clerks at the Colonial Office and so Agents for the Crown Colonies were appointed. They looked after the needs of the 13 Crown colonies of the time Ceylon, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Trinidad, St Lucia, British Guyana, Cape of Good Hope, Malta, Gibraltar, Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales and Western Australia. Many more were added in the following years.

Caphco only became a limited company in 1985 but has had over 120 years of practical experience with postage stamps. It took over the Crown Agents Stamp Bureau, which had commenced operations in 1848 when a contract to print the “Britannia” series for Mauritius was placed with Perkins Bacon, the printers of the Penny Black. By the 1860 s the Crown Agents were arranging for the design and printing of many colonial stamps. There soon follower! the first of a long line of watermarks incorporating the letters CA introduced as a measure to prevent forgery of stamps.

The first use of the single CA mark in the Pacific was in Fiji around the turn of the century.

Caphco is renowned for its policy advice to stamp-issuing nations. It is important to carefully create a balance between stamps featuring domestic and international themes as the philatelic market is particularly sensitive to any hint of exploitation thematic relevance to the issuing nation is desirable, if not vital. Capnco has guided many a nation through this difficult process.

The company also assists with artwork, keeping contact with a wide range of illustrators and graphic designers who specialise in stamp artwork. Caphco buyers first commission rough artwork which is then painstakingly checked for accuracy and amended or re-drawn as necessary. Finished artwork is then prepared and the stamps are printed.

Many postage stamps today are printed m fine-screen lithography a technique capable of very precise results. Even so, stamps are scrutinised under magnifying glasses to check for colour matcning, registration and spotting. Security is tight inside the printers works and every square inch of watermarked paper must be accounted for. Every street of stamps is manually checked for missing or misplaced colours.

Finished stamps are then shipped to the issuing country and extra supplies are kept in the Caphco strongroom to await orders from the trade.

The Crown Agent’s concern with philatelic sales dates from 1906 when the intensity of interest in British colonial stamps dictated they should com- 48 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

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STAMP COLLECTION!

Beautiful First Day Covers and Postcards of Solomon are now on sale. 1989 release dates Islands Stamps are as follows * ORCHIDS PTII 20th Jan * 125TH ANNIVERSARY OF RED CROSS 16TH MAY.

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C/- General Post Office Honiara, Solomon Islands Tel. (Honiara) 22108 FOR SALE

Ex-Australian Government

Ex Australian Government Bulldozers Cranes Tractors Post Hole Borers Forklifts Loaders Loaders backhoes Elevating Platforms Trenchers Road Graders Road Rollers Garbage Compactors Street Sweepers Excavators 4x4 x 6x6 Heavy Duty Trucks Generators Compressors Prime Movers etc.

Low Kim Low Hr Units

Cousins Truck & Machinery Sales

P.O. BOX 191 ARCHERFIELD BRISBANE OLD 4108 PHONE (07) 277 1822 FAX (07) 274 1389 mence distributing stamps direct to the dealers. Interest remains high but publicity and marketing are becoming increasingly important. In a rapidly changing world, stamp collecting seems a rather sedate past-time when considered alongside computer games.

Caphco is seeking to establish a new identity for the hobby and no opportunity is missed be it a school stamp club display or international promotional activity.

Solomon Islands will be participating in this year’s World Stamp Expo, to be held in Washington, USA, in November. This major event will coincide with the 20th Universal Postal Union Congress. The Solomons have donated some 10,000 pieces of philatelic materials to be given away to school-children as an introduction to the hobby of stamp collecting.

The • Isle of Man, Pitcairn Islands and Norfolk Island all have close historical links with the story of the mutiny on the Bounty. Several of the leading characters lived on the Isle of Man while descendants of the mutineers still live on Pitcairn and Norfolk.

All three island postal authorities have released special stamp issues to commemorate the mutiny bicentenary. 49 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Shipping Schedules

Australia New Caledonia

Fiji - Hawaii North

AMERICA PACE Line (ACTA Shipping) operates a fully containerised service every 17 days from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka. The vessels continue on to the North coast of America, calling at Hawaii at frequent intervals.

