NEW GUINEA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 September 1924, Page 5

NEW GUINEA

MANDATED TERRITORY

IMPORTANT REPORT. If OABI.l —PBESB ASSOCIATION-—COPYRIGHT Received Sept. 11, 10.35 a.m. MELBOURNE, Sept. 11. A report on the mandated territory of New Guinea by Colonel Ainsworth, late Chief Native Commissioner for Kedya colony, has been presented to the Federal Parliament. It recommends that the territory should be governed by an administrator, assisted. by an advisory council not made dependent upon the political or economic requirements of Australia. He refers to the absence of roads to the interior, which prevents the administrator from visiting out stations, and states that if the Commonwealth is going to give effect to the terms of the mandate it must be prepared to go to some expense and trouble in finding suitable locations to which isolated natives can .he moved. The native population is remarkably sparse and extremely backward. He considered that without Asiatics or some similar people progress miist wait and the public revenues become stationary, if not retrogressive. He says he has no reason to believe that the ingress of Asiatics would be harmful to the native people, and is of the opinion that a continuation of the expropriation board as plantation owners is undesirable.—■ Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.