CANBERRA — The Albanese government has worked for years to bring Pacific island nations closer into Australia’s orbit and sees itself in a permanent contest with China for influence in the region.
But on Australia’s own Pacific island, the federal government’s legitimacy is in question as a movement to leave the country gains prominence.
On Norfolk Island, population 2,188, hundreds of Australians lined up at polling booths on New Year’s Day and voted to secede in an election that is still being dismissed by officials in Canberra eight months later — and often, it seems, barely noticed at all.
Two groups that worked to organize the vote, the Norfolk Island Council of Elders and For The People Norfolk Island, insist their “people’s claim” to the island predates the creation of Australia itself.
Some members proudly fly Union Jacks, and for the unauthorized election handed out leaflets referring to the bullying “foreign ports of Brisbane and Sydney.”
In an interview with POLITICO, the self-declared government’s leader, chief magistrate Peter Christian-Bailey, said the election came after Norfolk Islanders had “exhausted every other avenue” for self-determination.
In the same interview, self-described councilor Rebecca Hayes said all laws on Norfolk Island should “revert back” to the 1850s — when many Norfolk Islanders argue Queen Victoria granted them self-determination — and described Canberra’s 112-year-old claim to the island as an “overreach.”
“We never stop fighting,” Hayes said. “For 200 years, at significant moments of our political history, we have laid down unequivocal points from our community, saying: ‘No, we are not a part of Australia. We are distinct and separate’.”
Canberra’s pushback
Australia has formally ruled Norfolk Island since 1914, and from 1979 to 2015 it granted islanders a self-government system that included a limited Legislative Assembly. After the island ran out of money to fund infrastructure, local officials traded their autonomy for a bailout from Canberra, nearly 2,000 kilometers away.
“Local community groups claiming to be independent governing bodies for Norfolk Island have no basis in law,” an Infrastructure department spokesperson said.
That’s a legal argument frequently mounted by governments fighting off secessionists, including Madrid’s longtime approach to the Catalan independence movement.
Hayes argued it was possible for Norfolk Island and Canberra to “meet in the middle”. But emphasizing the core — perhaps intractable — tension at the center of the dispute, she said “we have to be equal players” to do that.
Not even the member of Parliament representing Norfolk Island is getting involved.
That could become a political problem for David Smith, the Labor member for Bean, an unusual district that comprises the southern end of Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory and the 7-kilometer-by-5-kilometer Norfolk Island.
Smith holds the ruling Labor Party’s most marginal seat — winning by just 700 votes in 2025. Norfolk Island has double that number of voters.
Smith did not respond immediately to further questions about his engagement with Norfolk Islanders.
An Aug.15 Instagram post shows he visited the island with Environment Minister Murray Watt in August earlier in the month.
“The creeping annexation is never one party or the other — they’re both at it,” Hayes said, referring to Australia’s Labor and Liberal parties.
“But [on] David Smith, I would say that the general consensus of his representation of Norfolk Islanders is dismal.”
Australia’s appointee to run the island, Fiona McKergow, a former amb***ador to the divided island of Cyprus, declined POLITICO’s request for an interview.
A departmental representative declined to say whether McKergow, appointed in May, has met with the self-declared government, saying only she had “engaged with diverse groups, organizations and individuals.”
But Christian-Bailey said McKergow had attended at least one of his self-declared government’s general ***embly meetings and he hoped the pair would develop a “good, constructive relationship”.
Earlier this month, Regional Development, Territories and Local Government Minister Kristy McBain announced she hoped to “restore local democracy” through the imminent creation of the Norfolk Island Transition Assembly.
Grievances on Norfolk Island, including Canberra applying higher mainland income tax rates to islanders, have simmered since the cash-strapped island was integrated into Australia’s government systems in 2015.
“Many islanders continue to feel that decisions affecting our daily lives are made by remote control,” Christian-Bailey said.
Norfolk Island’s breakaway movement is not Australia’s first — Western Australia voted to leave in 1933 — but because the secession path is not clear, past movements have been stymied.
University of New South Wales constitutional law professor Harry Hobbs, who has discussed his research with Norfolk Islanders seeking independence, said the Australian Constitution provides no pathway to secede.
Norfolk Islanders now face a choice between bargaining for a better deal within Australia or ratcheting up their independence claims.
