ABSTRACT
The government of Papua New Guinea has committed itself to a course designed to move it from the latter condition to the former with deliberate speed. In doing so it has chosen to accept the Australian government’s offers of substantial aid for an extended period of time in order to make that transition in a way that will inflict a minimum of hardship upon its people and a minimum of strain upon the new democratic political institutions of the country. Contemporary Papua New Guinea, therefore, is a bifurcated society with the Australians and the new indigenous Westernized elite economically dominant over the rest of the society. The earlier strategy, which had as its aim “concentrated growth,” had been embodied in the first five-year economic development plan for 1968–1973 and, in turn, had been based on the 1965 recommendations of a World Bank mission to Papua New Guinea.
