A remote Pacific island whose residents are descendants of the swashbuckling British sailors and Tahitian women immortalized in the Mutiny on the Bounty movies is set to lose its right to self-rule.
Norfolk Island, 1,500km east of the Australian coast and settled by the ancestors of Fletcher Christian and the other Bounty mutineers in 1856, has governed itself since 1979, but it is effectively bankrupt and Canberra yesterday said it would introduce legislation next week to scrap the Australian territory’s parliament.
If it passes, the island’s legislative assembly would be temporarily replaced by an advisory council, before local government elections next year.
Personal and business tax would be introduced from July next year and residents would in return be able to access social security, healthcare benefits and other services enjoyed by Australians.
Assistant Australian Regional Development Minister Jamie Briggs said the changes were long overdue and it was not sustainable to ask a community of just 1,800 to deliver local, state and federal services.
REFORM
He said the infrastructure on Norfolk Island was run down, the health system not up to standard and laws out of date.
“The community overwhelmingly supports reform and is of the view that the current governance arrangements are not suitable,” Briggs said, adding that Norfolk Island was effectively in administration and reliant on Australian bailouts. “It is diabolical — it is quite concerning that it’s been left for so long.”
Norfolk Island Chief Minister Lisle Snell said it was unfair to impose such a decision on the tiny outcrop, just 8km by 5km and perched on steep cliffs above crashing surf.
“Norfolk Islanders will lose their identity, they will lose their way of life,” Snell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Most of the core population are descendants of the mutineers who set Captain William Bligh adrift from British warship the Bounty when they famously fell in love with the South Seas and its women in 1789.
HEARTTHROBS
The mutiny gained such a romantic gloss that chief mutineer Christian has been portrayed by a series of Hollywood heartthrobs over the years, including Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.
Christian and eight other mutineers first made their home on Pitcairn Island with a group of Tahitian women, but their descendants moved nearly 6,000km to Norfolk Island in 1856 when Pitcairn became to small for them.
Queen Victoria granted them the right to settle on the abandoned former penal colony.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS