A liberal 'respect for small property': Paul Hasluck and the 'landless proletariat' in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1951-63

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 119, 2002, Pages 55-72

  Wright, Huntley ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC   (Fiji)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744730498     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314610208596201     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. D. Denoon, 'Capitalism in Papua New Guinea: Development and Underdevelopment', Journal of Pacific History 20, no. 3 (1985): 119
2. S. MacWilliam and H. Thompson, The Political Economy of Papua New Guinea: Critical Essays (Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers, 1992), 133
3. J. Connell, Papua New Guinea: The Struggle for Development (London: Routledge, 1997), 6, 18, 20
4. Smallholder production is used here to describe a situation where the right to labour-power has been extended to include the right to property, or the right of labour to reproduce her/his subsistence. In TPNG development policy not only sought to strengthen the attachment of indigenous households to the land; it also sought to refashion the terms on which land was occupied. As Hasluck explained: 'the established policy of preserving the native rights in land ⋯ will only prove effective if, in practice, the natives live on their land and work it, using it to greater advantage than in the past'. A free market in land, contrary to the argument exemplified by anthropologist Lisettee Josephides, is not a logical presupposition 'for the emergence of capitalist social relations'. Papua New Guinean households are not centres of a mystical 'land-human' nexus, but are smallholders drawn into the capital-labour relation as producers whose production was first set in motion by the colonial state. The fact that attempts to register land in Papua New Guinea continue to be met with public protests shows how property rights have become deeply embedded in the right of households to their labour-power, 'a right made by producers to reproduce their subsistence'; M. Cowen, 'The Agrarian Problem: Notes on the Nairobi Discussion', Review of African Political Economy 20 (1981): 62-3
5. L. Josephides, The Production of Inequality: Gender and Exchange Among the Kewa (London: Tavistock, 1985), 90-2
6. S. MacWilliam, 'Smallholder Production, the State and Land Tenure', in Customary Land Tenure: Registration and Decentralisation in Papua New Guinea, ed. P. Larmour (Port Moresby: National Research Institute, 1991): 9-32
7. S. MacWilliam, 'Smallholdings, Land Law and the Politics of Land Tenure in Papua New Guinea', Journal of Peasant Studies 16, no.l (1988): 77-109
8. and S. MacWilliam, '"Just like Working for the Dole": Rural Households, Export Crops and State Subsidies in Papua New Guinea', Journal of Peasant Studies 23, no. 4 (1996): 40-78
9. Hasluck, Australian Policy in Papua and New Guinea, 1956, Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries (hereafter DASF), accession 12, box 16.664, file 9-1-1, Part 2, Papua New Guinea National Archives (hereafter PNGNA), Port Moresby
10. A. Morris, 'Doctrines of Development', Scottish Geographical Magazine 112, no. 3 (1996): 200
11. M. Cowen and R. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996), 5-6
12. K. Marx, Capital Volume One (1867; London: Penguin Classics, 1990), 926
13. Denoon, 'Capitalism in Papua New Guinea', 132 (original emphasis)
14. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development, xiii
15. P. Hasluck, Native Labour Policy, 23 April 1956, DT, series M1776/1, volume 9, NAA, Canberra
16. S. MacWilliam, 'Liberalism and the End of Development: Partington Against Hasluck and Coombs', Island 70 (1997): 90
17. P. Hasluck, Lectures and Radio Talks Mainly on Literary Subjects Given in 1935, 1936 and 1937, Records held at 14 Reserve St, Claremont
18. P. Hasluck, A Time for Building: Australian Administration in Papua New Guittea 1951-63 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), 326
19. P. Hasluck, 'The Fallacies of Progress, Servio News 3, no. 28 (1977): 1; and MacWilliam, 'Liberalism and the End', 91
20. Hasluck, 'The Fallacies of Progress', 7
21. MacWilliam, 'Liberalism and the End', 90
22. A.M. Healy, 'Hasluck on Himself, in The Hasluck Years: Some Observations-The Administration of Papua New Guinea. 1952-63. eds A. Ward, T. Voutas and B. Jinks (Discussion Paper 1/79, La Trobe University: The Research Centre for South-West Pacific Studies, 1979), 34-5
23. P. Hasluck, Black Australians: A Survey of Native Policy in Western Australia, 1829-1897 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1942), 204
