| Politics: HOWARD’S SECRET PACIFIC CONNECTION? |
Marr reveals links with PNG
Conrad Mill
Australia’s Liberal coalition government under John Howard has had a mixed relationship with Pacific Islands governments.
It’s often viewed as either heavy-handed, neo-colonial or aloof to the needs and aspirations of the region.
| John Howard... an Aussie battler? |
Howard himself has not exactly embraced the Pacific Way. At the Pacific Islands Forum meetings he refused to drink kava (the islands’ traditional drink), opting instead for tea, and wouldn’t join the leaders dancing island-style.
Given all these, who would have thought that Howard himself has a Pacific Islands connection that stretches back to his father and grandfather?
In a well-researched article written by David Marr and published in the Sydney Morning Herald, it has come to light that the family once leased copra plantations in New Guinea (now PNG).
In Australia, Howard has carefully crafted his image as one who came from a family of battlers. Lyall Howard, John Howard’s father, fought in the First World War, came home as a ‘digger’ and started a petrol station in suburban Dulwich Hill.
He worked long and hard to put food on the table, struggled through the depression and raised a family. Howard has used this pretext to identify himself as an Aussie ‘battler’ who rose to the highest office.
Now Marr has shattered this myth with revelations that Lyall, Howard’s father, acted as a ‘dummy’ for the Carpenters company to gain control of copra plantations left by the Germans after the First World War.
“The treaty of Versailles spelt the end for German planters in New Guinea. Australia took over the colony, stripped them of their land and sent them packing in the early 1920s.
“Then Prime Minister, Billy Hughes promised New Guinea for the returned servicemen and ex-diggers were offered very generous terms when 40,000 hectares of plantation went on the market in 1926.”
“Lyall tendered to buy four plantations on Karkar, an island off the coast of Madang. He was awarded two plantations—Kavilo for 9800 pounds and Marangis for 30,600 pounds (roughly A$4,000,000 in today’s currency).”
Lyall was an unemployed serviceman at the time. How he found the money for these plantations was simple.
Carpenters paid the deposits on his behalf and controlled and managed the plantations in his name. The scheme was called ‘dummying’.
“Carpenters and Burns Philp were desperate to mop up the old German plantations. They could have tendered for the plantations in their own names. But they would have had to outlay twice the deposit and pay the balance in half the time. Using dummies slashed their costs and sabotaged Canberra’s policy of favouring old soldiers.”
It was a scandal at the time with calls from politicians and the Commonwealth auditor-general for an investigation to stop the ‘dummying evil’. But while Canberra fine-tuned the regulations, it never took effective action.
In 1927, Lyall tendered 60,000 pounds for a large plantation on the island of Manus. Howard’s grandfather, Walter, tendered 25,100 pounds for Enuk, spread over a number of sandy islands near Kavieng, the capital of New Ireland.
In July that year, they took over the Wardell garage and service station in Dulwich Hill for a weekly rental of 14 pounds and began the long slog. Despite this connection, Howard has refused to issue short-term work visas for Pacific Islanders in Australia, calling it exploitive, yet young backpackers from Europe can come to Australia and pick fruit under the same conditions in what is called a ‘working holiday’.
The irony is that Howard’s family may have been indirectly responsible for the same sort of exploitation on their plantations that he claims will happen to islanders in Australia.
Bill Middleton, a famous Papua New Guinean planter, established his family’s fortunes winning tenders for some of these plantations with their own capital. The name Middleton is generally associated with coconut plantations on Karkar Island. He is now dead but his son Sir John recalls his father’s experiences with Carpenters and Burns Philp.
“The tenderers (dummies) were bound hand and foot to the companies. Carpenters was pretty good and fairly ruthless in running the plantations. You know what they called W.R. Carpenters before the war? ‘Would Rob Christ’ and Burns Philp they called ‘Bloody Pirates’.”
The leases for the plantations were administered by the Custodian of Expropriated Properties based in Rabaul. In 1929, fed up with the lack of action by the custodian over dummying, the administrator for New Guinea decided to challenge a blatant case. He sent a coded cable to Canberra.
“Walter and Lyall Falconer Howard apply for consent purchase property valued at 25,000 pounds and 100,000 pounds respectively. Strongly suspect dummies for Carpenters and Co. Could investigation branch enquire into the status and financial circumstances of these men and report the result urgently.”
The branch which would later become ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Office) reported back that it was unlikely the Howards had such capital to purchase such properties given their income and assets.
This was passed onto the auditor-general who wrote in his 1928-29 report that he had “no doubt whatsoever that dummying exists in their case. A change of government and general apathy towards dummying ensured the Howards were never brought to justice over the breach.
“The custodian was to disappear under a cloud soon after and turned up as Carpenters’ London representative.”
Questions remain unanswered about the relationship between the Howards and Carpenters.
Howard has refused to answer questions put to him by Marr over the family connection with the plantations. The obvious one is how much were the Howards paid to become dummies? It was common knowledge that dummies received annual fees by Carpenters to use their name and if opportunities ever came up to transfer their holdings to their backers, they were usually paid a premium.
“While it is not clear how the Howards benefitted, it is very clear the family remained useful to Carpenters. That these plantations were conducted in the name of a couple of mechanics from Dulwich Hill allowed the trading company to cry poor through the depression, the war and its aftermath. The files are fat with pleas from Carpenters for concessions of one kind or another because their ‘clients’ the Howards could not pay.”
After the Second World War, the Howards slowly disposed of the plantations by transferring them to Carpenters or pulling out altogether from the ones deemed uneconomic by the company. The paper work for the last plantation on Kavilo was completed in 1962 when Howard was a young liberal and law graduate.
“Strangely these plantations never seemed to feature in the Prime Minister’s repertoire of stories about the ethos of his family,” wrote Marr.
Certainly Marr has destroyed the legend Howard has carefully crafted about his background and uses to his political advantage.
A lot of diggers after the First World War returned as shattered men, damaged by the war and never able to fully participate in society.
Some diggers, it seemed, saw opportunities and went on to produce powerful children nurtured from the sweat and toil of Pacific Islanders.
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