Economic or Political Development: The Evolution of “Native” Local Government Policy in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1945–1963

Abstract

In 1969, Speaker of the House Assembly of Papua and New Guinea John Guise, spoke of a “quiet decision” to limit the activities of “Native” Local Government Councils in the Territory, so that “they seem to be much more like those of Australian Shire Councils”. The present essay suggests that this “quiet decision”, contrary to conventional wisdom, was not simply part of a colonial policy designed to serve “assimilationist purposes”. Rather, the restricted role finally accorded to local councils was a corollary of the enhanced, post‐war capacity of the metropolitan state. Early local government policy never envisaged councils as a first step toward self‐government. Rather, councils were to be vehicles for securing the “systematic development of native agricultural potential”. The decision to limit the scope of local government policy reflected not a rejection of this initial intent, but rather agrarian reform after 1956 was re‐constituted as an object of direct government control. The legacy of local government in Papua New Guinea is not so much one of ‘white’ colonialism, but of ‘development’ entrapped in trusteeship.