Png Link That Brings Three Former Prime Ministers To Wollongong
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 8, 1989
WOLLONGONG University makes Australian academic history today by conferring honorary doctorates of letters (D.Litt) on three former Prime Ministers, Sir John Gorton, Mr Gough Whitlam and Mr Michael Somare. The link between them is Papua New Guinea.
And the link between them and Wollongong University is its enterprising Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ken McKinnon, who from 1966 to 1973 was PNG's Director of Education, a man who cheerfully worked himself out of a job preparing the way for his PNG successor at independence, Sir Alkan Tololo.
Sir John Grey Gorton, 78, and Mr Edward Gough Whitlam, 73, made political history by being the first Australian Prime Ministers to display a genuine, practical interest in PNG's political future. Mr Michael Tom Somare, 53, made history by being first his country's Chief Minister and later its first Prime Minister.
In the early and mid-1960s, Sir John and Mr Whitlam saw that PNG independence was not only inevitable and right but desirable in Australia's own interests. In the age of decolonisation, it was better to risk a prematurely independent PNG than the inevitable, resentful backlash of a people kept waiting too long.
I worked a great deal in PNG during that period. Excepting a relative handful of mainly coastal and islands evolues, independence took a lot of pushing. The late Mr John Gunther, who became Vice-Chancellor of UPNG in 1966, wrote to me of his students: "It's not Africa. Most don't know what the hell they want."
In those years, in addition to being an active journalist, I was executive officer of the newly founded Council on New Guinea Affairs, editor of its magazine New Guinea Quarterly and director of its seminars.
The seminars, fairly lavish in scope and sometimes a bit pompous, dealt with a variety of coming issues of importance - the university, constitutional change, the need for indigenous lawyers, defence, Indonesia. A number were held in PNG itself. At one of the latter, Mr Somare met for the first time his future successor as a Pangu Prime Minister, a young Tolai student named Mr Rabbie Namaliu.
The then Minister for Territories, Mr Charles (CEB) Barnes - who appeared better suited to administer his horse stud at Warwick than the fortunes of Papua New Guinea - regarded the council's activities with deep suspicion bordering on hostility and its board members, including Sir Norman Cowper and Sir John Crawford, as "irresponsible stirrers".
Sir Robert Menzies may well have agreed. Not long after the appearance of the first quarterly issue of New Guinea and the World Bank Seminar, held in Goroka in April 1965, had made headlines, I was asked to see him.
Although intrigued by so curious an organisation as the council, the real reason for the brief interview soon became clear. Sir Robert didn't like the tenor of remarks made at the Goroka seminar by Mr Whitlam.
At Goroka, Mr Whitlam had shocked the socks off members of Farmset, the white settlers' organisation - and not a few cautious black politicians for that matter - by saying that the UN anti-colonialist movement was so strong that "the rest of the world will think it anomalous if PNG is not independent by 1970".
Mr Whitlam, said Sir Robert, was "rather careless of his facts" and should have known better. What then were Sir Robert's own thoughts about PNG's future? He appeared to have none, despite his famous 1960 statement that "if in doubt you go sooner, not later". We talked desultorily a few moments longer before he shrugged, shook hands and indicated the interview was over.
Determined on a parting shot, I made a comment about Mr Barnes. Sir Robert was too quick for me. His hands shot up in the air in mock protest. "I won't hear a word against Charles Barnes," he said. "He's an excellent judge of horseflesh." It was an old joke apparently, but new to me.
In January 1958 the AIPS (Australian Institute of Public Affairs) held its annual summer school in Canberra. The subject was Australia and New Guinea. It was a seminal event mainly because of the strenuous, occasionally angry discussion provoked by Sir John Kerr's paper on the political future.
On the Australia Day weekend in 1968, the AIPS ran a second summer school on the same subject. This time the atmosphere was different, concerned rather than speculative. Mr Barnes, scowling in the audience, suddenly seemed irrelevant. Times were changing.
