Port Moresby, 21 October 1968
8462. Immediate
… It is too early to assess prospects of new party.1 Its sentiments are of course not new. There are however indications of more experienced European hand than that of Simpson 2 in the organisation and documentation. This suggests we may expect vigorous and competent presentation of party interests among planters, Roman Catholic missions and possibly Chinese as well as indigenes. We will keep in touch with these elements and keep Minister informed. Henderson will be in New Britain and New Ireland this week and will report on his return.
2. Counter measures on lines authorised by Minister during our talks on Bougainville have already been set in train to cover this wider field. 3 We intend to go into the substance of the case for unity in order to bring home to the villager the implications of disunity. Campbell and Sinclair 4 are being consulted. Newman will be directing administration effort.
3. To my view a firm public reaction from the Government on the economic aspects of unity is desirable in order to counter the basic Tolai (and I suspect, planter) argument that unity means the islands paying out to support a mendicant Papuan economy. Perhaps the Minister would agree to say that while the question of unity is very much the responsibility of the House of Assembly (which is going to discuss it at its next meeting) one of the assumptions on which the Government’s favourable attitude to the development programme is based is that the Territory will remain united. It is only on this basis that long term viability is likely, because of the more effective planning and use of united resources and advantages of scale in establishing secondary industry. To give aid on the present scale to separate entities would be more costly and separation is likely to reduce the total amount of aid. The Minister might add that the principle of concentration of effort means that while the Territory is treated as a whole, the more productive areas get more in the way of development aid than the others. Thus the island areas derive an advantage from national planning and would be worse off without it.
4. I am writing to Archbishop Hoehne and asking him to support Administration efforts towards unity through means such as the newspaper Kundu which the mission has started. 5
[NAA: A452, 1968/5429]
1 That is, the Melanesian Independence Party (see document 234).
2 Stephen Simpson, a Rabaul businessman reported to be an organiser of the party (see Document 240).
3 See footnote 8, Document 230.
4 A.J.M. Sinclair, consultant psychiatrist.
5 Warwick Smith replied a day later that the ‘Minister [is] disinclined to come out too positively or substantively in public at this stage. He wishes to wait a little further to see whether anything fresh develops’. If questioned on the matter, Warwick Smith noted that Barnes would answer along the lines of comments made in the Australian (that is, that PNG would be seriously affected if secessions occurred, becoming more dependent on Australia, but that it was left to the people of PNG to decide the fate of secessionist movements (19 October 1968, NLA: mfm NX 48)). He would also stress that the economic development program was predicated on the needs of the whole and ‘did not contemplate any division or fragmentation’. On Hay’s reference in paragraph three to the ‘principle of concentration of effort’, the Secretary wrote that it ‘seems to the Minister to go rather in a contrary direction to the kind of argument he may wish to develop later—i.e. to say that the island areas derive greater advantage out of national planning than the contribution they make is to discuss the issue on a purely sectional or selfish interest basis which is not the basis on which Australian aid is given to the Territory as a whole’ (telex 28817573, Warwick Smith to Hay, 22 October 1968, NAA: A452, 1968/5429). Meanwhile, Campbell reported from PNG that the Acting District Commissioner of Rabaul, Bill Kelly, had said he thought the ‘Government reaction to the Front was too abrupt’ (see AEC press statement in footnote 4, Document 234). Kelly believed that the Administration ‘should play this sort of thing “coot”’ (minute, Ballard to Warwick Smith, 28 November 1968, NAA: A452, 1968/5429).