Australian Goodwill Mission To Malaya

Chronicle (Levin), 15 June 1948, Page 5

Australian Goodwill Mission To Malaya

(N.Z.P.A.-

—Reuter,

Copyright)

Beeeive.d Monday, 8.5,0 p.m. SYDNEY, June 14. The feeling throughout Australia eoncerning the Malayan ■reaetion to the Australian good-: -will mission is stiil running high, but thig bulk o±" th.e oriticispi is faliing els.e-where than on the shoulders of the leade?? of mission, Mr, Maemahon P.ail, The sta-te-luonf by i)r. Eyatt iii the Jhouse pf jl,epresjentative^ deptje.o.aitipg tbe fitteifipf by ''extreuiibt Singapore newspapets" to caws.e tr.obble-: between Australia and Maiaya drawR ah immediate repiy from th.e Singapore Pree Press which has b.een widely pubiished bete, The paper repeats the scathing criticism of the Australian action in hastening to Maiaya "with a million dollars worth of scholarships, nostrums and textiles,"' and adds: "The mission could hardly have been worse timed or nj.ore crude in conception. " It suggests that if Dr. Evatt still has doubts about the strength of antiAustvalian feeiing in Maiaya he shou|d sen,d a fact-finding mission to test it. Australians are asking them- , selves wh.e.th.er after all the sum of £410,000 taken by the mission is calcujate.d to make any appreciable change in the con'dition of ,the starving miilions of Ma'laya, Burma, Java, Indonesia, China and the Phijippines, and if not whether the mission is serving any other purpose than providing a target for nation a! feelings aroused by wholesale deportatlons of Asians from Australia.

Tlie attitude of Mr. Malcolm MacDonaJd, British High Coipmissioner in Maiaya, has drawn unfavourable comment in Canberra. "For blazingly indisereet windli^gging, Mr. MacDonaid was possibly a bit ahead of tbe ball," comments the Sun day Telegraph 's correspondent. Canberra asks why his Majesty's agent in Maiaya went so far to diseredit Australia in all the. liemispheres. Mr. Ball was placed in a rema-rkable position and seems- to have had little assistance from Mr. MacDonaid. They ar.e asking in Canberra wliat excijse was there for. Mr. MacD.onald 's trse nf-;tJhe op" portunky to stigmatise Australian policy. "Tliis criticism is directed at Mr. MacDonaid 's statement that Australian po.licy in the East had donc irreparable harm to the Empir.e. It is inevitable that much of the press and pulilic blame for the series of unfortunate ineidents is reeoiling on the head of Dr. Evatt as Minister of External Affairs. "Tlie trouble goes d.eep.er than the method of deporting coloured people from Australia," says the Sydney Sun. "It lies in Dr, Evatt being allowed to treat Australia's foreign policy as if it were his priv.ate and personal property. Dr. Evatt is the gr.eat traveller. He basks at United Nations in th.e iiqw diminishing adnlation awarded the 'champion of the smajl nations'. He should now fly to Singapore and take over some of the dirty w.ork he has fobbed off on -to the devoted shoulders of Mr. Macmahon Ball."