MUTINY REVISITED

It is happening.
The outside world is starting to take notice.
It is hard to imagine how Australia thought they could get away with it.
Did they really think that in the 21st century, they could just get away with an act of colonial paternalism that most of the world rejected more than 100 years ago?
They did not count on the spirit of the Norfolk Island people. People like Greg Quintal, who featured some years ago in an article in GEO, Australia's Geographical Magazine, Vol2 No2, reprinted in today's Norfolk Islander. The article quoted Greg as saying at the time that "the Australian Government has a long way to go before it really understands the unique needs of Norfolk. If necessary, he will be ready, at the drop of a liberty, to mutiny again." (GEO Vol2 No2)

Today Greg is the nearest thing we have to an elder statesman, and his love and passion for this island, its rights and its freedom is undiminished.
Many of us, like Greg, cannot help wondering:
How can Australia continue to do the following, and not risk being shamed in the eyes of the world?
*do things that affect us without our knowledge
*do things that affect us without consulting us
*do things that affect us without our consent
*do things that affect us when it is clearly against the wishes of our people
*do things that affect us against the wishes of our democratically elected government
*do things that affect us that are contrary to previous promises and commitments
*do things that affect us when it is clearly more in Australia's interests than ours

Australia has committed its troops to Iraq supposedly for the rights and freedoms of the Iraqui people, and yet it is prepared to trample on the very basic rights of the people in one of its own island territories.
How can Australia give self-government, and then take it away...just like that!! I cannot get my head around that one.
I mean, as my children got older, I gave them more and more freedom and responsibility. There were periods of time....and there still are....when they came to me for advice or a bit of help. But I respected their right to make their own decisions and to do things their way, and I respected their dignity and self-esteem, and I treated them as equals.
The silly thing is that this Norfolk community is not even like a child that broke away from "Mother Australia."
This is a people who were managing their own affairs when Australia was still well and truly attached to Mother England.

WHO SAID THIS?
"They [the Cabinet] are asking us to assent to this proposition while no member of this House, on the one hand, would stand on the hustings and advocate that there should be a certain form of government here which would not give every man a voice in making the laws. On the other hand, the Government wish to deny to this handful of people those rights which they would not dare to deny in this colony."
(William Crick, member for West Macquarie in the N.S.W. Parliament 1896, referring to the proposal to bring Norfolk Island under the NSW government, to replace the island's locally elected magistrate and to abolish all existing Norfolk Island laws.)