Category: Law and order

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots In late 1954, soon after Professor Elkin, the editor of Sydney University’s anthropology journal Oceania told me he wanted to publish my article “AFEK of Telefomin” but was experiencing difficulty getting...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots Before I went to TPNG I had been Secretary of the Marist College Old Boys Association of WA and, since everyone knew I intended going to PNG for only the one...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots This was also written for the Old Boys’ talk and, in March 1955, halfway through the Law Students Project, the jury trial of The Queen v. Harry Vincent Pierce made it...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The Queen against KABO, heard at Sohano on 29 February 1952, was my first nolle – that is, the first trial I aborted saying “this trial ceases here”. The Defending Officer,...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The coats on all the men in the photo on the middle pages of the last Una Voce remind me of an essential difference between the early 50s and, say, the...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots Everyone agreed that you had to get an outside interest but nobody told you how. Monte Phillips had started the Port Moresby Music Society which put on musical comedies, and Ruth...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The Queen against Lapae was a wilful murder trial at Rabaul on 4 and 5 March 1952. It was so important that I immediately wrote a full report to Crown Law...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots Snapshot No 3 describes my first day in court in TPNG but, rather than give Monte’s speech then, I preferred to give his performance in two truly remarkable cases. He commenced...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The next two snapshots are for the benefit of younger readers who may sometimes fear that, perhaps, their father or uncle who was in the Admin. may not always have been...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots Readers who watched the recent BBC TV series Ruling Passions on SBS, and whose father or grandfather served in the Admin., must have been affected by the fact that it depicted...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The King against Peter James Jameson (Kavieng, 14-22 February 1952) was my very first trial in TPNG and the only one in which I faced two lawyers defending the one man....

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots In the Jameson Case I produced evidence that he had used several different schemes for stealing the money, all of them directed against village people and never against European or Asian...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots God alone knows how often Monte hammered home the ‘Expulsion of Undesirables’ warning before I arrived in TPNG but he returned to it (so as to make sure that it was...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots Not that it was only Monte who was talking about deportation and “undesirables”. The case of Queen against Donald Drury (no relation to the then Director of Civil Aviation) was the...

Paul Quinlivan’s Snapshots The Commonwealth Grant paid for all Administration expenses including salaries, housing, hospitals, roads, bridges, schools, ships, prisons, etc., but there are (amongst many others) four special items of expenditure in the...