Speech at lunch for Prime Minister of Papua-New Guinea (Michael Somare)

Prime Minister, Your Excellency, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.

We are delighted, Michael SomarePrime Minister, that you accepted an invitation to pay an official visit to Britain with your wife and are very pleased that you have also brought your Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Mrs. Giheno. We extend to you and your whole delegation a very warm and friendly welcome to Britain.

Your visit is the more significant because this year marks the 10th Anniversary of Papua-New Guinea's Independence. We were proud to see Papua-New Guinea attain [end p1] independence and delighted that our relations have been so close since then. Throughout most of those ten years you have led your country, and what great progress and achievements it has seen under your leadership.

As with so many Commonwealth countries, our early contacts go back a very long way. The first Englishman to visit your shores was a celebrated buccaneer, William Dampier. In the way things happened in those days, he was sent out by their Lordships of the Admiralty, a sort of pirate-explorer by appointment; and it was in 1700 in Her [end p2] Majesty's Ship ROEBUCK, that he discovered one of your islands. In the cheerfully acquisitive way which British explorers used to have, but with some lack of imagination, he took it for the Crown and christened it New Britain. In the 150 years after that many British Naval Captains visited, mapped and surveyed parts of your coast, the most famous of them Captain Cook who first touched on your shores in 1770.

Prime Minister, just as Britons were among the first to explore your country, so today we want to be among the leaders in helping you develop the [end p3] vast mineral deposits with which you are blessed and which will provide your export earnings well into the next century. We also want to play a part in building up the infrastructure which will enable you to carry forward the exploitation of those resources successfully. You and I were able to discuss these prospects in our talks just before lunch; and I assured you of the British Government's wish to encourage investment in your country and its future.

Lord Jellicoe, who is here today, led a successful trade mission to your country last year, and [end p4] I am sure that he would agree with me that there is a strong desire on the part of British industry to work with you in the task of development and to help you realise your country's enormous potential, for the benefit of its people.

We also admire, Prime Minister, the way in which you have set out to develop a diverse agricultural base, as the surest way of providing for the needs of your people. I was very pleased to see in your programme that you were to visit our Agricultural College in Wye, which enjoys such a very high reputation and I hope that you found that [end p5] useful and instructive.

There is also a wide and growing popular interest in Britain in your country. People's imagination and enthusiasm has been stimulated by some fascinating films shown on television; and of course Mr. David Attenborough, who is here today and who has led explorations in your country, has had a considerable hand in this. [NOT CHECKED—WILL TRY TO ASK HIM BEFORE LUNCH.] One result of which I am particularly proud is that a number of our young people have followed up their interest by volunteering to help in the development of your country [end p6] through Voluntary Service Overseas, and again one of them—Dr. Halstead—is at this lunch. Indeed, the number of British volunteers in Papua-New Guinea is the second largest number in any country in the world. I hope you will regard that as a true mark of our interest, our commitment and our desire to help.

Prime Minister, yours is only a brief visit, but you have told me today that we shall have a further chance to meet at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the Bahamas in October. [end p7] The Commonwealth link is a very important one for us particularly for countries such as ours which lie at great distance one from another. We were very pleased that His Royal Highness Prince Charles was able to pay such a successful visit to your country last year and strengthen those links.

But I hope that even your short stay has demonstrated to you the great warmth and friendship which exists here for the people of Papua-New Guinea, the respect which we have for the vigour of your democratic parliamentary institutions, and the admiration for all that [end p8] has been achieved under your leadership.

I ask you to raise your glasses to the health of the Prime Minister, to the future prosperity of Papua-New Guinea and the continuing friendship between our two peoples.