NEW GUINEA SCANDALS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 79, 1 April 1908, Page 5

NEW GUINEA SCANDALS.

CHARGES AGAINST OETICXAIjS. __>____ IST_ATOB>S REPORT. (Received 9.10 a.m.) MELBOURNE, this day. Papers relating to the suspension of Mr. Drummond, late acting-Chief Government Surveyor of Papua, were tabled in the Federal House of Representatives last evening. The suspension, it was stated in the report, followed on a charge of having attempted to evade an order of the Executive Council that it was not considered desirable that officers of the Land Department should apply for land. The statement of the case furnished by Judge Murray, acting administrator, shows that in 1907 a syndicate, consisting of Messrs. Drummond, Pinney, and Watt-MacAlpine was formed to take up land for plantation purposes. Messrs. Drummond and Pinney belonged to the Lands Department and Mr. Watt to the Treasury, while Mr. MaeAlpine was not in the Government service. Mr. Ardley, who came in later, was a district surveyor. Messrs. Drummond and Pinney, the report continued, applied for two adjoining blocks of 250 acres. The applications came before the Executive Council, and were refused. The Government offices were then closed for the Christmas holidays. Immediately after they had been reopened an application was put in for the same land by Messrs. Watt and MacAlpine, and it was a question whether this application was not also on behalf of the syndicate. The minutes of the Land Board showed that applications by Messrs. Drummond, Pinney, and Watt-MacAlpine, in which, to his knowledge, Senator Staniforth Smith had an interest, were recommended at meetings of the Land Board, at which no one was present but Mr. Dr_t_mond.