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Abstract
Australian newspapers detailed the progress of the Papua Act (1905) through the early Australian Federal Parliaments. This article explores this reporting in two leading newspapers of the time: Melbourne’s The Age and Sydney’s Sydney Morning Herald. Attention is paid to journalist news framing; these include the Othering of the Papuan nation and the presentation of the nations’ colonialist interest, especially regarding land and liquor. First, drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and then on Teun van Dijk’s analysis of strategies of cognition, it is found that Othering and the presentation of Whiteness were used to champion the Parliament's approach without challenge or dissent.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Section 122 of the Constitution enabled the federal government to make laws for any Australian territory placed upon it by the Crown.
2 ‘The Papua Bill which was read for a first time in the House of Representatives to-day [19 July 1904] is virtually a replica of the bill introduced by the Barton Government’. Federal Affairs, Kalgoorlie Western Argus, July 19, 1904, 28. What differed was the ‘new bill’ expanded on the administration of the territory and included a focus on the prohibition of liquor and opium supply to natives.
3 Lewis, The Plantation Dream, 8; Woolford, Papua New Guinea, 2–3.
4 Woolford, Papua New Guinea.
5 Ibid., 2–3; Hoskins, Australia & the Pacific, 271.
6 O’Brien, “Remaking Australia’s Colonial Culture?”; Primrose, “The Papua Bill”, 205–223; West, “The Beginnings of Australian Rule in Papua”, 38–50.
7 See for example, O’Brien, “Remaking Australia’s Colonial Culture?”; Elkin, “The Place of Sir Hubert Murray in Native Administration”, 23–35; Thompson, “Hubert Murray and the Historians”, 79
8 For instance, Grimshaw and Smith, Papua the Marvellous; Inglis, Papua.
9 See, Geil, Ocean and Isle; Bridges, “Afoot in Papua, 1923”; Elkin, “F. E. Williams–Government Anthropologists, Papua (1922–43)”; Mead, Male and Female.
10 For example, Johnson, Roars from the Mountain, Roberts, Voices from a Lost World, Ferns, “Colonialism as Foreign Aid”, 459–76.
11 See Stella, Imaging the Other; Reay, “Ritual Madness Observed”.
12 Carey et al., “Re-Orientating Whiteness”, 10.
13 Boucher, “‘Whiteness’”, 56–7.
14 Brantlinger, “Kipling’s ‘The White Man’s Burden’”, 173.
15 Dyer, “White”, 1.
16 Ibid., 14–7.
17 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 122.
18 Entman, “Framing”, 52.
19 Brians and Wattenberg, “Campaign Issue Knowledge and Salience”, 172.
20 Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Measuring Education”.
21 Whelan, “Visualised”.
22 For the remainder of this paper, the Sydney Morning Herald will be abbreviated as SMH.
23 Beattie, “Chris Watson’s Resignation”; Morrison, David Syme: Man of the Age.
24 Kenny, 2022 and Hawker, 1983. It was also satirically referred to as ‘lachrymose old Granny’: ‘History of the Herald’.
25 Nisbet, “Knowledge into Action”, 46.
26 Gamson and Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power”, 1–37.
27 Scheufele, “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects”, 103–22.
28 Lee, “The Management of a Victorian Local Newspaper”, 131–48; Mayer, “Chapter 5: Press Economics”, 55–71.
29 Nisbet, “Knowledge into Action”, 46.
30 Excludes Indigenous Australians in the count.
31 Coghlan, Seven Colonies of Australasia, 545, 576, 838.
32 Excluding Indigenous Worldviews. Gramsci provides an important insight into the role of hegemony in the lives of citizens. See: Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.
33 Entman et al., “Nature, Sources and Effects of News Framing”, 176; McCombs and Shaw, “The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Theory”, 58–66.
