MALAYAN CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26853, 18 August 1948, Page 5

MALAYAN CRISIS

AUSTRALIAN INTEREST GOVERNMENT’S RELUCTANCE TO HELP MAIN CONCERN OF PUBLIC From C. R. Mentiplay, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 10 p.m. SYDNEY, Aug. 17. When he told Newcastle Communists that Australia must not intervene on behalf of “ imperialism ” against the “ armed insurrection ” in Malaya, Mr L. L. Sharkey, general secretary of the Australian Communist Party, provoked strong reaction from a large section of the Australian press. Reports of terrorism in Malaya culminating in appeals by planters and business firms for defensive arms with which to protect white families against the Sten guns of Chinese Communisls are causing many Australians to ask why more effective measures cannot, be undertaken.

Another viewpoint on the situation is that of Mr J. McCormick, the Australian manager of a Malayan tin mine, who says that Australian capital finances more than half the mines in Malaya and that two-thirds of the technicians employed in the mines are Australians. An original investment of £10,000,000 of Australian money in Malayan tin now has a market value of £25,000,000. Australia depends on Malaya for most of her crude rubber imports, which totalled 479,055 hun-dred-weight last year. Of this, 335,095 hundred-weight came from Malaya So far Australian action to protect this investment and the lives of Australians operating the mines has been to send a small number of revolvers and ammunition and 100 Sten guns, which were held in Australia on behalf of the British Government. The Australian citizen, .however, is least concerned with the danger to the investment than with the rule of terrorism implied in such incidents as the murder of the Australian dredgemaster, Mr G. P. Wills, who was cut down by Sten fire while riding a bicycle to his company’s property. “ The Communists are stating that the Malays are fighting for their national independence against British Imperialists and cut-throat mercenaries,” says the Sydney Telegraph. “ This is tommy-rot. The Malayans are not fighting against, but with, the British. If there is any imperialist expansion in the picture it is expansion by the Chinese who have infiltrated into Malaya for so long that they now outnumber the native Malayans. Those Chinese who are now murdering the British and Malayans are representatives of a party which has closest ties with Moscow and which has, received all its orders from the Kremlin.” The Sydney Morning Herald charges the Australian Government with procrastinating. “Appearances do the Chiflev Government wrong if its inclination is not to avoid sending Australian arms to Malaya or to send as few of them as possible at the last possible moment,” says the Herald. “At the latest advice, a fortnight after the Cabinet decision to supply some arms if asked, further information was still being awaited from the Government of Malaya. Observing Canberra’s apparent embarrassment and reluctance to help, the Malayan authorities may well have decided to turn elsewhere for equipment.”