bounty

Norfolk seeks the Queen's bounty

Alleging unjust, and even illegal interference in their affairs by the Australian Government, the Norfolk Islanders are drafting a petition to Queen Elizabeth which will suggest that, if the Australian Government doesn’t draw in its horns, they will ask to become a separate Crown colony.

A Citizens’ Committee, which claims it has the overwhelming sup port of the islanders, decided on August 23 to make the petition.

Two measures proposed by the Australian Government have created the crisis—legislation to close down the island as a “tax haven”, and the planned establishment of an animal quarantine station. The former, the islanders complain, will rob them of much-needed revenue—they reckon at least 5250 a head, plus hotel and store trade generated by a tax haven.

The latter could bring all sorts of evils. An outbreak of disease among quarantined stock is one bogey, but the biggest fear is that the tourist industry would suffer.

Norfolk Island, they argue, would lose its image and its tourists. Who fancies an island paradise with a quarantine station?

When the business of the abolition of the tax haven blew up many months ago, Norfolk was split in two.

On one side were those who pocketed fees as resident “directors” of the carpet-bagging companies. On the other, those who didn’t. It even caused an election, a new island council. Most of the “Bounty” strain were among those who didn’t.

Then came the quarantine station proposal and an uneasy feeling that, although they’d been told they were being consulted over the station, the government would please itself in the end and the islanders would be landed with it. There was no doubt the majority were “agin” it; letters in the island’s newspaper proved that. The letters also indicated that bad feeling, neighbour against neigh bour, was creeping in: something the island had never had to any great extent.

But the realisation that the govern ment was acting without really con sulting the people and would ignore their wishes and their welfare was the real spark which is being fanned into the flame of polite revolt, but revolt

all the same. Once again the idea of secession, nothing new in Nor folk’s history, is abroad. Many want Britain to take over the island as a Crown colony, arguing that Australia has no legal right to claim its 8,528 acres as part of the mainland; that all Australia had been given was the job of looking after it for the good of the islanders. Even that right, contained in an Order in Council made by George V in 1914, is “meaningless” says Mr Tom Jackson, Norfolk’s just-retired chief magistrate.

Many people are angry. They say the island council has sold the pass after being elected on a promise to protect their rights. At a recent meet ing the councillors accepted the idea of a quarantine station “in principle”.

So a Citizens’ Committee has come into being, and it’s talking about secession.

The companies registration fee was originally $l3 a year. The Federal Government, by ordinance, raised this last year to $250 and away went 60 companies through deregistration, with another 30 going into liquida tion. But there were still 1,550 left at June’s end this year which, the local newspaper, “Norfolk Islander”, estimated, would bring in revenue of $400,000 a year—a nice nest egg in another basket to that of tourism.

This is what Norfolk Island will lose along with its tourists, the islanders fear, if the two measures come into operation.

And one is in operation already, the ordinance closing the tax haven through a ruse which the juris prudence practitioners think is one of the nastiest, most underhand bits of work ever perpetrated by a poli tician, which is saying something.

When Federal Treasurer Mr Snedden announced in July that the island’s tax haven days were over and that the Federal Government would table a bill introducing the requisite ordinance, he put a stopper on the activities of all the companies.

He said the effects of the measure would be retrospective to July 19 this year. What’s the effect of that?

For one thing, the government’s right to make the law will be chal lenged. The legal draftsmen have to draft a measure which will be an extremely complicated piece of work.

All this will take time, at least 12 months, say the legal experts.

Meantime, as the effect of any law which emerges has been made retro spective, that law is already working as a de facto law if not de jure.

What company is going to go on operating with the risk of losing any thing it has gained from July 19?

Continued on p. 127