34 Lippman, Public Opinion.
35 Terkildsen and Schnell, “How Media Frames Move Public Opinion”, 880; Weiner, Papers for the Millions, 48.
36 In this article, Critical Discourse Analysis is abbreviated as CDA.
37 Koller, “Part II: Introduction”, 164.
38 Ibid.
39 Jorrgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, 26.
40 Ibid.
41 Montessori, “Text Oriented Discourse Analysis”, 6.
42 van Dijk, Elite Discourse and Racism, 31.
43 Ibid., 31–32.
44 Ibid., 38.
45 Ibid., 35–9.
46 Ibid., 50.
47 Ibid., 247.
48 Ibid., 243.
49 NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software program.
50 Prohibition of Intoxicants and Opium, The SMH, 16/03/1903, 8.
51 New Guinea Constitution, SMH, 12/07/1904, 6.
52 Papua Act 1905 (Cth), 17.
53 Federal Parliament, House of Representatives, The Age, 31/07/1903, 8.
54 Summary, SMH, 8/4/1904, 1.
55 Gamson and Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power”, 1–37; Scheufele, “Framing as a Theory of Media Effects”, 103–22.
56 Commonwealth and States, The Age, 21/07/1903, 5, Federal Parliament: House of Representatives, The Age, 24/07/1903, 9.
57 Federal Parliament: House of Representatives, The Age, 24/07/1903, 9.
58 Federal Parliament. House of Representatives, The Age, 31/07/1903, 8.
59 ‘‘The temperance question engaged the attention of the House yesterday, and it gave rise to a very interesting debate, Mr. Mauger has several times said on the public platform, that the Federal Parliament contains a greater proportion of teetotallers than any other similar body in the wide word. Yesterday he gave members an opportunity of enforcing their principles upon others without the risk of retaliation’. Federal parliament, House of Representatives, The Age, 05/08/1903, 5.
60 Natives included ‘Malays, kanakas, and any inhabitants from the neighbouring islands, who may take info New Guinea a taste for liquor’. Part III, Section 21 subsection 8, Papua Act 1905 (Cth), 18. Also see Footnote 8 for a greater discussion.
61 New Guinea Affairs. The Proposed Papua Bill. Land Sales and Liquor, SMH, 21/05/1904, 14.
62 Ibid.
63 News Of The Day, The Age, 06/08/1903, 4. Randolph Bedford, The Circle Continent, The Martyrs Of The Drift, SMH, 16/12/05, 5.
64 Federal Parliament. House of Representatives, The Age, 5/08/1903, 5. News Of The Day, The Age, 06/08/1903, 4.
65 New Guinea Affairs. The Proposed Papua Bill. Land Sales and Liquor, SMH, 21/05/1904, 14.
66 Hough, “Kava Drinking”, 85–92. The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, SMH, 09/12/04, 8 and Melbourne, Thursday, 8th December 1904. The Age, 08/12/04, 6.
67 Despite reports from Atlee Hunt, Secretary for External Affairs, and Senator Staniforth Smith on the colony plus anthropological and ethnographical writing on as known Papuan intoxicants. For example, see News Of The Day, The Age, 13/06/1905, 4. News Of The Day, The Age, 19/06/1905, 4. New-Guinea Prohibition. Deputation To Prime Minister, The Age, 27/11/1905, 4, Melbourne, Friday, 29th September 1905, The Age, 4. Staniforth Smith, The Senate, Papua (British New Guinea) Bill, Second Reading, Speech, 2 December 1904, 7773–84, Thomas, “Mushroom Madness”, 321–3; Brady and McGrath, “Making Tuba”, 315–30; Reay, “Ritual Madness Observed”, 55–79; Thomas, “The Psychoactive Flora”, 285–93; Haddon, Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition.
68 Melbourne, Thursday, 8th December 1904, The Age 8/12/1904, 6.
69 The Age, Melbourne, Wednesday 25th October 1905, 6.
70 Melbourne, Friday, 29th September 1905, 29/12/1905, The Age, 4, The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, SMH, 24/07/1903, 3.