Details from ACTA Pty Ltd. Sydney (266 0633); Tlx AA121369; Fax 267 1148; Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Rodwell Road, Suva (311 777); Tlx FJ2168; Fax 301 127; Burns Philp (SS) Co Ltd, Lautoka (60 777); Sato SA. Avenue James Cook BPC 2. Noumea, Cedex (281 122); Tlx 3163 NM GATO. Fax 276 532. Sofrana Unilines operates a Roßo/container service every three weeks from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka. Vessels continue (as PAD Line) to the US West coast.

Details from Sofrana-Unilines (Aust) Pty Ltd., Sydney. Tel. 264 8944; Telex AA170090; Fax 267 6547. Sofrana Unilines, Noumea Tel 275191; Telex NM3048; Fax 272611. Wiltrans Agency, Melbourne Tel (03) 6144788; Telex AA30163; Fax (03) 6145909. Wiltrans Agency, Melbourne Tel (03) 6144788 Telex AA30163 Fax (03) 6145909. Wiltrans Agency, Brisbane Tel (07) 8541855 Telex AA40712 Fax (07) 2524953. Carpenters Shipping, Suva. Tel 25141 Telex FJ2IBB Fax 301572.

Australia - Samoas

TONGA Warner Pacific Lines operates a regular container service from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to Nuku’alofa, Pago Pago, Apia and Vava’u with transhipment to Rarotonga.

Details from Hetherington Westfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt St, Sydney (223 1600).

Australia - New Caledonia

Fiji Samoas Tonga

Pacific Forum Line operates a fully containerised service (general, reefer and ro-ro) from Sydney to Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago, Nuku’alofa, Sydney. Cargo centralised from Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, PO Box 796 Auckland; Union Bulkships, <333 George St, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne; Union Co, Lautoka; Pacific Forum Line, Suva, Nuku’alofa; Pacific Forum Line, Apia; Polynesia Shipping, Pago Pago. Sofrana-Unilines operates a RoßoContainer service every three weeks from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Noumea, Suva and Lautoka with transhipment to the Samoas and Tonga. For details see above.

Australia Norfolk Island

Lord Howe Island

Sofrana-Unilines (Australia) Pty Ltd operates a regular monthly service with MV Capitaine Wallis. Details from Sofrana-Unilines, Sydney (02) 2648944; Telex AA170090 Fax 2676547,

Australia - New Caledonia

VANUATU Campagnie Generate Maritime operates a monthly service from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Noumea, Port Vila and Santo, for containerised and break-bulk cargo.

Details from Compagnie Generate Maritime 12 Castlereagh St, Sydney (231 3700).

Australia Nauru

Nauru Pacific Line operates a regular cargo service from Melbourne to Nauru, passenger service to Nauru only.

Details from Nauru Pacific Line (Aust) Pty Ltd, Nauru House, 80 Collins St, Melbourne (653 5709), Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring St Sydney, (20 522).

Australia - Solomon

Islands Vanuatu

NGAL/PNGL joint service operates a monthly service.

Details from Nedlloyd Swire Pty Ltd, 6 Spring St. Sydney (20 522).

Australia - New Zealand

The Australian National Line and the New Zealand Line operate a 10-day container service (TRANZTAS) between Sydney and Melbourne to Auckland, Wellington, Lyttleton and Port Chalmers.

Details from Australian National Shipping Agencies, 131-137 York St, Sydney (225 7333) and Australian National Shipping Agencies, “World Trade Centre”, cnr Flinders and Spencer Sts, Melbourne (611 2323) or New Zealand Line, Pastoral House, 96 Lambion Quay, Wellington (72 2245).

Australia Nz Fiji

Vanuatu - New Caledonia

Solomons - New Guinea

Sitmar Cruises operates a year-round cruise program from Sydney to include the better-known ports in the above countries plus a number of unspoilt, and largely unknown, island paradises.

Details from Sitmar Cruises, 39 Martin Place, Sydney (239 9000) for NSW; reservations and inquiries (008 42 2277); rest of Australia, reservations and enquiries (088 22 2277).

Australia Nz Fiji

Tonga Vanuatu - New

Caledonia Solomons

Samoas Tahiti

P&O Liners call at Auckland, Bay of Islands, Honiara, Lautoka, Noumea, Nuku’alofa, Pago Pago, Papeete, Port Moresby, Santo, Savusavu, Suva, Vava’u and Vila on cruises from Australia.

Details from P&O Booking Centre, Thomas Cook Pty Ltd, 33 Bligh St, Sydney (237 0333).

