Jolley v Mainka

• Jurisdiction: Papua New Guinea
• Court: Obsolete Court (Papua New Guinea)
• Date: 31 August 1933
• Docket Number: 17

Australia, High Court.

Appeal from the Central Court of the Territory of New Guinea.

(Rich, Starke, Dixon, Evatt, JJ.)

Case No. 17

Jolley

and

Mainka.

British Dominions — International Position of — Position as Mandatories — Australia.

Mandates — Position of Mandatory — Legal Basis of Mandatory's Powers of Administration and Legislation — Application of Commonwealth Bank Act to New Guinea — Status of Dominions in International Law.

The Facts.—In order to secure the payment of the purchase money on a sale of land situated in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, the appellant Jolley had, in 1926, executed mortgages in favour of the respondent Mainka. The mortgages included a clause that all payments thereunder should “be made in gold or in currency equivalent thereto at the market or exchange rate current at the time when every such payment is actually made”. The principal sums secured by the mortgages were expressed in pounds. In 1931 the appellant paid into the respondent's banking account in Rabaul nine hundred Australian one pound notes, in full payment of the nine hundred pounds interest then due. At the material time the equivalent of nine hundred pounds in gold was eleven hundred and seventytwo Australian pound notes. The respondent claimed that the payment was not made in gold or in currency equivalent thereto, as provided in the agreement, but in depreciated Australian currency. She accepted the nine hundred pounds as a part payment and sued for two hundred and fifty pounds balance.

The appellant relied on the Commonwealth Bank Act, 1920, which provides in s. 60 H (1) for the issuing of Australian notes, and that they shall “(b) be legal tender throughout the Commonwealth and throughout all the territories under the control of the Commonwealth”. The question to be decided was, therefore, whether that section of the Act applied to the Mandated Territory of New Guinea.

New Guinea is one of the “C” class mandates which, according to the terms of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, “can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory” subject to certain safeguards in the interests of the indigenous population. The Mandate was issued by the Council of the League on December 17, 1920, and was expressed as being conferred upon “His Britannic Majesty, to be exercised on his behalf by the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia”.

In September 1920, in anticipation of the Mandate, the...