Why A Tiny Island On The Pacific Is Becoming A Headache For Australia
Australia is the sixth largest country in the world, and despite its continental size, it is divided only in six states plus three internal territories (including Australian Capital Territory, ACT, where Canberra lies). New South Wales, whose capital is Sydney, is the most populated state, followed by Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the small island of Tasmania. Each Australian State is a successor of a British colony and has its own constitution. The ACT and the Northern Territory, which is the second biggest state/territory in Mainland Australia, operate indistinguishably from the states, although they do not have state status according to the federal constitution. The last has 49% of its territory dominated by indigenous tribes. The small Jervis Bay Territory is considered an exclave of the ACT.
But if the Mainland Australia is comprised by huge divisions, its external territories, except the Australian Antarctic Territory (which has an area of almost 6 million km²), are composed mostly by tiny islands (inhabited or not) and coral reefs. One of these islands, the 35 km² Norfolk Island, with just 1748 inhabitants, is creating some trouble in and outside its territory. And this may affects Australian politics and economy.
First occupied by East Polynesian seafarers in the 13th or 14th century, Norfolk Island saw its European domain in the late 18th century through the land of British captain James Cook. The island rapidly turned to a penal settlement for indigent people from the Thirteen Colonies in North America, in order for British colonization over the island. In 1824, the Governor of New South Wales, Thomas Brisbane, was instructed by the British government to reoccupy the Norfolk Island as a place to send “the worst description of convicts”, initiating a process of a second penal settlement. A third settlement to the island was followed by the arrival of Pitcairn Islanders, whose migration lasts nowadays. In 1856, the Governor of New South Wales was constituted as the Governor of Norfolk Island, after the separation of the territory from Tasmania. After the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and the adoption of the new federal constitution, the responsibility of the administration of the island was vested in the figure of the Governor of the State of New South Wales. Today, the island is governed by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications alongside the other external territories.
In the 20th century, Norfolk Island became a key airbase and refuelling depot during World War II between Australia and New Zealand. In 1979, the island was finally granted with limited self-government by Australia. From that date on, the Norfolk Islanders could elect a government that would run most of the island’s affairs. However, in the 21th century a turmoil have begun for the islanders and the politics of Norfolk.
In 2006, a revision on the Norfolk Island’s model of self-governance took place by the Australia government, who considered it a dismal failure. With no income tax in the island, the then Legislative Assembly raised money on imports duties. According to BBC, at that time, Canberra viewed the island heading towards bankruptcy. That was the first unsuccessful attempt from Australia of taking full control of Norfolk by transforming the Legislative Assembly in a local council.
The second and successful attempt came in 2015 when the Australian government abolished the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly, with the territory becoming run by an Administrator and a Regional Council, whose first elections were held in 2016. According to the Australia government, it was necessary “to address issues of sustainability” that couldn’t be delivered with the self-governmental model run in the island. Most of Australian laws were passed to Norfolk, and the island lost almost all of its autonomy in practice. Since the 2019 Australia Federal Election, voters from Norfolk Island were covered by the electorate of Bean and would no longer choose the Administrator, who have begun to be appointed by the Governor-General.
The dissatisfaction between the Islanders made they start looking for other options than fight back the arbitrary measures of the Australian government, which would be very difficult to achieve. The inhabitants called the United Nations to include Norfolk on its list of “non-self-governing territories”, that comprises the “people [that] have not yet attained a full measure of self-government”. In 2020, the president of the Council of the Elders, Albert Buffet, said they were appealing to the Human Rights Council in Geneva to include Norfolk Island on Special Committee on Decolonisation, C-24.
But the real turmoil started in October 2021, when the residents formed a new political party to fight for their autonomy or even independence: the Norfolk Island Party. However, the supporters are facing difficulties to register the party at the Australian Electoral Commission, because an electoral legislation amendment act passed by the government in September 2021 set a threshold of at least 1500 party members to complete the registration, increasing the number from 500 members, what would even surpass the island’s voters population.
A survey conducted by the Norfolk Island People For Democracy advocacy group in October 2019 showed that 37% of the islanders were in favour of a free association with New Zealand, while 35% preferred free association with Australia, 25% were in favour of full independence and only 3% preferred the current full association with Australia. And that survey obviously caught the attention of New Zealand media and politicians, since in August 2017 the former chief minister of the extinguished Norfolk government Andre Nobbs said in an interview with The Guardian that a free association with New Zealand would be a better fit to the island’s residents than a full association with Australia, due to cultural heritage and closer distance and ties with the New Zealanders. Nobbs cited also the treatment given to New Zealand associated states like Cook Islands and Niue, which have their own constituencies and laws. But why is there a dispute between Australia, New Zealand and Norfolk Island over its independence status?
Although Norfolk has an area of less than 35 km², in practice, its maritime dependences are much larger than that. Its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), that is, the area of the sea in which a state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, according to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, equates to roughly 428000 km². Although it is yet to be proven, the Norfolk Islanders believe that the maritime soil on its EEZ reserves oil and gas, and that would be one of the main reasons for an independence. An association with New Zealand would be also interesting for Norfolk: the Cook Islands, an association of 17 self-governing islands in free association with New Zealand, have an EEZ of 1960027 km² and free exploration rights over it. Last year, in November 2020, the Cook Islands prime-minister Mark Brown defended taking plunge on deepsea mining on the islands’ EEZ.
The deepsea mining or oil exploration can cause irreversible damage to islands on the Pacific Ocean like Cook Islands or Norfolk Island, due to their small terrestrial size and cover by water sea. But the regain of political autonomy for the Norfolk Islanders should be a matter of no discuss inside Australian parliament. The residents got their rights stripped away in a move of no consideration on their will and self-determination. A full independence could be hard to deal for the islanders, since Norfolk is too small and the population doesn’t reach even 2000 people. The main exports of the country are soybean meal and sowing seeds, what maybe wouldn’t sustain the economy. But a free association with New Zealand sounds interesting for them to recover at least their autonomy. However, if Australia wants to keep Norfolk with dignity alongside its dependences and territories, the government must stop hampering the creation of the Norfolk Island Party and taking their rights off. And this will be not an easy task for the islanders, the tiny David against the huge Goliath.