France, which administers neighboring New Caledonia, offers a case study in how quickly independence movements in the region can shift from peaceful agitation to deadly violence.
After three referendums and decades of peaceful efforts by locals to gain independence, New Caledonians remained deadlocked. In 2024, midway through a Paris-led electoral reform process, violence erupted. The French government declared an emergency and deployed armed forces, but 13 people died before order was restored.
Deep independent streak
Norfolk Island’s self-declared government has quickly set about formalizing a general ***embly, holding meetings in May and July.
The body announced that only those born on Norfolk Island are eligible to be members of the body, and only those who have lived on Norfolk Island for five years are eligible to vote for their election.
Norfolk Island’s independent streak runs deep. Roughly a third of Norfolk Islanders are descendants from mutineers on the HMS Bounty and Tahitian women, who developed a English-Tahitian creole still spoken on the island today.
Their story of breaking free from the tyrannical captain William Bligh to establish a free life became a global legend, spawning four Hollywood films starring some of the biggest names of their eras: Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson.
The mutineers were eventually allowed to resettle on Norfolk Island by the British Crown in 1856, and descendants argue that Queen Victoria handed Norfolk Island territory to their ancestors that year.
Australia’s courts reject that interpretation, but what’s indisputable is the island’s tortured modern history. It was first settled in 1788 — just six weeks after the first British colony in Australia — and quickly became a brutal prison.
Administered at different times by Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and New South Wales, the island was incorporated into Australia in 1914, as Canberra was tasked with shutting down German colonial ambitions in the Pacific at the outbreak of World War I.
Among the many tussles with colonial and Australian administrators, Norfolk Islanders have at various times faced evictions from their homes and were banned for 29 years by the Australian government from printing newspapers, between 1935 and 1964.
After three decades of substantial autonomy the island’s chief minister concluded in 2010 that the island could no longer fund repairs to infrastructure and began negotiations to surrender self-government in return for a bailout of its debts.
A second mutiny
In a striking turn of events, it was the government of Malcolm Bligh Turnbull — named after William Bligh, the captain of the Bounty to whom his ancestors were politically loyal — which completed the transfer to power back to Australia in 2015.
A month before the Turnbull government formally replaced Norfolk Island’s self-governance, a nonbinding referendum saw 68 percent of residents vote for the right to “freely determine their political status, economic, social and cultural development.”
A group of Norfolk Islanders used the result to petition the U.N. Special Committee on Decolonisation, arguing Australia had violated international principles of self-determination.
That remains a common thread; in the lead-up to Jan. 1, polling booths were plastered with claims that used international law to legitimize the vote.
David Poblock, who represents Norfolk Island as an independent senator for the Australian Capital Territory, has visited annually since entering parliament in 2022. His most recent was at the invitation of the Council of Elders, a key organizer of the Jan. 1 vote.
Hayes described Poblock as a “bit of a champion for Norfolk Island” who “has put his money where his mouth is”.
Poblock said the Australian government must “respect the right of Norfolk Islanders to shape the future of the Island.”
“Norfolk Islanders are a distinct people with their own language, traditions and deep love for their Island,” Poblock told POLITICO. “For a decade, Norfolk Islanders have been denied meaningful self-determination and local representation, so it is little wonder why the community is now looking for ways to restore democracy on their home, on their own terms.”
Canberra concessions
McBain, the local government and territories minister, said that would include revisions to the Norfolk Island Act, including reinserting a preamble acknowledging the island’s distinct history.
The five-member council would be democratically elected before making recommendations to Canberra over the island’s democratic future over two years.
The government insisted McBain’s work had been ongoing for 18 months, and the announcement had “no connection” to the Jan. 1 vote.
“[I] would encourage Islanders to engage with [the government’s] governance process,” said Smith, the Labor member for Bean.
If islanders choose not to take up that offer, they’ll have diplomatic reinforcement from British MP Andrew Rosindell, longtime member of the U.K. Parliament’s Norfolk Island friendship group and an enthusiastic supporter of the Jan. 1 vote.
“I have not made any formal representations to the Australian Government regarding the vote on Norfolk Island, but would be willing to do so if the people of Norfolk Island asked me,” he told POLITICO.
“Norfolk Island belongs to the Norfolk Islanders, not Canberra or London.”
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