NEW GUINEA

Southland Times, Issue 19347, 12 September 1924, Page 5

NEW GUINEA

SPECIAL COMMISSIONER’S REPORT. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) MELBOURNE, September 11. The report on the mandated territory of New Guinea by Colonel Ainsworth, late Chief Native Commissioner in Kenya Colony, has been presented to the Federal Parliament. It recommends that the territory should be governed by an Administrator, assisted by an Advisory Council, and should not be made dependent upon political or economic requirements of Australia. He refers’ to the absence of roads to the interior, which prevents the Administrator visiting the out-stations. He states that if the Commonwealth Government 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 be moved.

The report says that the native population is remarkably sparse and extremely backward. The Commissioner considers that without Asiatics or some similar people progress must wait, and the public revenues become stationary, if not retrogressive. He says that he has no reason to believe that the ingress of Asiatics would be harmful to the native people, and he is of opinion that the continuation of the Expropriation Board as plantation owners is undesirable.