Australia Png

Solomons Vanuatu

A consortium of NGAL/PNG and CONPAC has four vessels operating a joint service from east coast Australian ports to Port Moresby, Lae.

Alotau, Madang, Wewak, Rabaul, Kavieng-Kimbe, Kieta, Honiara, Vila, Santo.

Details from Burns Philp & Co Ltd, PO Box R 124, Royal Exchange, Sydney (20 547); Nedlloyd Swire, 8 Spring St, Sydney (20 522); New Guinea Express Lines, 37 Pitt St, Sydney (241 3991); Vila Agents PO Box 27, Port Vila (2456), Tlx NHIOII.

Europe Tahiti New

Caledonia Vanuatu

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Bramen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, Port Vila and Santo.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; Ets A.M. Fare LITE, Papeete; Ets Ballande, Noumea and other local agents. Sofrana Europe Australia Line “Sofeal” operates a regular three-weekly service from North European ports including Felixstowe to Papeete from Noumea. Details from McArthur Shipping Agency Co. Pty. Ltd. Tel (02) 5502222 Telex AA24045 Fax 5191382.

Europe - Png - Solomons

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Bramen, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688). Tlx: AA24066, Columbus Line, Lae (423466), Tlx: NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Europe W. Samoa Tonga

FIJI The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hamburg, Breman, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre to Apia, Nuku’alofa, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Singapore Hong Kong

Fiji Islands Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co Ltd operates a monthly containerised and break-bulk cargo service from Hong Kong to Lautoka, Suva and then to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Private Mail Bag, GPO Suva, Fiji (31 2244); Fax: (679)301 572. Tlx FJ2199.

Far East Fiji New

ZEALAND New Zealand Unit Express (NZUE) operates a monthly service accepting containerised and break-bulk cargo from Manila, Keelung, Kaohsiung and Hong Kong to Lautoka, Suva and thence to New Zealand ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Private Mail Bag, GPO Suva, Fiji (312 2244), Fax: (679) 311 572; Tlx FJ2199; Burns Philp, Suva (311 777); New Zealand Unit Express, Maritime Building, 2-10 Customhouse Quay, PO Box 890, Wellington (727 865), Cables ENZUEMAN WELLINGTON, Tlx NZ31340, NEDLNZ, or Nedlloyd Swire Pty Ltd, Sydney (20 522).

Far East Mid South Pacific

China Navigation’s New Guinea Pacific Line operates a regular container and Break Bulk-Heavy Lift service from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Manila, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand to Port Moresby, Lae, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara with 50 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

U« ...

Europe-South Pacific Joint Service

The South Pacific Specialists offer facilities for shipment of: Containers (FCL/LCL) and Breakbulk Cargo plus reefer space and deeptanks for carriage of vegetable oils and other liquid bulk cargo.

Carriers also accept heavy lifts, overlength and cumbersome parcels.

Ports of Service: Loading; Papeete, Apia, Suva, Lautoka, Noumea, Port Vila, Santo, Honiara, Port Moresby, Lae,Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta, Darwin.

For; Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Hull, Dunkirk, Le Havre.

Additional ports on enquiry.

Round The World Service

Please contact our regional offices for further information: The Bank Line (Australasia) Pty Ltd Ground Floor Telex AA24063 53 Martin Place Telephone (02) 223 6255 Sydney NSW 2000 Facsimile (02) 223 6549 Columbus Line Reederei GmbH P.O. Box 1667 Lae/Papua New Guinea Phone: 42 3466/42 3287 A.H. 42 2481 Telex: Colline NE 44 171

