Norfolk Island

This review covers the two-year period from July 2018 to June 2020. For the people of Norfolk Island, the past two years have been a continuation of the difficulties associated with the Australian government eliminating the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly and effectively ending the island’s representation and denying its right to self-determination in 2015—against the overwhelming majority expressed in a referendum at the time! Following the passage of the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Act 2015 in the Australian Parliament (Government of Australia 2015), Islanders have continued to experience challenges in terms of representation and ensuring equitable, democratic, and accountable governance. At the same time, the past twenty-four months have seen a continuous commitment from the people of Norfolk Island to work toward a system of governance and accountability that aligns with international standards of the twenty-first century, as upheld by the United Nations (UN). The tent embassy protest domiciled within the island’s former parliamentary compound has entered its fifth year, and numerous protests, public meetings, and reports and other documentation formed the landscape of the period under review.

Events of particular note over the last twenty-four months include the registration and progression of the Norfolk Island complaint, championed by Geoffrey Robertson, through the UN Human Rights Committee, which was met with a belated and evasive response by the Australian government. Also notable were a comprehensive self-governance assessment carried out by Dr Carlyle Corbin, an Australian National Audit Office review of the expenditures and processes used by the regional department in its external management of Norfolk Island, and the release of a memorandum shedding light on Canberra’s true motivation to shut down democracy on the island, as well as ongoing economic downturn and comprehensive concern for the environment and biosecurity of Norfolk Island. Most recently, ramifications of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic have dramatically increased the Islanders’ hardships.

In March 2018, high profile Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, qc, on behalf of the president of the Norfolk Island Council of Elders, Albert Buffett, submitted a detailed complaint against Australia to the UN Human Rights Committee. Robertson has a long history of support for the island community, and he also helped raise awareness of the issue by mentioning his outrage at the 2015 removal of Norfolk Island’s self-government in his recently published memoirs (Robertson 2019, 395–396).

Supported by expert opinions by various scholars, the submission argued that as an Indigenous people, Norfolk Islanders of Pitcairn origin, who are descendants of the mutinous crew members of the late-eighteenth-century British ship hmav Bounty and women from Tahiti and other Eastern Polynesian islands, are entitled to protection of their identity and cultural practices. The submission further argued that Australia was violating these rights, in addition to denying the Islanders basic tenets of democracy, such as not being subject to legislation passed by a body in which they are not represented (in Norfolk’s case, the Parliament of the state of New South Wales, whose laws have replaced those passed by the Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly before its abolition in 2015 [see Government of New South Wales 2016]). (The Guardian, 13 March 2020). According to UN Human Rights Committee rules, Australia had six months to reply to the submission.

Meanwhile, the social and economic impacts of the new system of government became increasingly visible. While the island’s economy has been in a significant downturn since 2016, the imposition of land rates without the normal associated provision of utilities and services to land parcels has further challenged members of the Norfolk Island community. It is important to note that there is no transparent formula utilized in the Norfolk Island rate calculations. There is a lack of regard for, or genuine evaluation of, the community’s capacity to pay and of the equity of applied or enforced rates that constitute the mandatory considerations by councils and taxation entities outside of NorfolkIsland.

For the people of Norfolk Island, the downgrading of essential services like hospitals and the inadequate capacity of satellite communications (versus the previously...