Canberra, 18 July 1968
Confidential
I have given considerable thought to your letter of 17th May about the need to foster an awareness and understanding of Defence matters in the developing civil Government of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. 1
This is, of course, closely related to the discussions we have had in the Defence Committee on the future size and role of the Pacific Islands Regiment.2 You will recall that the importance of positive measures for co-operation and understanding between the Administration (or future Government) and the PNG forces was emphasised and this had your support. The Defence Committee’s view was that there was a need for greater efforts on the part of the Administration to involve the PNG forces in the life of the community— to remove any suggestion that they were the instrument of the Australian Government and to present the PNG forces as no less a vital element in the country’s institutions than the police and Government services. It was agreed that the Administration in conjunction with the Army and Navy should direct its attention to problems of the relationship between the PIR and indigenous Public Servants and police, and to questions of the re-establishment of ex-members of the local forces in their own communities.
You require no assurance that I am in full sympathy with your objective of developing an appreciation of problems affecting both the Services and the civil Administration and an understanding of the Services’ role in the community. At the same time we have to keep in mind that Defence has aspects and implications different from most other governmental functions being exercised in the Territory. As matters stand, under Cabinet the primary responsibility for ensuring the defence of the Territory rests with the Minister and Department of Defence but more than that there is a large interdependence between defence planning for mainland Australia and the Territory: certainly the problems of each are not being thought of as compartmentalised.
At the same time, as you will have seen from our Defence Committee discussions, we are mindful that we have to think of the Territory’s problems in terms of that Territory having an independent Government with all the paraphenalia, including Defence Forces, that goes with it. And, while the control of the indigenous Armed Forces would pass to a PNG Government on attaining independence, it could be that there will be an intermediate stage when Australia continues to be responsible for Defence-or at least to exercise a powerful role in relation to the Territories defence and its Defence Forces.
Turning to the particular suggestions in your letter I make one preliminary point. We don’t have one single person in command of all our forces in the Territory. The Army Commander has no direct responsibilities in relation to the Navy and R.A.A.F. elements currently located in the Territory: they are under the local command of the Naval Officer in Charge New Guinea area and the resident Air Force Officer Papua/New Guinea respectively. So we have a problem as to who would be spokesman to attend the Executive Council.
Then we need to clarify the substance of your proposal. You speak of the Administrator’s Executive Council being consulted on the plans and activities of the Services, including such matters as proposals to set up new Defence establishments, the needs of the Forces, civic action programmes etc.
I put aside operational plans which would, in the situation you are immediately envisaging, be withheld on security grounds.
So I come to the meaning to be given to the word ‘consulted’. I return to the point that our Defence programme in relation to the Territory is formulated with our own overall Defence planning needs in mind, as well as the particular Defence interests of the Territory. Likewise training and operational activities of Service units, while co-ordinated as far as possible with the views of the Administration on patrolling requirements in particular areas, also have regard to the overall Defence requirements. I cannot imagine that you are envisaging that the Executive Council should be consulted in the sense that they could propose amendments which could, ex hypothesis, impinge on our total Defence programme, or on planned Service training or operational activities. This is not to say that at some stage along the road to self-Government and independence we won’t have to face this problem.
There is, as well, a practical problem. We have a budgeting problem and programme. In this connection, it is relevant that the Defence Department Budget carries the whole cost of the PIR and other Defence Forces in and about the Territory. I take it that the reference in the penultimate paragraph of your letter to the Administrator’s Executive Council considering in June or July ‘departmental estimates’ for the ensuing year can only mean that it would be useful if when the Department of External Territories’ estimates for Papua/New Guinea were being considered, the Executive Council had some knowledge of the resources that would be committed on the defence side in the ensuing year. The problem here is that none of the Service Commanders could then discuss what our Defence Budget would be: what in fact it turned out to be would be revealed only after the Commonwealth Treasurer opened his Budget.
Now l am left with the positive aspects of how best your anxieties can be met.
In the first place I see no reason why the Service Commanders should not at intervals attend the Executive Council to talk about the progress being made with approved building programmes, with trades training and with nativisation of the Forces, about the size of the Forces, what needs to be done to ‘integrate’ the Forces in the community, possible civic action programmes, resettlement problems and so on. It might be best if, in advance, an agenda were prepared and sometimes papers presented to facilitate discussion. But we ought not, in the early stages, to think of getting into classified problems and we could not, for example, allow the idea to get about that the forces constitute a supplementary civil work force or allow a situation to develop where new and unacceptable demands were to be placed on the Forces.
I see also room for a wider education of the Executive Council. First, it could be acquainted of prospective developments: Second, it must begin to understand the problems of strategy and conceivable threats and why it is that Forces are needed of a particular shape or size.