The Bank Line Ltd London

Columbus Line Reederei Gmbh Hamburg

TONGA KIRIBATI VANUATU

Cook Island

Solomon Islands

New Caledonia

U.S. SAMOA

Western Samoa

French Polynesia

Japan . Korea

YOU’LL FIND IT,

Where The Sky Meets

THE SEA

Roro, Container &

B.Bulk Shipping

BALI AGENTS and PHONE SUVA:Burns Philp(B P) 311 777 Carpenter Shipping (C.S) 31 2244 LAUTOKA:B P 60777 C S 63988 APIA B P 22611 PAGOPAGO :Polynesia Shipping Services Ltd 633-1 211 PAPEETE:Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne 42 84 02 NOUMEA;Etablissements Ballande 687-283384 VILA:B P 2456 SANTO:B P 230 HONlARAiSullivans (Solomon Islands) Ltd 21645 TARAWA:Shipping Corporation of Kiribati 26195 NUKUALOFA:B P 21500 BUSANrfor general cargo Young Chang Shipping Co , Ltd 753-0451 for vehicle Pan Continental Shipping Co., Ltd 778-7680 Soyang Shipping Co , Ltd 752-7755 JAPANrfor general cargo Swire 03-230-9245 for vehicle NYK Lines 03-284-5506 Mitsui O S K 03-587-7123 18 days frequency. Wewak and Madang will receive four direct calls a year or more on inducement. A T/Service via Lae to these and other PNG ports connecting with monthly sailings is available at cost. Cargo from the same Eastern ports to the South Pacific ports of Noumea, Santo, Vila, Papeete, Pago Pago, Apia, Nukualofa, Rarotonga and Tarawa will be shipped via Japan or Busan on the monthly Bali Hai service.

Details from Steamships Shipping, PO Box 634, Port Moresby (220 283 or 22C 289).

Kyowa Shipping Ltd operates monthly services from Japan to Guam, Saipan, Solomons, New Caledonia, Fiji, Western and American Samoa, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Details from Hetherington Wesfarmers Shipping Agency, 37-49 Pitt St, Sydney (223 1600); Carpenters Shipping. Suva (312 244), Tlx FJ2199.

Guam Northern Marianas

Saipan Shipping Co operates a weekly service via barge carrying containers and conventional cargo between Guam and Saipan and Tinian.

Details from Saipan Shipping Co, Inc, PO Box 8, Saipan CM 96950 (322 9706 or 322 9707). Tlx 783619; Fax (670)322 3183; Guam agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.

Hawaii Samoas Tonga

Cook Islands

Hawaii-Pacific Lines operates a monthly container service between Honolulu, Pago Pago, Apia, Nukualofa and Avatiu (Rarotonga).

Details from Hawaii-Pacific Maritime, Inc., PO Box 3264, Honolulu HI (9680)-32641 (808 531 4841).

Details from Morris Hedstrom Samoa Ltd, PO Box 189, Apia, Western Samoa (21 355, 22 722), Tlx 224 MORISHED SX), Fax 24 279; Union Citco Travel Ltd, Rarotonga, Cook Islands (682 21 780); Tlx 62024 (UTRAV G); Fax (682) 20 859; Kneubuhl Maritime Services, PO Box 39, Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799, (684 633 5121); Tlx 782505; Fax (684)633 5100; Union Maritime Services Ltd, PO Box 4 Nukualofa, Tonga (21 644 / 5); Tlx 6627, Fax (676) 21 645.

Japan Fiji Island Ports

Kyowa Shipping Co-operates a monthly containerised service from main ports of Japan to Suva, Lautoka, thence to island ports.

Details from Carpenters Shipping, Neptune House, 3/4 Floor, Tofua St, Walu Bay, Suva (31 2244), Fax (679) 301 572 Tlx FJ2199.

Japan Micronesia

The NYK Shipping Line operates a monthly cargo service from Japan to Micronesia, calling at Yoko, Nagoya, Kobe, Guam, Saipan, Truk, Ponape and Majuro, returning via Yoko, Nagoya and Kobe.

Details from Burns Philp & Co Ltd., 51 Pitt St, Sydney (259 1000).

Saipan Shipping Co operates a monthly service from Japan to Saipan, Guam, Truk, Ponape, Majuro (Kosrae and Ebeye on inducement).

Details from Saipan Shipping Co, PO Box 8, Saipan, CM 96960 (322 9706 or 322 9707), Tlx 783619, Fax (670)322 3183.

Japan agents Kyowa Shipping Company Ltd: Guam Agents Maritime Agencies of the Pacific Ltd.

