Port Moresby, 30 July 1969
Constitutional questions for discussion in Canberra
You will see from the attached copy of a letter to the Minister1 the broad background against which, in my opinion, the more detailed discussions of what the Constitutional Committee might do should be held.
As to the discussions themselves, it seems to me that there are two broad categories of questions. The first relates to the devolution of power from the Australian Government to Territory authorities. The second includes constitutional issues proper.
It would be best from the point of view of the Australian Government if the discussions on devolution of power were held within the framework of the amended Section 25, Papua and New Guinea Act.2 This permits adjustment of the balance of authority as between Departmental Heads and Ministers in favour of the latter. It would permit great financial delegations. It already permits other delegations, and once the new organisational proposals are approved these will in fact be given. There is also room for a direction from the Minister that all matters of policy are to be referred to the A.E.C. for formal advice. It is also a matter of policy as to whether such advice should be accepted by the Government or not. A flexible attitude by Official Members on these matters, indeed a forthcoming one, might enable the Committee to take some initiatives early in the piece, knowing that they would be acceptable to the Government. No doubt the Committee will want to discuss other matters affecting devolution of power, but not falling within Section 25 of the Act. These would include target dates and perhaps authority of the House of Assembly over revenue raised internally. I do not think there ought to be any opposition to the discussion of target dates in the Committee. Perhaps we could turn such a discussion to our advantage by asking the Committee to define what it believes to be the fiscal and administrative prerequisites of self-government rather than the time scale. By that I mean the amount of localisation in the Public Service, the number of professionally trained people who are indigenous outside the Public Service, and also the financial aspects. Surely there should be some prerequisite which would indicate that a certain proportion of revenue would be raised locally and that there would be some assurance of other revenue coming from other sources. No doubt the financing of Commonwealth activities in the Territory, such as Civil Aviation and the Armed Forces, might need to be included in a discussion of prerequisites. lt seems to me that the Committee could quite usefully engage in this discussion, both privately and in public.
So far as constitutional questions proper are concerned, I would agree that there is no call now for the drawing up of a constitution. But I do not agree with what I believe to have been a Departmental view, that the drawing up of a constitution should await self-determination. I think that certain constitutional issues at any rate should have been fully discussed and perhaps experimented with while the country is still moving towards self-government and during the stage of self-government before self-determination. In this category I include the following:—
- unitary or federal system;
- relation of Executive to the House of Assembly;
- should the Chief Minister or Chief Executive be elected directly or be responsible to the House;
- allocation of functions as between central and local governments.
All these and others seem to me to moot consideration and recommendations at this stage.
As you know, I have told Paulus Arek that we would provide a good secretary for the Constitutional Committee from Australia and that we would also provide a local officer assistant secretary. On the question of expert advice, I think we should discourage him very strongly from pressing for the appointment of a full time expert (who would probably not be acceptable to ourselves or Canberra anyway) and instead confirm that the Committee has the right to ask experts to appear before it at any particular stage from time to time.
[ matter omitted ]
[NAA: M1866, 4]
1 Document 295.
2 See editorial note ‘Changes to the Papua and New Guinea Act’.