PERMANENT STATION IN ANTARCTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5289, 30 December 1946, Page 5

PERMANENT STATION IN ANTARCTIC

(Press Assn-

PLAHS OF GOVERNMENT N0 ATTEMPT TO RACE BYRD EXPEDITION

-By Telegravlv —xjopyripht.)

•WELLINGTON, Last Night. A Department committee was investigating the practicability of establishing a^ permanent seieiitific station in the Ross Depenjieney, and the dispatch oi' an expedition to the Antarctic next year would be considered when the committee had completed its examination of the factors involved and had submitted its report, stated the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser. The purpose of the proposed station, said Mr. Fraser, would he to further investigations of Antarctic meteorological and geophysical conditions, to carry out fisheries research, and to tackle other scientific problems, all of which were of practical importance to New Zealand. The Prime Minister said that although it had been hoped for some time to extend scientific work in the Antarctic, the war had made it impossible to put plans into effect. The development of new types of equipment during the war had, to a very considerable. extent, broken. down natural barriers, mostly eaused by the rigorous climatic .conditions, which, in the past, had always to be faced,in the establishment of scientific posts in the Antarctic. » It was also hoped to co-operate with the United Kingdom and Australia in furtherance of an international plan of Polar research, details of which had been, and were still, under discussion. The Prime Minister said he wished to stress that there was no desire by the New Zealand Government to send an expedition to the Antarctic ahead of that eommanded by Admiral Byrd for the purpose of asserting sovereign rights.

The days of rushes to the Pole, he said, closed with the end of the heroic period of discovery 30 years ago, and the task now faced was to make good the rights which explorers had won, and to crown discovery with patient, long-term research and development. The Americans were as welcome to enter and fly. over New Zealand territory in/ peacetime as they were in wartime. New Zealand would be glad to afford any possible facilities, and the Government was quite sure that the Dominion's rights in the araa, which had been under New Zealand jurisdiction and administration since 1923,- would be respected by all those who might be engaged in Antarctic expeditions. New Zealand did not wish to display a dcg-in-tbe-manger attitude in the period of international co-opera-tion that was ahead. Once New Zealand's Antarctic scientific base was established and equipped scientists from other countries would be welcome to join her scientists in work for the good of all.