Japan Korea - Png

Paradise Service

Mitsui OSK Lines in joint service with NYK Lines operates a monthly service from main ports in Japan and Busan in Korea to PNG ports of Wewak, Rabaul, Kieta, Lae, Port Moresby, Kavieng, Kimbe, Madang and Oro Bay Details from Robert Laurie Company Pty Ltd, PO Box 1032, Lae (direct; 423 642 or a switch: 423 811). Contact W 0 Hackenberg, Group Shipping Manager & Marketing; Tlx NE 42508 Fax 423 801, JAPAN - KOREA FIJI -

Island Ports

Bali Hai Service operates a monthly and general cargo and vehicle service from main Japanese ports and Korea to Suva, Lautoka, Apia, Pago Pago, Papeete, Nukualofa, Noumea, Vila, Santo and Honiara.

Details from John Swire and Sons (Japan) Ltd, 14 Ichibancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo (03) 230 9220); Tlx J 22248, Fax (03) 230 9288.

Png Inter-Mainport

Papua New Guinea Lines offers scheduled 10-20 day coastal liner services linking all PNG major ports with containerisation, reefer, heavy lift and trans-shipment facilities.

Details from PNG Line, Box 543, Port Moresby (211 174), Tlx 22269.

Png - Taiwan - Hong Hong

- Singapore - Indonesia

The Bank Line & Columbus Line operates a regular joint cargo service from PNG Ports to Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta & Surabaya.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 51 Pitt St, Sydney (251 6688), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466); Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents. 52 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Png Uk/Continent

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint service from Port Moresby, Oro Bay, Kieta, Rabaul, Kimbe, Madang and Lae to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171, or lines’ local agents.

Solomons - Uk/Continent

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Honiara to Hull, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Le Havre.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. operates a regular three-weekly service from PNG ports to Northern European ports, including Felixtowe. Details from McArthur Shipping Agency Co. Pty Ltd; Tel.

Sydney (02) 5502222 Telex AA24045 Fax (02) 519 1382 or from local PNG agents.

NEW ZEALAND - AUSTRALIA -

Png - Solomon Islands

Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and ro-ro service from Lyttleton, Napier and Auckland to Brisbane, Port Moresby, Lae, Honiara, Brisbane then to New Zealand.

Details from Pacific Forum, Auckland, Christchurch; Union Bulkships, Brisbane; Steamships Shipping, Port Moresby and Lae Sullivan Ltd, Honiara; Seabridge, Wellington.

New Zealand Cook Islands

TAHITI New Zealand Line operates cargo services based on pallets and similar units from Auckland to Cook Islands and Tahiti.

Details from NZ Shipping Agencies International Ltd, PO Box 3420, Auckland (392 650), Waterfront Commission, PO Box 61, Rarotonga, Cook Islands; Shipping Office, Govt of Niue, PO Box 107, Niue Island: Compagnie Maritime Polynesienne, PO Box 36, Papeete, Tahiti.

Rarotonga Line operates regular services to Tonga and the Samoas from New Zealand.

Details from Sofrana Uni lines (NZ) Ltd. Tel (09) 773279 Telex NZ2313 Fax (09) 393874.

New Zealand Fiji

Reef operates a regular 18-day service from Auckland to Suva and Lautoka. Also passenger accommodation.

Details from Reef Shipping Agencies, PO Box 3382, Auckland (771 2213), Tlx 60633; MV Fijian Shipping Agencies Ltd, Private Bag, Suva (311 056).

Pacific Line with one ship operates a three-weekly ro-ro cargo service New Zealand, Lautoka, Suva. No passengers.

Details Sofrana Unilines, [773 279); PO Box 3614, Tlx NZ2313, Darpenters Shipping, Neptune House, Tofua St, Walu Bay, Suva (25141), Tlx FJ2199.

New Zealand Fiji North

America (Wc)

Blue Star Line Ltd Pacific Coast container services: only direct service to and from New Zealand. Blue Star vessels call at Suva and Honolulu on NZ-US West Coast voyages.

Details from Blueport ACT (NZ) Ltd, PO Box 1 92, Wellington (739 029); Burns Philp (SS) Co _td, GPO Box 355, Suva (311 777), Tlx FJ2168 Burnship.

New Zealand Fiji Samoas

- TONGA Pacific Forum Line operates a containerised and p-ro 21 day service from Auckland to Lautoka, Suva, Apia, Pago Pago and Nuku'alofa.

Details from Pacific Forum Line, Auckland, Christchurch, Suva and Apia, Union Maritime, Lautoka, and Nukualofa, Polynesian Shipping, Pago Pago.