For a start John Gorton had been sitting in the Lodge for a full three weeks. He asked me to see him. He had a knockabout face, a direct manner of conversation and a larrikin charm. Things were gathering momentum in PNG, Australia faced problems and he had noticed that things were "hotting up" in Rabaul and he wanted to talk about them.
Sometime in 1968, he rang me to ask if I knew any New Guinean who could talk about East New Britain's increasingly militant Mataungan Association -the real harbinger of coming political change in PNG. I suggested Mr John (JK)Kaputin, a Mataungan leader, who remains to this day the most perceptive, dedicated PNG nationalist I ever knew. "Bring him down" was his response.
We met Sir John in Canberra. It was not a successful meeting. Sir John wanted a precise Western style description of Mataungan ideology, its political aims and time table - an impossible task. Mr Kaputin faltered. Evoking incongruous images of the Winter Palace, the Prime Minister ended up inadvertently calling him "Mr Kropotkin".
Among Sir John's PNG pluses was his appointment of Mr Les Johnson, a former PNG Director of Education, to succeed Sir David Hay as Administrator. One of the most talented, least publicly recognised, of Australia's pro-consuls, Mr Johnson's sympathetic support of Mr Somare and his Pangu Pati supporters, as much as anything, made it possible for them to form self-government in 1973 as a prelude to independence in 1975.
In the end, Mr Whitlam got things moving. In August 1966, Mr Arthur Calwell so manipulated Federal Conference he had himself placed on the ALP Aborigines and New Guinea Committee in place of Mr Don Dunstan and attempted to delete all reference to PNG independence as a Labor Party aim.
Conference called for another report. Mr Whitlam, Mr Don Dunstan, Mr Jim Keefe, Mr Clyde Cameron and I gathered in John Kerr's chambers - after watching a lonely and excluded Mr Calwell limp slowly along Phillip Street -to debate a new report which among other things still ensured future independence for PNG remained ALP policy. It was carried by conference the following day.
The stage was gradually being set for the entry of Mr Somare - the "Chief"- whom I first remember meeting the same year on the beach at Wewak where he complained bitterly that we were being followed by Special Branch police. We were too.
At that time, Mr Ted Wolfers, who is today professor of history and politics at Wollongong University, with an unrivalled knowledge of PNG politics, was already researching and teaching in PNG. In his spare time, he was books editor of New Guinea Quarterly. He persuaded Mr Somare to say what he thought in a Quarterly article.
The Chief did so, savagely attacking Special Branch agents as "SS" types mostly recruited from former African colonies. It's a fair comment on the then prevailing white attitudes that Mr Somare found it politic to sign himself Bramaig Damai, one of his Murik Lakes chieftainly titles.
I remember him best on an expedition in February 1980 to Wogeo, north of Wewak, made famous in the 1930s by anthropologist Mr Ian Hogbin describing it as the "Island of Menstruating Men". He seemed unperturbed by looming political defeat, talking cheerfully of changing his country's name from Papua New Guinea to Panusia or recalling a former, unlamented white kiap who demanded that a youthful Somare and friends carry his jeep across swollen streams.
For a feast he intended later at Murik Lakes, the Chief bargained strongly for four large pigs, including a huge tusker, which were later hauled grunting and squealing aboard HMPNG Ship Samarai by hoist and tackle. On the way back to Wewak, he complained dramatically of the cost - 400 kina ($A600). "Those Wogeos, those Wogeos ... " But he didn't look too unhappy about it.
A few days later in Mt Hagen, I told a friend of Mr Somare's the story of the pigs. He casually asked about their cost and, when I told him, stared in disbelief.
"Four hundred | Here in the Wahgi they'd cost 1,000 kina ($A1,500) these days. Got them for 400 kina eh?" He added admiringly, "that bastard Somare will knock off a bank next."
© 1989 Sydney Morning Herald