71 Melbourne, Friday, 29th September 1905, 29/12/1905, The Age, 4. The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, The Age, 03/12/1904, 6.
72 The premise that Australia was terra nullius, Latin for ‘unowned land. Under British colonial law, aboriginal Australians had no property rights in the land, and colonization accordingly vested ownership of the entire continent in the British government. The doctrine of terra nullius remained the law in Australia throughout the colonial period, and indeed right up to 1992’. Banner, “Why Terra Nullius”, 95–131.
73 Federal Parliament. House of Representatives, The Age, 24/07/1903, 9 and House of Representatives, SMH, 30/07/1903, 8, House of Representatives, SMH, 14/07/1903, 5. Also see Tennent, “Management and the Free-Standing Company”, 81–97; Weaver, “Pathology of Insolvents”, 109–31; Tonts, “State Policy and the Yeoman Ideal”, 103–15.
74 Mgbeoji, “The Civilised Self”, 855–69; Kelley, “A Poetics of Anticolonialism”, 7–28.
75 Spivak’s subaltern are people without access to power. They are not part of hegemonic society and thereby cannot be compared to them. Rather, they are heterogenous: when their voice is sought, their ongoing displacement and effacement defines them for example, the Hindu Widow. In 1999, Spivak refined this to ‘can the hegemonic ear hear anything’? See: Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, 66–111; and Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, page number.
76 Mgbeoji, “The Civilised Self”, 857.
77 Mutua, “Savages Victims”, 202–4.
78 Mr Deakin’s Speech—His Great Responsibilities, SMH, 30/10/1903, 7.
79 Melbourne, Friday, 29th September.1905, 29/12/1905, The Age, 4. The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, The Age, 03/12/1904, 6.
80 For example, see Teo, “Racism in the News”, 7–49, van Dijk, Racism, and the Press.
81 Jacques, “Global Hierarchy”.
82 Gregory, “In Central Australia”, 13.
83 “Australian Anthropology”, 4; Spencer, “Aborigines of Australia”, 7.
84 Bedford, “Circled Continent: The Martyrs of the Drift”, 5.
85 Federal Parliament. House of Representatives. The Age, 24/7/1903, 9
86 Robert Waddell in Port Moresby, Maori Kiki at the storm’s centre. The Canberra Times, 15/10/1969, 24.
87 House of Representatives, SMH, 24/7/1903, 5.
88 And not for the purpose of covering the annual administrative subsidy.
89 Melbourne, Friday, 29th September 1905, The Age, 29/12/1905, 4.
90 The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, SMH, 23/07/1903, 3.
91 The Commonwealth Parliament. The Senate, SMH, 23/07/1903, 5.
92 van Dijk Teun, Elite Discourse and Racism, 2–3.
93 British New Guinea, SMH, 09/01/1906, 6.
94 The Papuan Dependency. Report of Mr. Atlee Hunt. Suggestions and Recommendations. A Valuable Document, SMH, 01/11/1905, 9. Federal Parliament. House of Representatives. The Age, 05/8/1903, 5, News Of The Day, The Age, 12/06/1905, 4. News Of The Day, The Age, 08/07/1905, 10. New Guinea Mission, SMH, 27/07/1903, 6. British New Guinea, SMH, 09/01/1906, 6. Mr Deakin’s Speech—His Great Responsibilities, SMH, 30/10/1903, 7. Federal Parliament. House of Representatives, SMH, 30/07/1903, 8. Federal Parliament. House of Representatives, SMH, 31/07/1903, 8.
95 Melbourne, Friday, 29th September 1905, The Age, 29/12/1905, 4.
96 Dijk Teun, Elite Discourse and Racism.
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Notes on contributors
Belinda Beattie
Belinda Beattie, School of HASS, University of New England, Armidale, Australia; E-mail: [email protected]