New Zealand Tonga

SAMOAS Warner Pacific Line Services from Auckland to Nukualofa, Vava'u, Apia, Pago Pago monthly carrying general and freezer cargoes and FCL Dry Freezer.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd, 2nd Floor, Ferry Bldg, Quay St., Auckland PO Box 3 (390 229). Cables MACSHIP, Tlx NZ2554f; Warner Pacific Line, Box 93, Nuku’alofa, Tonga; Mealelel (Western Samoa Ltd) Private Bag, Apia, Western Samoa; Burns Phi Ip (SS) Co Ltd, PO Box 129, Pago Pago, American Samoa (633 2709), Burnsouth SB.

Rarotonga Line operates regular services to Tonga and the Samoas from New Zealand.

Details from Sofrana Unilines (NZ) Ltd. Tel (09) 773279 Telex NZ2313 Fax (09) 393874.

Nz Cook Islands

Aitutaki Niue

Cook Islands Line services Auckland, Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Niue monthly carrying general and freezer cargoes.

Details from McKay Shipping Ltd, 2nd Floor, Ferry Bldg, Quay St., Auckland/PO Box 3, Auckland (390 229). Cables MACSHIP, Tlx NZ2554; Fax 32 931, Rarotonga Line operates regular services to Tonga and the Samoas from New Zealand.

Details from Sofrana Unilines (NZ) Ltd. Tel (09) 773279 Telex NZ2313 Fax (09) 393874.

Southeast Asia Fiji

Nedlloyd Lines (NZEAS) Service operates regular fast cargo service from Surabaya, Jakarta, Port Kelang, Bangkok and Singapore via New Zealand to Suva and Lautoka. Details from Carpenters Shipping, Neptune House, 3/4 Floor, Tofua St., Walu Bay, Suva (312 244). Fax: (679)301 572. Tlx: FJ2199.

Tahiti - New Caledonia

Vanuatu - Solomon

Islands - New Zealand

Png Singapore - Europe

Polish Ocean Lines operates semi-container type vessels to the following ports: from Pappete, Noumea, Santo, Vila, Yandina, Honiara, Auckland, Singapore, Port Kielang, Penang then to Meditearranean ports and Europe via the Suez Canal (other New Zealand ports subject to inducement).

Details from Universal Shipping Agencies Ltd, 7th Floor, 14 Emily PI, Auckland 1 (390 931, 390 727, 32 104), Tlx 21 517.

Taiwan Hong Kong

Singapore Indonesia

PNG The Bank Line & Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Surabaya to Papua New Guinea Ports.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Europe Tahiti - W Samoa

Fiji New Caledonia

Compagnie Generale Maritime operates services from Europe and Mediterranean ports to Papeete and Noumea using three ro-ro and multi-purpose vessels thus ensuring a bi-monthly sailing to and from.

Details from Compagnie Generale Maritime, 12 Castlereagh St, Sydney (231 3700).

Sofrana Europe Australia Line operates a three-weekly cargo service from Continental ports, including Felixtowe, to Papeete and Noumea. Details from McArthur Shipping Agency Co Pty Ltd Sydney. Tel (02) 5502222 Telex AA24045 Fax (02) 5191382.

Europe Tahiti New

Caledonia New Zealand

Vanuatu Solomons Png

EUROPE Polish Ocean Lines offers regular monthly sailings for containerised and break-bulk cargo, also conventional reefer space and reefer containers from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Dunkirk.

Le Havre to Papeete, Noumea, Auckland, Santo, Honiara, Rabaul, Lae, Singapore, returning to Europe via Suez. Other ports in the South Pacific can be served directly with inducement or otherwise via transhipment.

Details from Sotama, BP 9170, Papeete (42 7805), Tlx Sotama 373FP; SATO; BP 02 Noumea Cedex (27 2094), Tlx 163 NM; Universal Shipping Agencies, PO Box 2282 Auckland (30 930), Tlx 21517; Vanua Navigation, PO Box 44, Vila (2027), Tlx 1033; Melan Chine Shipping Co, PO Box 71, Honiara (21 678). Tlx 66335; Steamships Trading Co Ltd, PO Box 85, Lae (42 4666), Tlx 4243; Union Steamship Co NZ Ltd, PO Box 50, Apia (21 781); Tlx 226; Warner Pacific Line, PO Box 93, Nukualofa (22 088), Tlx 66219; Fiji Agents TBA.

