Canberra, 17 February 1968
United Nations Visiting Mission 19681
This Department and the Department of External Affairs have examined the proposed arrangements for the 1968 United Nations Visiting Mission against the background of:
(a) Reports of liaison officers attached to the 1965 Mission.
(b) Reports of escort officers who have accompanied recent visitors e.g. Miss Angie Brooks.
(c) Possible sources of criticism which should be avoided.
2. From this examination, the following points have arisen which it is considered should overlay all arrangements made for the Mission throughout its visit to the Territory. Although those are matters which you will doubtless have had in mind in framing the programme, it is considered essential that Administration staff responsible for the detailed programming in each District bear them in mind. We should like the detailed programme to be checked against these points:
(a) The welcoming party at the airport at each centre and on the arrival of the Mission at Port Moresby should always include indigenous representatives. Notwithstanding the status {after 16.2.68} of existing Members of the House of Assembly they as the {known} elected representatives for the area visited should be included together with representatives of the Local Government Council concerned. If other indigenous leaders, including candidates for election, were also able to be included this is all to the good. Although the mission will meet all of these people during its visit, it is considered important that a representative indigenous group is included in each welcoming party.
(b) Indigenous elected leaders and indigenous Administration officers should be associated with briefing sessions provided by District Commissioners in each District. In this regard the elected Local Government Councillors, particularly the Chairman of the Council, can be considered in some way to be the elected counterparts of the District Commissioner and his staff.
(c) European Members of the House of Assembly and Local Government Councillors who are of course also elected representatives of the people should not be ignored or slighted, and could be associated with (a) and (b). Members of the House of Assembly should be provided with a skeleton of the itinerary ‘for information’ so they will know when the Mission will be in their electorates.
(d) The Mission will not be bringing dinner jackets and no social function should be arranged which would require this dress. No social function should be arranged which does not include indigenous representation.
(e) Because of the difficulty with the Liberian member of the last Mission in regard to a function conducted by the Rotary Club in one District and the basically European make up of this organisation,2 we would not wish the Mission to be invited to a function to be conducted by Rotary in any district. Representatives of Rotary and other service organisations in the Territory as well as other voluntary organisations should not, of course, be overlooked in arranging social functions but unless such organisations are clearly multi-racial they should be discouraged from seeking to entertain the Mission. Functions at premises of clubs or organisations whose membership or activities could be distorted to be discriminatory should likewise be avoided.
(f) Throughout briefings and inspection visits the emphasis should not be placed so much on what ‘we are doing for’ the people of the Territory. This will be clear and, of course, must be stated. The emphasis, wherever possible, should be directed to what the indigenous people are doing for themselves and how the Administration is encouraging them to ‘develop themselves to the position where they can determine their own future’. The activities of Local Government Councils, Co-operative Organisations, and indigenous entrepreneurs should help make this point. Under Secretaries, indigenous patrol officers, malaria eradication team instructors and other health workers with a degree of authority and responsibility, teachers (inspectors, headmasters?) etc., should not be overlooked.3
[matter omitted]
[NAA: A452, 1967/4226]
1 See also Documents 129 and 140.
2 Details not found. For general background, see footnote I, Document 129.
3 In a marginal note of 19 February to Ballard, Galvin wrote: ‘I spoke to [the] Admin[istration] … and mentioned this was coming so Fenbury etc wouldn’t blow a fuse at our telling them how to suck eggs. I made the point that these points must be clear in all Districts & that they could treat this as a jumping off paper for one of their own to DC’s [District Commissioners]. I intend to run through the arrangements in Moresby … to see how well their detailed programme arrangements fit this picture’.