Port Moresby, March 19671
Evidence given in Port Moresby to the Select Committee for Constitutional Development
I refer to your message 263/473 of 17th March2 in which you ask for a copy of the statement given by a group ofPapuan and New Guinean leaders to the Select Committee for Constitutional Development.3
I should like to emphasise that your use of the word ‘leaders’ is misplaced. The group giving evidence are in no sense leaders and represent their own views and possibly those of a section of the Tertiary student population in Port Moresby.
It may be useful for you to know that Mr. Tei Abal who is a member of the Select Committee said that the points brought forward by the group were important but had come too soon in the Territory’s development. The people making the submission wanted to go too quickly. ‘They wanted to go like a rocket to the moon.’ All of these things could come later but not at this time. Mr. Abal said there were no members of the House with the knowledge or qualifications to be ministers at this time. Nobody in the House knew how to do a minister’s work. Mr. Abal asked Mr. Rarua who the people making the statement represented, themselves or many other people. Mr. Rarua replied that they were only speaking for themselves and wanted to put their thinking to the Committee. Mr. Abal said that he and the Western Highlanders in general strongly opposed all this hurry-up talk about self-government.
It is worth noting too that a Papuan who has claims to be called a leader, Mr. Toua Kapena, also disagreed with the group’s presentation. Mr. Kapena is Chairman of the Port Moresby Local Government Council and has been a Councillor continuously since 1950. He told the Select Committee that his experience was that most Councillors did not understand Council procedures and therefore it seemed that Papuans and New Guineans would be unable to cope at this stage with the more complicated business of the House. However, he believed that the next House should have a greater say in the country’s affairs.4
[NAA: A452, 1966/2960]
1 Exact date indecipherable. It was received in Canberra on 20 March.
2 Not printed.
3 Document 97.
4 In Territories, Ballard submitted to Barnes that ‘The statement is “anti-colonial” in tone and appears to be the work of Cecil Abel… There seems no reason to regard the statement as other than the views of the thirteen signatories, i.e. they are not presented as the views of any group or groups of people with whom the signatories might be associated’ (31 March 1967, NAA: A452, 1966/2960). Meanwhile, in a memorandum of 23 March, Hay had commented to DOT on publicity surrounding proceedings of the Select Committee on 16 March: ‘It appears that an organiser for the group with the main submission distributed copies of that submission to certain people, including the representative for the ‘Australian’, but no copies were supplied to the Administration … When it was learnt that the group had appeared before the Select Committee an effort was made to obtain a copy of the transcript. The Executive Officer advised that this could not be released until their report had gone to the House … On Friday 17th a press telegram for Administration [radio] Stations was despatched … This emphasised Mr. Tei Abal’s comments. A.B.C. news items which dealt exclusively with the group’s submission were being rebroadcast by Administration stations as part of their normal news service’. Writing more generally about publicity on the Select Committee, Hay opined that the ‘A.B.C. in particular and the local newspapers tended to concentrate on novel and extreme submissions, while [the] reports [of the Department of Information and Extension Services] endeavoured to balance these with reports of more moderate views, including common views expressed by numbers of people’ (NAA: A452, 1967/2553). On the question of the submission’s impact in the Territory, Erskine wrote to Fen bury that ‘there has been very little reaction observed among the indigenous urban population of Port Moresby to the submission made [to] the … Committee … relating to self government … The minor reaction that has been observed has come from the Intermediate Tertiary Student group and the better educated of the local officers. Both of these groups express the view that the demands made by the thirteen persons are untimely, and that although the thirteen belong to various part of the Territory, they are not speaking as true representatives of the people in their districts’ (30 March 1967, NLA: Ian Downs papers, MS 8254, box 8, folder 6). Notably, Watkins had publicly given his personal view that ‘some of the [group’s] statements … are impertinent, and also show an absolute disregard for what has been done for the Territory … and exhibits a situation which shows no thanks’. He said he took ‘the strongest exception’ to the charges made against the Federal Government and the Administration ( South Pacific Post , 20 March 1967, NLA: NX 342). Watkins was privately reprimanded by Hay, who thought these comments inappropriate for an Administration officer (Hay interview, 1973–4, NLA: TRC 121/65, 3:1/29).