Relating to Offences against European Women was prepared - with provisions identical with those of the White W o m e n ’s Protection Ordinance - but then suddenly abandoned. Instead the Criminal Code was amended, providing heavier penalties for sexual crimes, but there was no death penalty for attempted rape, the death penalty
for rape was included but made optional not obligatory upon the judge, and, as throughout the Criminal Code, there was no discrimination as to the race of the victim.'*' Why this was done can not be explained with certainty for the relevant papers in the file on the proposed Ordinance in the Commonwealth Archives Office have been enclosed in
2
brown manila envelopes and scholars are not permitted to read them. I suspect it was an Australian Cabinet decision anticipating League of Nations opposition; when I was working on the material in 1971, all Cabinet papers were closed to access by research workers. The incon sistencies in the laws of the Territory remained after the repeal of the Ordinance, leaving a "hotch potch of differences in regard to relevant ages and penalties in sex offences on immature females.
3
These differences remain to the present day..." The reasons for
the repeal were other than those W.W. Watkins had offered in the Legislative Council; as Sir Hubert Murray’s reasons for his intro duction of the Ordinance had been.
After W.W. Watkins had made his statement of explanation, E.A. James and other non-official members of the Legislative Council complained that they had not had time to study the Bills, "i cannot for the life of me see," said James, "why after 30 or 40 years it was necessary that these amendments should go through after about
, „4
seven days notice. But he did not speak against the Bills.
Only B.E. Fairfax-Ross, non-official member, reminded those who now talked of discrimination that they "must not forget that where it does exist it was specifically planned to exist by thoughtful and
1. Criminal Code Amendment Ordinance, No. 29 of 1937. 2. The file is CA0:CRS A518, Item No. C840/1/3
3. S.H. Johnson, "Criminal Law and Punishment", p. 86.
4. Legislative Council Debates, V o l . IV, No. 4, 17 September 1958, p. 415.
benign Administrators of this country in the past.” And he con tinued in much the same words as Hubert Murray had used when defending the Ordinance:
Discrimination in law, Sir, often seems to me to be very necessary in dealing with two groups of people in very different stages of development and with very
different reactions to law and punishment and discrimin ation is not necessarily all bad.^
Fairfax-Ross was speaking for many white residents, though none supported him in the Legislative Council, and the Bills passed through all stages in the time it took to read them, ’’without amendment or debate.”^
The specific conditions which caused the Ordinance to be
introduced have gone; the basic fear which lay beneath it remains.
A fear of black sexual attack is still in the air of Port Moresby.
The white newcomer soon learns of it. In A Guide to Newcomers to
Papua New Guinea published by the Country W o m e n ’s Association the following warning appears:
Parents of little girls especially should not allow a familiar attitude to grow between a domestic servant and their children, but to bear in mind that the people of this country do not have the same social background
or training as ourselves. Do not let your children run
around unclothed. Make sure they always wear trunks or
swim suits at least. There have been cases where children
and women have been molested. A lot of people have the idea ’it cannot happen to m e ’ but do n ’t be too sure! It is your duty to guard against your child being injured, and prevent anyone from an act which he may regret later...
In the home, on the streets, and even in the field of sport and swimming, bear in mind the phrase ’revealing
clothing leads to provocation’. Do not appear before
your staff in night attire or under-clothes.*234
The story of the lady with the towel is still told in Port
Moresby. The suggestion is still current that women who are sexually
1. Legislative Council Debates, V o l . IV, No. 4, 17 September 1958,
p . 415 .
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 417.
4. p p . 15-16. Revised edition of booklet first issued in 1957.
Undated, but with a foreward written by Alison Hay, wife of the Administrator between January 1967 and July 1970.
assaulted have themselves to blame. In 1969 the fact that a young white woman was living with a black man was given as part explanation, part extenuation, for the attempt of another black man to rape her. Gossip exaggerates the number and seriousness of assaults, and
today, as in the twenties and thirties, each sexual attack by a black man on a white woman is seen not as an individual case but as the early sign of a trend. There also remains in the town a fear by black men of accidental contact with white women. Older Papuans in particular step aside when a white woman comes towards them in the street, or the shop or the office; there is less physical con tact between black and white people than is normal in cities or crowded areas; if a black man bumps into a white woman at Koke his apologies are likely to be effuse.
What has changed is the language in which the fears are couched. The warning of the Country Women*s Association sounds very different from the Papuan Courier’s hysteria. These are women talking to women and warning them calmly of dangers; not enemies of a Lieutenant-Governor using an issue to discomfort or dislodge him. What has also changed drastically are the penalties and the discrimination as to victim. A black man in 1971 who "behaved indecently" towards a European girl aged seven pleaded guilty and was convicted, received five months gaol, although the Resident Magistrate thought he should have received nine months gaol "because the charge was a serious one."^ Thirty years before he may well have been imprisoned for life, if not hanged.
That Sir Hubert Murray, a thoughtful and benign adminis trator, passed the White W o m e n ’s Protection Ordinance needs to be explained and not glossed over as it has been. Murray brought in the Bill, as he brought in all those regulations passed since 1908 in Papua whose purpose was to keep Papuans in an inferior position and to keep them apart from whites in the town, partly because he shared many of the assumptions of the white residents about black
sexuality and inferiority and about the importance of white prestige in a colonial situation. Although he opposed the white residents on many important issues, in this case he bowed before the strong and concerted pressure of the most influential men in the town, those who had tried to engineer his dismissal a few years earlier. In doing so he added to the burden of inferiority which the colonial relationship had placed on the Papuans and to the injustices they had to bear in the white man's town.
BIBLIOGRAPHY