Europe Tahiti New

CALEDONIA Nedlloyd offers regular cargo services from Continental ports to Papeete, Apia, Fiji and New Caledonia.

Details Nedlloyd (Aust) Pty Ltd, Spring St., Sydney (27 3801); Carpenters Shipping, Ist Floor, Harbour Centre Bldg, 100 Thomson St.

Suva (31 2244), Tlx 2199FJ and Vetari St..

Lautoka (63 988), Tlx 5215FJ.

Sofrana Europe Australia Line operates a three-weekly cargo service from Continental ports, including Felixtowe, to Papeete and Noumea. Details from McArthur Shipping Agency Co Pty Ltd Sydney. Tel (02) 5502222 Telex AA24045 Fax (02) 5191382.

UK - WESTERN SAMOA -

Tonga Fiji

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, to Apia, Nukualofa, Suva and Lautoka.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd. 53 Martin Place. Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Uk Png Solomons

The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull to Port Moresby, Lae, Madang, Kimbe, Rabaul, Kieta and Honiara and on inducement to Yandina.

Details from The Bank Line (A’asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line. Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; or lines’ local agents.

Uk Tahiti New Caledonia

VANUATU The Bank Line and Columbus Line operate a regular joint cargo service from Hull, to Papeete, Noumea, Port-Vila and Santo.

Details from The Bank Line (A'asia) Pty Ltd, 53 Martin Place, Sydney (223 6255), Tlx AA24063; Columbus Line, Lae (423 466), Tlx NE44171; Ets A M. Fare UTE, Papeete; Ets Ballande, Noumea and other local agents.

US - HAWAII - MICRONESIA - PNG PM&O Lines operate two fully self-contained container vessels on a sailing frquency of every 30 days between the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Majuro, Ebeye, Kosrae, Ponape, Truk, Saipan, Yap, Palau, Cebu, Davao, Manila, Lae, Kieta and Rabaul.

Details from PM&O Lines, 353 Sacramento St., San Francisco, California 94111 (415 421 5400); Tlx: 278016 PMO UR; Owner’s Representative, PO Box 803, Saipan, NMI 96950 (234 8819); Tlx 783605 CMCAA. 53 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Out Of The Past

The hazards of the patrol Dr lan Downes recalls the perils of early PNG police-work.

JA S 1936 DREW TO a close Edward Taylor, District Officer of the Morobe District in New Guinea, was finding it difficult to cope with the flood of gold prospectors, labour recruiters and missionaries hoping to enter new country being opened up on the New Guinea Mainland. The decline of the stabilised goldfields in the Wau-Bulolo area, the discovery of the huge populations in the Highlands valleys from Kainantu to Mount Hagen, the recent search for oil and the rejuvenation of island plantations all contributed to this pressure and by late November, Taylor had only three patrol officers available for routine patrols (the others were operating from established police posts). There was also a shortage of experienced national police to accompany patrols, and the situation was daily growing more difficult: the Morobe District, which included Wau, Bulolo, Lae and Finschaffen and which then extended behind the Madang and Sepik Districts as far as the border of Dutch New Guinea, was simply being overwhelmed by an invasion of Europeans.

All of us patrol officers knew this.

The Montoro had arrived from Sydney with patrol officers John Milligan and Thomas Hough, wno had completed their year of study at the University of Sydney after two years’ service in New Guinea. The Montoro also brought a draft of 20 police constables, all natives of Bougainville Island, who had just completed training in Rabaul.

Taylor called Milligan, Hough and I into nis office: we were to go on patrol within a week. Hough was to patrol the watershed of the Leron, the northern tributory of the Markham; Milligan was to patrol the Irumu and Erap and I was to complete the pattern by covering the Wain, Naba and Momalili tribal areas eastward and inward from the Bakauwa coast. I had the largest area, but the more civilised people. Hough had the smallest area, out its inhabitants had only experienced half a dozen patrols. We had to record a complete census, visit every hamlet and village and would probably be away for two or three months.

I can remember Tom Hough; a tall, rangy, fresh-faced young man with fair surf-bleached hair and pale blue eyes. I think he had been studying architecture before he came to New Guinea: he spoke quietly and was fond of music, owning one of those portable wind-up gramophones that were still the latest thing in 1936.

