FROM FORMER ADMINISTRATOR OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND

Some years ago, a Senate Standing Committee, in a report on Norfolk Island Affairs, pressed the usual line about Norfolk Island needing to be brought more firmly under Australia's umbrella, because we were like naughty children who were denying ourselves all the so called wonderful benefits of being like  other Australians! One of theSenate committee members, Sophie Mirabella (or Panopoulos as she was then) provided a dissenting report, saying that they did not want to create another basket case like Christmas island.
Here Jon Stanhope, who has recently finished his tenure as Administrator of Christmas Island, reinforces that view. He bemoans the lack of democracy there, as well as the provision of very basic human services.

"There are aspects of Noel Towell's report on planned changes to the constitutional status of Norfolk Island (''Norfolk Island ministers fear return to colonial-style rule'', October 10, p4) that do not ring true. It is simply not conceivable that the Commonwealth would be proposing, in the 21st century, to unilaterally remove the democratic rights of an entire Australian community, namely that of Norfolk Island, and impose in their stead the non-democratic and paternalistic 19th-century British colonial regime that applies in Christmas and Cocos islands.

If there was a skerrick of truth to this, surely the three mainland federal representatives of the people of Norfolk Island, namely Gai Brodtmann MP and Senators Seselja and Lundy, would be out manning the barricades in support of their constituents' basic democratic and human rights. Their silence suggests the residents of Norfolk Island have nothing to worry about.

While I have no reason to doubt Senator Seselja's commitment to basic democratic rights, I would not presume to speak for him, but I cannot imagine any situation in which either Ms Brodtmann or Senator Lundy, or, indeed, any of my federal Labor Party colleagues, would even give a passing thought to a proposal to annul self-government on Norfolk Island.

Such a possibility, as reported by Noel Towell, that Norfolk Island may be facing the prospect of having imposed on it, by the Commonwealth, the electoral system enjoyed by the people of North Korea has to be a desperate beat-up. Surely it can't be true. Can it?

Jon Stanhope"