We will, I believe, make a great mistake if we do not begin this process of education. But I immediately enter two caveats—
i. At this stage, this process should not be described as ‘consultation’, if that word is to carry the connotation that we would be deflected from a plan. Perhaps I see one exception, e.g. if it were thought necessary to set up some establishment at some area, we ought to be prepared to listen to suggestions as to where it might be located in the area and to justify why we want it in one area rather than somewhere else.
ii. This educative role is not one in which we should cast the local Commanders or even the most senior of them.
Instead it seems to me that this educative process can best be advanced if the opportunity is taken of visits to the Territory by say my Minister, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, individual Chiefs of Staff, or even myself for a meeting with the Executive Council.
When you have considered my observations, we might discuss the whole problem and the associated mechanics in greater depth.
[NAA: A452, 1968/3949]
Interdepartmental consultations on West Irian border crossers
Following an initial meeting in July 1967,1 the departments of External Territories and External Affairs continued to consult during 1968 on the question of West Irian refugees.
In a meeting of 7 February, Toogood reported that the Administration was ‘keeping a close watch’ on the Territory’s permissive residents, and noted that those who had been politically active had become ‘reasonably subdued’ since having been required at the turn of the year to sign renewed undertakings to remain apolitical. 2 Toogood said that if political activity were resumed, the ‘transfer of offenders to other parts of the Territory would greatly assist in controlling the situation’. Ultimately, offenders could be warned that their certificates of residency could be withdrawn. Jockel responded that Hasluck ‘firmly supported this approach’.3
In discussion of the circumstances on the border, Jockel again alluded to the necessity for a firm attitude, asking Toogood ‘whether Administration officers at border stations took a sufficiently tough line’. Indeed, Jockel’s comments were reflective of a general concern in the DEA to ensure that Territories maintained such a line. In preparation for a meeting of 17 June 1968, a Territories paper noted that External Affairs planned to ask if ‘policy should be changed—e.g. made even tougher’, and remarked that ‘From our and Admins. point of view this would be appropriate. But it is quite tough now’.4 A DOET record of the meeting demonstrates that DEA continued to push hard:
Both Departments agreed that in view of the possibility that a greater influx of West Irianese may occur over the coming months (the U.N. Representative expected to arrive in West Irian in August to supervise the act of self determination) it was important to ensure that all border posts were adopting a uniform approach to border crossers and that the approach should be a firm one. (External Affairs would like to see a period of virtual non-admission) … It was … agreed that an officer from this Department should visit all Border posts in the next two-three weeks to discuss practices followed on the ground and ensure that Government policy is clearly understood.5
- 1 Document 183.
- 2 See Documents 189 and 190.
- 1 Document 137.
- 2 Record of conversation between DEA, DOET and Administration officials, 7 February 1968, NAA: A452, 1967/4460. Fenbury also reported that Sarwom, Hamadi and ‘other prominent West New Guinea people’ had been ‘individually warned … that by indulging in political activities concerning West Irian they are breaching their undertakings’ (memorandum, Administration (Fenbury) to DOET, 15 January 1968, ibid.).
- 3 In a minute to Plimsoll on permissive residents, Jockel commented that ‘[Territories] have not sent back any West lrianese for violation of his undertaking not to engage in political activities. They say that the system rests on implanting in the mind of the West lrianese the fear that if he played up his permit to reside would be revoked and he would be sent back across the border. The Territories officials say that they do not know what the position would be if one of the West lrianese were to dispute direct action by the Administration to return him across the border, e.g., by having his case publicised and contesting either the validity of the certificate of residency itself or denying that he had breached its terms … So far there have been no great difficulties, but there are, of course, serious difficulties inherent in the situation owing to the existence of the West Irian Agreement with its provisions concerning the right of self-determination. Could we, for example, deny the right of the West lrianese in TPNG to assemble and peacefully demonstrate {for} a proper act of self-determination at various significant moments in the next eighteen months?’ (17 July 1968, NAA: A1838, 3036/1411/6 part 10).
- 4 Anonymous and undated DOET paper entitled ‘West lrianese Border Crossers—meeting 17th June 1968’, NAA: A452, 1967/4460.
- 5 Minute, Besley to Warwick Smith, undated (possibly a draft), ibid. In conveying a draft DEA record of the meeting (not found) to the Embassy in Djakarta, Jockel wrote that ‘It is self-explanatory; our aim is to tighten up as much as possible within the framework of policy as at present stated’ (letter to Loveday, 28 June 1968, NAA: Al838, 3034/14/1/6 part 10).