There were a few photographs of family, and one of a girl, that ne put in the patrol box with nis bush clothes.

On that evening, the last time I saw him in Salamaua, he was playing gramophone records. I can’t remember why I wanted to ask him why he had come to New Guinea he seemed a most unlikely person to be there but I never did: I left for Lae in the morning and Milligan and Hough were to fly as far as Kaiapit in tne Markham Valley.

On December 17, a runner arrived from Milligan when I was just above Boana Mission station in the Wain: Hough had been wounded, Milligan was on his way to the Leron and intended to get Hough to Kaiapit.

Would I send a messgae to Alan Roberts, the Assistant District Officer in Lae? Milligan had already sent one runner, but another message would do no harm and perhaps there was a transmitter on the mission station at Kaiapit.

Jonn Milligan brought Tom Hough out of the Leron and nad him carried for two days to the airfield at Kaiapit, where an aircraft from Lae was waiting to fly him to Salamaua. He died nine days after admission to hospital, from complications that followed an arrow wound in the lung. Arrowheads do not have to be poison tipped: if they’re dirty, they will kill you if you don’t get them out in time.

Alan Roberts and John Milligan returned to the Leron, where 17 men implicated in the attack gave themselves up and “friendly contact was successfully established”. Only the man who fired the arrow at Tom Hough was committed for trial in the Supreme Court. He was ultimately sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for manslaughter; the defence counsel, paid by the government, argued that the man who fired at Hough had not even aimed at him. He said ne was firing at the police.

This is what had happened: Thomas Alfred Hougn was wounded on a Sunday morning, while lying in a hammock outside nis tent ana reading a book. He had 12 Bougainville police with him, none of wnom had ever been on patrol before. They had all wandered off unarmed to Suenda Village, about 300 metres away, to go to church.

From evidence presented at the trial, it appeared the police had been refused entry to the Lutheran church because they were Catholics. They had then tried to negotiate for a woman, but had been refused: they had been led to believe at the training depot in Rabaul that it was normal for ‘bush kanakas’ to provide women for police on patrol. Finally, one of them tried a direct approacn to a girl carrying bamboo water containers, apparently on her way to deliver them to Hough’s camp.

Tne rest of the police gathered, surrounding the young woman, who began to run, dropped the bamboo containers and called for help. Village men grabbed bows and arrows and startea to shoot. The police were unarmed, and ran to the camp with the bowmen sending showers of arrows behind them.

The police rushed past Hough . . . and kept on running. Tom scrambled out of his hammock and for a moment was between the police and the Suenda bowmen. He held up his arms, calling on them to stop. They shot at him and ran on after the fleeing police.

Eight of the Bougainville police never returned. Some of them, however, managed to find Milligan, who had already learned of Hough’s wounding by ‘village telegraph’. The Suenda Ceople and Hough’s cook did their est to look after the injured man until Milligan arrived.

Tom Hough was the only person wounded in the whole affair: not much more than a month earlier, he had been surfing at Manly.

As was customary, there was a press release from the Minister for Territories and a letter of condolence to Hough’s family. In those days it was generally accepted that “death or injury by violence from natives may be considered one of the occupational hazards of a patrol officer’s life”. I’m sure they had this pasted up somewhere in the records office of the department in Canberra it was in all the letters they wrote to next-of-kin.

In 1937, five of us attending training courses at the University of Sydney seized on this quote and sought a meeting with the then Minister for Territories.

We were assured that something would be done . . . but of course nothing was, until after World War ll.□ 54 PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY JUNE 1989

Wlien (loin« business in the Fkciiic, you need to have the rioht connections.

Now, with our Sunday service to Tokyo, Air Pacific can link you with Japan, and the main business destinations of Asia: Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul, Malaysia, Singapore and India. Also Air Pacific still has the most convenient flights to Australia and New Zealand. We’ll fly you to Nadi onboard our spacious ATR42’s and then onto your destination in one of our 747’s or 737’5.

And we’ll do it with the kind of first class service you’ll always find in our Business Class. Check out all the details for the best connections by asking your travel agent or Air Pacific.

The friendly face of Fiji.

W W PACIFIC fU'SINrtPNAHONAL A!R(.,'NE Timetable IJfcctlve March. 1988 w% p • J - % % AIR MCI nc^

Fiji'S International Airline

©ShdocS'.

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