Talk of independence on tiny Queensland island

Press, 17 April 1979, Page 16

Talk of independence on tiny Queensland island

By

GRAHAM LEES

in Sydney

Inhabitants of a tiny, sleepy island a few miles off Australia’s tropical northeast coast might one day become citizens of the world’s newest country.

A group of moderate, but determined residents of Magnetic Island, a 30-mile square rocky pimple nestling between Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef, want to quit the 78-year-old Australian Federation and establish a tax-free, profit-making republic.

In legal terms they want to secede and, according to Australian constitutional lawyers, they are within their rights.

Secession has been an ugly word in the Australian vocabulary ever since federation of the country’s six states in 1901, but it has remained nonetheless popular with independent-minded Australians whenever they have felt cheated or disillusioned by central government.

The present rebels are disgruntled by both central and local government reluctance to provide financial help for the island’s flagging tourist industry, under threat because of new, cheap international air fares luring Australians to holiday abroad. The secessionists say the island would pay better dividends if it was a tax-free haven catering for “foreigners” from the mainland.

Talk of secession began as a joke anaons depairing businessmen, but quickb acquired credibility when 300 of the island’s 1800 population turned up at a meeting on the issue and most «

voted enthusiastically for separation. A leadership group calling itself the Magnetic Island Secession Steering Committee is now seeking constitutional advice and preparing for an island referendum.

Constitutional experts have told the secessionists they are within their rights to leave the federation, providing a majority of the islanders are in favour, and if both the Federal and State Governments do not object.

Federal Ministers have so far chosen to ignore the issue, presumably in the hope it will fade away without much further ado. However, Queensland’s Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen has said his Government w’ould not oppose the plan.

Secession has been threatened bv political leaders in Queensland and Western Australia down the decades since 1901, and even today the two mineral-rich state’s complain bitterly that they are unfairly supporting the poorer and heavily-populated southern states. The Premier of Western Australia, Sir Charles Court, was a staunch secessionist in his earlier political days. He now advocates remaining in the union, but his state still has an active secessionist movement. Meanwhile, Premier Bjelke-Petersen is on record as saying that separatism will probably be the biggest issue facing his state in the next 20 years.

Magnetic Island’s breakaway bid is heartened by the biireaucracv-bashing antics of two independent-minded landowners tired of taxes and Australian citizenship.

One of these, self-ap-pointed “Prince” Leonard Casley, a genial wheat farmer who claims to have taken his 18,500-acre West Australian property out of the federation, has already sent a message of encouragement to the islanders. Casley made his unilateral declaration of independence eight years ago after a squabble with the agricultural authorities about the amount of grain he was permitted to grow. Since then he has paid no taxes and has turned his “Hutt River Province” into a national tourist attraction with a $1 million annual turn-over.

“Prince” Casley’s province has a population of 30 whose main concern today is not how much wheat they can produce, but how to keep coachloads of curious visitors happy. He has grandiose ideas for casinos, hotels and an international airport within his province. So far the authorities have left him alone, apart from engaging him in a few courtroom skirmishes over tax.

Another farmer, “King” Ron Sarina, has set up the “Independent Religious State of Freedom” on his property in New South Wales. But local councils are currently pursuing him for unpaid tax bills after a High Court ruling that his secession was invalid.

Not all Magnetic Islanders are enthusiastic about seceding from Australia. The island’s normal police force of one has been reinforced following anonymous death threats telephoned to some of the secessionist leaders. O.F.N.S. Copyright ,