The Press MONDAY, MAY 6, 1946. South Seas Commission

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24867, 6 May 1946, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, MAY 6, 1946. South Seas Commission

It is welcome news, given to-day, that, at the Commonwealth conference in London, the Australian and New Zealand Governments have secured the consent of the United Kingdom Government to the establishment of a South Seas Regional Commission. Both Australia and New Zealand are colonial Powers. Australia administers Papua, Norfolk Island, and a slice of Antarctic* territory, and holds a mandate over the former German portion of New Guinea. New Zealand holds Western Samoa as a mandate, and administers the Cook Islands, Niue, the Tokelau Islands, and the Antarctic area known as the Ross Dependency; and both countries share with Britain the administration of Nauru Island. In the Canberra Pact, signed in January, 1944, the two Governments went;further than any others of the United Nations had gone at that tape in defining the sort of international system they hoped to see emerge after the war; and a considerable proportion of the Canberra Pact was devoted to the need to promote the welfare of the native inhabitants of colonial dependencies in the Pacific. They declared that “in “applying the principles of the At- “ lantic Charter to the Pacific, the “ doctrine of trusteeship is applic- “ able in broad principle to all “colonial territories in the Pacific “and elsewhere, and that the main “purpose of the trust is the wel- “ fare of the native peoples and “their social, economic, and politi- “ cal development ”. They agreed, further, that the future of the territories of the Pacific and the welfare of their inhabitants could not be successfully promoted without a greater measure of collaboration among all the authorities involved, particularly in respect to health measures, communications, anthropological research, education, and assistance in native production and “ material developments generally ”. They undertook, accordingly, to promote the establishment of a regional organisation, which they suggested might be named the South Seas Regional Commission. Its function would be “to secure “a common policy on social, economic, and political development, “ directed towards- the advance- “ ment and well being ox the native “peoples themselves”; and in that task they hoped to have the cooperation of the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. One of those Governments, as to-day’s news reveals, has given its general approval, though details have still to be worked out among the three Commonwealth Governments. It is welcome progress. It is, also, very slew progress. It is not too early to ask whether this is its sum; for it is almost two years and a half since Canberra and Wellington agreed that the commission should be set up “as soon as possible ”, and 18 months since Dr. Evatt announced that both Governments were “ about to consult with other “ Governments ” accordingly.