Norfolk Island

Abstract

Norfolk Island Lorenz Gonschor (bio) The year under review was a fateful one for Norfolk Island, and indeed for the entire Pacific Islands region, as it marked the unprecedented recolonization of an island territory by its administrative power without the territory’s consent, an anachronistic act going against the current of decolonization of the past six decades and comparable in modern history only to the reactionary French policies toward its Pacific possessions from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. Australia’s recolonizing policies sparked an outburst of Norfolk Island nationalism and a well-organized resistance movement struggling both locally and globally for the restoration of democracy to the island community. A British colony settled in 1856 from Pitcairn Island by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian partners (some of whom later returned to Pitcairn to become the ancestors of that island’s current inhabitants), Norfolk Island became a dependent territory of Australia in 1914, and six decades later Australia initiated steps toward the island’s decolonization by granting it a large degree of self-government in 1979, an arrangement similar to other autonomous dependent territories in the region. However, the 2008–2009 global financial crisis hit the island’s mainly tourism-based economy particularly hard (after earlier disruptions including miscalculated investments in a locally owned airline in 2006), and from 2010 onward, the local government’s budget operated at a deficit. This necessitated annual subsidies from the Australian federal government ranging from a$3.2 million in 2011 (us$2.4 million) up to a$7.5 million (us$5.6 million) in the 2014–2015 financial year. Under the 1979 statutes, Norfolk Island was not allowed to borrow money in order to cover deficits without Canberra’s permission, which was not forthcoming. In 2010, Australia first refused to provide the requested budgetary subsidy but then agreed to it on condition that Norfolk Island paid Australian federal taxes and accepted financial oversight by federal officials, which the local government agreed to under protest (C Nobbs 2016b). The 2007–2013 Australian Labor Party government under Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd had agreed to further negotiations with the Norfolk Island territorial government over the issue, and the two governments had signed a “Norfolk Island Road Map” for that purpose in 2011. But the Liberal Party government under Tony Abbott that came to power in Australia in 2013 repudiated this compromise and instead advocated a hard-line, reactionary [End Page 154] approach. A report commissioned by the federal government in 2014—originally intended to look into economic issues, not political institutions—recommended shutting down the Norfolk Island government altogether and replacing it with direct rule by Canberra, and the Abbot government followed the report, introducing corresponding legislation in Australia’s Parliament. The Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Act 2015 was first tabled in the Australian House of Representatives on 26 March and in the Senate on 13 May. The Norfolk Island government reacted immediately to the impending threat to its existence. On 27 March 2015, while the bill was moving through the federal parliament, the island’s Legislative Assembly called for a referendum to be held on 8 May among the local voters on the question of whether the people of Norfolk Island should have the right of self-determination and should be consulted before any changes to their political institutions were made by the Australian Parliament (Norfolk Island Government Gazette, 27 March 2015). The result could not have been clearer, with an overwhelming majority of 624 out of 912 participants (68% out of a 92% turnout of registered voters) voting “Yes” to the question (rnz, 9 May 2015). However, the Australian Parliament ignored the referendum, and with strong bipartisan support from the ranks of both the Liberal government and the Labor opposition, the bill passed both houses on 14 May and was assented to by Australia’s governor-general, Peter Cosgrove, on 26 May 2015. In the debate leading to the bill’s passage, no parliamentarian acknowledged this obvious denial of democracy, and some even mocked the more than two-thirds majority vote in the referendum as merely representing “some” people on the island being “unhappy” or...