24. P. Hasluck, 'From Protection to Welfare, Address to the Biennial Conference of the Australian National Council of Women', 14 October 1952, in Native Welfare in Australia: Speeches and Addresses by the Hon. Paul Hasluck, ed
25. P. Hasluck, 'Some Problems of Assimilation', Address to Section F to ANZAAS, Perth, August 1959, in Aborigines in White Australia: A Documentary History of the Attitudes Affecting Official Policy and the Australian Aborigine 1697-1973, ed. S. Stone, (Melbourne: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974)
26. F.W. Eggleston, Reflections of an Australian Liberal (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1953), 4
27. P. Hasluck, Australian Policy in Papua New Guinea, 1956, DASF, accession 12, box 16.664, file 9-1-1, Part 2, PNGNA, Port Moresby
28. Hasluck, A Time for Building. 335
29. 'Islands Development and Visionary Ministers-Especially Australian', Pacific Islands Monthly 25, no. 10 (1955): 14
30. I. Downs, The Australian Trusteeship: Papua New Guinea 1945-1975 (Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1980), 122-3
31. see H. Wright, 'State Practice and Rural Smallholder Production: Late Colonialism and the Agrarian Doctrine in Papua New Guinea, 1942-1969' (PhD thesis. School of Global Studies, Massey University, 1999), 11-13
32. B. Jinks, 'Hasluck's Inheritance: Papua New Guinea in May 1951', in Ward, Voutas and Jinks, 29
33. P. Hasluck, 'New Guinea Presents Governmental Knot', Sydney Morning Herald, 4 August 1952
34. B. Jinks, 'Policy, Planning and Administration in Papua New Guinea, 1942-1952, with Special Reference to the Role of J.K. Murray', (PhD thesis. Department of History, University of Sydney, 1975), 693
35. Hasluck, Native Labour Policy-Papua and New Guinea, 2 March 1955
36. Jinks, 'Policy, Planning and Administration', 30
37. J. Sinclair, 'Australian Colonial Administration of Papua New Guinea, 1951-1963: A Field Staff Point of View', in Ward, Voutas and Jinks, 52
38. Statement read by Senator Paltridge on behalf of the Minister for Territories, Commonwealth of Australia Senate Debates, 15 August 1961, p. 22 (emphasis added)
39. cited in Hasluck, Native Labour Policy, 23 April 1956
40. P. Hasluck, 'Foreign Natives' in Towns, 22 February 1960, DT, series Ml776/1, volume 17, NAA, Canberra
41. P. Hasluck, Foreign Capital Investment in Papua-New Guinea, September 1963, DT, series A1838/1, file 846/2 Part 2, NAA, Canberra
42. Connell, Papua New Guinea, 6
43. Denoon, 'Capitalism in Papua New Guinea', 124-5
44. Jinks, 'Policy, Planning and Administration', 494
45. W. Timms, 'The Post World War Two Colonial Project and Australian Planters in Papua New Guinea: The Search for Relevance in the Colonial Twilight' (PhD thesis. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies [hereafter RSPAS], The Australian National University, 1996), 109
46. B. Finney, Big-Men and Business: Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth in the New Guinea Highlands, (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1973), 45
47. Timms, The Post World War, 107-8
48. Hasluck, A Time for Building, 90, 121-2
49. The Hagen-Sepik Patrol, 1938-1939, in Readings in New Guinea History, eds B. Jinks, P. Biskup and H. Nelson (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973): 275
50. '"A Second Kenya" in Central New Guinea', Pacific Islands Monthly 10, no.l (1939): 19
51. K.E. Read, 'Risks in New Guinea Settlement Scheme', Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 1952, DT, series A1838/1, file 302/4/2, NAA, Canberra
52. J. McAuley, 'White Settlement in Papua and New Guinea, South Pacific 5, no. 12 (1952): 253
53. 'Warning of a 'Second Kenya"', Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 1954
54. CD. Rowley, 'Hasluck and Papua New Guinea', Historical Studies 18, no. 70 (1978): 121
55. McAuley, 'White Settlement', 250
56. for the same view see R. Ward and J. Ballard, 'In Their Own Image: Australia's Impact on Papua New Guinea and Lessons for Future Aid', Australian Outlook 30, no. 3 (1976): 443-4
57. and I. Downs, Purchase of Native Owned Land, 24 June 1954, ibid
58. D. Howlett, 'A Decade of Change in the Goroka Valley: New Guinea Land Use in the 1950s' (PhD thesis, RSPAS, The Australian National University, 1962), 228
59. M. Cowen and R. Shenton, 'Agrarian Doctrines of Development: Part I', Journal of Peasant Studies 25, no. 2 (1998): 51
60. Cited in R. Levin and M. Neocosmos, 'The Agrarian Question and Class Contradictions in South Africa: Some Theoretical Contradictions', Journal of Peasant Studies 3, no. 2 (1989): 239