Australia, Trusteeship and New Guinea

Abstract

T HE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT is faced with a dilemma in New Guinea. Trusteeship, under the United Nations, has become outdated and equated by some with colonialism. However, political instability in the region to the north, together with the recent Indonesian take-over of the western half of the island, inhibits the Australian Government in disengaging from an adjacent territory whose present capacity for complete self-rule is doubtful. Yet, to move more slowly than the emerging political forces in New Guinea will not only antagonise the anti-colonial bloc, and even Australia's friends, but is likely to jeopardise the future relationship between Australia and the nation whose eventual existence has now been somewhat reluctantly recognised. Australia has been involved in New Guinea since the latter part of the nineteenth century, but its present jurisdiction in the territory derives, for the southeast portion (Papua), from the British transfer of authority in i906 and for the northeast portion, first, from the Mandate granted by the League of Nations in i919, and subsequently from the trust agreement negotiated with the General Assembly of the United Nations in I946. Apart from an initial desire to deny the territory to an unfriendly power-an intention which reappeared at the time of the granting of the Mandate-New Guinea aroused little attention within Australia before I942.1 However, in that year indifference was shattered by the Japanese invasion. Vague and undefined fears, associated traditionally with an Asian threat, now crystallised and New Guinea was depicted as a springboard for enemy violation of the Australian mainland. Following the Second World War this image of the possible role of New Guinea significantly influenced governmental and public attitudes to the territory. For the Labor Government, which had held office since I94I, this resulted in an attempt to square security considerations with a traditional outlook on colonialism; for the Liberal-Country Party Government, which has been continuously in office since i949, it has meant, at least in its early years, a far less ambivalent approach. The Australian Government's position on trusteeship at the San Francisco Conference on International Organization can best be described as equivocal. Posing as the defender of the rights of small nations, espousing proposals for