Port Moresby, 2 June 1967
977. Confidential
Your 288/1351 constitutional committee.1 It is important that Minister be reassured as to meaning of para 20. It was written to avoid alternative proposal that there should be a continuous review of ministerial responsibility with some achieving progressively greater responsibility than others. ‘Sole legislature but rather the responsibility to the Administrator.2 The proposal for ministerial role in report envisages that director and minister should share responsibility to the Administrator; the next step is that minister should accept this (but only this) responsibility alone. You will note that para 7 sets out the basic constitutional situation on which all subsequent recommendations are based. The term ‘minister’ was used widely and freely in all evidence given to the committee. The people were not concerned with possible Australian interpretation but with their own strongly held feeling that their senior parliamentary representatives should be dignified by the word ‘minister’. It would be unwise for Tei Abal to introduce an amendment for two reasons (a) he is a member of a committee which produced the report (b) it could be regarded as a pay back for his Under Secretary appointment. On the whole it is best that the report should be received without comment by official members but without commitment as to the final position of the Government. But we would be on lookout for any favourable tactical development in the House which would enable us to have term ‘Minister’ removed.
[NAA: A452, 1967/5895]
1 Document 114.
2 This sentence appears to have been corrupted in transmission.