MANDATE RULE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 91, 14 October 1926, Page 11

MANDATE RULE

AUSTRALIA AND NEW GUINEA

LEAGUE QUESTIONNAIRE RESENTED

INSPIRED BY PROPAGANDA, SAYS SENATOR PEARCE

(United Press Association.—Copyright.) (Heceived 14th October, noon.) SYDNEY, This Day. At Canberra the conference between the Empire Parliamentary delegation and Commonwealth politicians discussed at length the question of the New Guinea mandate. Senator Pearee, dealing ■with the questionnaire recently propounded by the League of Nations, regarding the New; Guinea, Mandate, described it as of a most inquisitorial character. 'It asked ! questions which, under the Mandate, | were purely within the Commonwealth Gpvennnent's competence to desi with. and regarding which the League was/ not entitled to question* the Commonwealth. He declared that the questionnaire! was the outcome of inspired propaganda against the Australian administration in New Guinea. Inquiries had demonstrated that the accusations made had no foundation. He added that he regarded the matter as a potential cause' of friction in the League of Nations. Sir William Glasgow, Minister of Homo and Territories, explained that the Government's policy in regard to New Guinea was generally that of improving the natives' conditions of liv> ing and. preventing them from being exploited and ill-treated;'* securing their land to them, and abolishing inter-tri-bal fightings, and the participation of the natives to an increasing extent in the administration of ths territory. In regard to this the Minister declared that it would be many ymxrs before the natives could be entrusted with the responsibility of participation in the administration, but by a gradual increase in their authority, the Government hooped eventually to create a body of w spbnsible native officials who could be entrusted with the actual administration of the- territory. In the general discussion which followed, Australia's attitude in Hiring the subject was sil|>ported.