PACIFIC AREA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 80, Issue 7152, 16 January 1950, Page 8

PACIFIC AREA

QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY PROBLEMS TO BE STUDIED Australia and New Zealand had a special responsibility to foster the economic, cultural and political development of the South-West Pacific said the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (Professor D. B. Copland) at Timaru. Professor Copland was born a. E_L. Valley and was educated at the Waimate High School and Canterbury University College. He is visiting relatives in South Canterbury after an absence of 30 years. The National University in Canberra was to concentrate upon postgraduate studies and research, said Professor- Copland. Of special interest to New Zealand was the school of Pacific studies where it was hoped to develop a well co-ordinated study of the anthropological, ethnical, geographic, political, and economic problems of the Pacific area with concentration on the territory near Australia and New Zealand. In its initial stages the school was being developed under the advice of a distinguished New Zealander, Professor Raymond Firth, of London University. Australia and New Zealand had common problems in the administration of the.r territories in the Southwest Pacific area, he said. But their responsibilities went far beyond that. Their geographical position linked them closely with the great Eastern peoples to their north, and their close ties with the United Kingdom and the United States made them advance posts of Western civilisation in the EastIt would be sheer presumption to imagine that Australia and New Zealand had anything to offer these peoples in cultural values, continued Professor Copland. The Chinese and Indian peoples had a cultural inheritance extending far beyond the origins of Western civilisation, from which Australia and New Zealand derived their own cultural inspiration. But Australia and New Zealand had shared in the great technological advances associated with Western civilisation in the last two centuries, and in this respect they would both render valuable assistance in the development of modern technique in the East.