This exchange of notes is especially revealing regarding
Lynch's views on autochthonous adoption. Writing to Kearney,
he suggested two alternative methods by which the interim
constitution could be adopted (in the interests of minimising
the delay caused by the debate in the House) . The first was
that the existing Australian legislation could simply be
adopted by Papua New Guinea, with a schedule of amendments -
an idea Lynch dismissed as "just a horrible mess". The second
is of more interest:
The Constitution could be conferred by an Australian Act, as the Australian Constitution was by a U.K. Act. However, I doubt if anyone, including
Australia, would wear that, except at the specific request of the Government or, perhaps, the House of Assembly, and that would take away any conceivable advantage that there might be in the idea.
"I am somewhat puzzled", Kearney wrote in the margin,
as to the Australian end of this Independence exercise. What do you envisage the Australian
legislation to be? Do you envisage something like a 'washing of hands' by Australia, with a purely
autochthonous Constitution - i.e., a break in legal continuity?
Page 4 7
"Frankly", answered Lynch, "I don't know."®^
If, by the end of March, Lynch was uncertain of the mechanics
of independence, this may help to date his "Autochthony for
Papua New Guinea", the contents of which were so closely
echoed in the CPC's Final Report, to the period between his
exchange of notes with Kearney and the submission of the
Report. Yet further documents reveal that he had in mind just
such an eventuality as early as 1967.
In the first House of Assembly (1964-8) , the Guise Committee
called for contributions in its search for "a set of
constitutional proposals to serve as a guide for future
9 3
constitutional development in the Territory." A submission
was received in 1967 from Barry Holloway and Tony Voutas,
which said in part:
with the legal protection so far as possible of the fundamental principles of the constitution itself, an independent judiciary, a neutral public service,
and the need for a constitutional revolution in
" Ibid.
93 Territory of Papua New Guinea, House of Assembly,
Final Report from the Select Committee on Constitutional Development, p. 1.
order that the Territory might determine its own constitutional future, as outlined by C.J. Lynch and
others, we have no quarrel, at least in principle.^''
What "constitutional revolution"? A possible candidate is
provided in Notes Towards a Possible "Council of the People of
Papua and New Guinea", a draft of a submission by Lynch for
the Guise Committee, dated 10 February 1967 (although as the
Committee's Report did not list submissions received there is
no way to confirm that it was in fact submitted). Lynch wrote
that
the intention of this paper is to put forward for consideration the idea of a future "Council of the People" for Papua and New Guinea, more widely
representative than a working Parliament can very well be, and capable of dealing with certain
constitutional issues without resort to the clumsy, expensive and probably ineffective device of a
referendum. ^^
Submission to the Select Committee on Constitutional
Development from B. Holloway (MHA, Kainantu) and A.C.
Voutas (MHA, Kaindi), March 1967, National Library of Australia, MS 5105. Italics added.
95
C.J. Lynch, Notes Towards a Possible "Council of the
People of Papua and New Guinea". (Submission to the
Select Committee of the House of Assembly on
Constitutional and Political Development in Papua and New Guinea), Draft of 10 February 1967, Personal papers.
Page 4 9
The Council envisaged by Lynch would exist alongside
Parliament, and would deal with, among other eventualities,
the making and amendment of a Constitution. "Above all,
perhaps". Lynch wrote, "I thought in terms of wedding the
people to the Constitution and to constitutionalism, and vice
II 9 6
versa."
If this submission did contain the outline referred to by
Holloway and Voutas, then it was truly revolutionary. The
Report of the Guise Committee - while significant in its
recommendations concerning ministerial government - did not
address the issues raised in Lynch's submission. Yet the
submission's existence, and the reference to it in that of
Holloway and Voutas, are the earliest evidence that the ideas
considered by Wheare and others were being similarly examined
within the Territory. Certainly, the establishment of the
Constituent Assembly which did eventually adopt Papua New
Guinea's Constitution was not completely foretold in Lynch's
submission. But the ideas foreshadowed in the 1967 draft
submission and elaborated in the 1974 advisory paper
illustrate Lynch's contribution to the building up of the
acceptance of the principle of constitutional autochthony in
the Territory.
Professor Jim Davidson held the foundation chair in Pacific
History at the Australian National University, and was an
active participant in the politics of the Pacific. He
justified this by saying that he "could not study the past
satisfactorily without an interest in the structure of
97
contemporary society".
Davidson had a lengthy pedigree in constitution-forming, being
closely connected with the independence or self-government of
Western Samoa (from 1947), the Cook Islands (from 1963), Nauru
9 8
(from 1967) and Micronesia (from 1969). His experiences in
Samoa - where he described himself as a "passionate partisan"^^
- were seminal in his approach to the issues of colonialism
and sovereignty. In writing of his involvement.
^^ Quoted in Denoon, "Davidson, James Wightman", p. 579.
Ibid.
J.W. Davidson, Samoa mo Samoa: The Emergence of the
Independent State of Western Samoa, Melbourne, 1967,
Page 51
he in no w a y u n d e r e s t i m a t e s his own role in Samoa's t r a n s i t i o n to independence, a role that involved a d r o i t m a n i p u l a t i o n of meetings in the cause of
S a m o a n u n i t y , on the one hand, and, on the other, an o p p o s i t i o n to his own countrymen's paternalism which
- i m p l a c a b l e , v o c i f e r o u s opposition as it was - s a c r i f i c e d , one suspects, little to tact.^°°
S i m i l a r l y , D a v i d s o n had a "profound" influence on Nauru's
t r a n s i t i o n to i n d e p e n d e n c e , as constitutional adviser in 1967:
"his b e l i e f in the r e p u b l i c a n ideal, for example, resulted in
N a u r u a d o p t i n g r e p u b l i c a n statehood."
D a v i d s o n had first v i s i t e d Papua New Guinea in 1951 and
c o n t i n u e d a c o n n e c t i o n w i t h the Territory through the 1960s.