TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 22nd MARCH, 1943 RELATIONS WITH AUSTRALIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5595, 22 March 1943, Page 2

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 22nd MARCH, 1943 RELATIONS WITH AUSTRALIA

THE Government may be warmly congratulated, not merely on advancing to the appointment, long over-due, of a High Commissioner in Australia, but on its choice. Mr C. A. Berend- . en is one of the Dominion’s outstanclpublic- servants and departmental heads. His experience has been of the most fruitful kind. His abilities include those of the first-class administrator but are completed on the higher level of constructive stateci ait. He is intimately acquainted with the Government’s policy and with the problems to which, at CanLn ra, it will be his business to apply it as a solvent. Much can be expected ci his appointment, the importance of which is fairly measured by that < f the duties he must leave to take it. ’.t its reluctance to let him go, or . heer inability to do so, the Government can now plead its only telling . ■ pointment so long; but though a telln.g one, it is not enough. If not Mr Berendsen, then some other could .-'•id should have been appointed, with capacity enough for a task too important to neglect or to deal with by fits and starts. Both the Australian .-nd New Zealand Goovernments. the Prime Minister says, “ are convinced that essential unity on the defence and foreign problems of the two countries will be promoted ” by regulating and canalising their relations. This is perfectly true. It would have been true had it been said three years ago; and it should have been said. Some cf the difficulties of those three years would have been avoided, others eased, it it had been said and if what is done now had been done then. The fact been discussed '• from time to time and the Government feels, “ in view of the situation in the Pacific in recent months, come ” to establish this regular means of negotiating, deciding, and acting together. But it would perplex Mr Fraser to explain ripened the time for this decision. The now, and it is. it would have been just as wise, or wiser, a year ago, and sooner than that, so much wiser still. Mr Fraser’s reference to “foreign roblems ” may obliquely suggest that questions of post-war settlements and relations in the Pacific are taking shape and that Mr Berendsen is specially well fitted to assist in bringing Australian and New Zealand views to agreement on them. If it does, the suggestion is an acceptable one. But it cannot mean that an < arlier appointment was unnecessary, or even that for this particular reason it has only now become necessary. Too much time has been lost; and bo loss has-been poorly concealed by stretching pretentious phrases over it and poorly off-set by makeshift devices, such as the “ permanent consultative committee” jubilantly established two years ago. Supply, however, was its main concern; its method e traditional one of Ministerial missions. That it never grew beyond those limits or achieved ery much within them was sufficiently well indicated by events. During the next year or so New Zealand was to hear from one Minister after another new variations of an old theme. It as always possible to find ‘absolute unanimity in strategy and supply” » going to Canberra to look for it; but the need remained for the permanent machinery which alone can make consultation complete, swift and effective, and impel agreement ’ to and through action. That machinery is now for the first time assured.