Defence and Development in Australian New Guinea

Abstract

A T LEAST since the i83os, Australia's chief concern with New Guinea and the other islands of Melanesia has been strategic, arising from the fact that they lie across the northern and northeastern approaches to the mainland. The Commonwealth has considerable shipping, aviation, trading, mining, plantation and missionary interests in this region, but defence considerations are paramount. No Australian Government can be indifferent to any question concerning the political control of the Islands. This attitude was demonstrated early, when cries of anger and alarm were raised in the Australian Colonies at the appearance of the French in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides; and even more plainly when in i884 the British government failed to forestall the German declaration of a protectorate over what is now the Trust Territory of New Guinea. It is perhaps true that there has been something a little factitious and merely noisy in these and other agitations, but the ground of the concern is real enough. From the Australian point of view, the political patchwork of the Southwest Pacific is a disadvantage because it renders coordinated defence more difficult. From time to time it has been suggested that Australia should take over the territories controlled by the British High Commission for the Western Pacific, or at least the British Solomons Islands Protectorate and the British share in the condominium of the New Hebrides. The question of the New Hebrides was raised at successive Imperial Conferences. Since the French were not agreeable to partition, the United Kingdom contemplated ending the odious and unworkable condominium by withdrawing; but at the I937 Imperial Conference Australia proposed instead that she should take over British