N.I. Affairs

Federal Aid to End?

Some Islanders Favour

Independence

From Our Own Correspondent.

Norfolk Is., July 10.

ON July 2 the Administrator — Colonel Bennett —called a mass meeting of all residents interested in the welfare and progress of the island to consider what measures we might and should take to improve liv ing and business conditions and to attract and hold visitors.

He made a very fair and reasonable speech, urging us to merge our indivi dual interests into one common aim, and prefaced his remarks by the very serious information that it was doubt ful how much longer the Common wealth Government might be expected to support us in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

It appears that while we have been receiving something over £4,000 per an num and spending it so vaguely that —apart from official salaries, the sum total of which the veriest arithmetical babe can glumly quote no concrete benefit can be discerned, we have really no claim at all upon the Commonwealth finances and may find the Treasury doors closed and locked against us any minute.

This situation we are advised to pre pare to meet. Some of us say it would not be an unmixed evil to be cast upon our own resources, for a whole, at any rate.