A blistering recent poll shows Norfolk Islanders want to renounce Australia and join New Zealand.
The rebels outnumber those who want free association with Australia, with 37% of the vote compared to 35%.
Most Norfolk Islanders want to cut ties with Australia and join New Zealand - survey
Norfolk Island. Photo / Pixabay
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Norfolk Island is technically part of New South Wales, but it's much closer to New Zealand, and part of the submarine ridge that joins Aotearoa with New Caledonia.
This week, a survey of more than 450 of its 1800 residents by local group Norfolk Island People for Democracy found 25 per cent wanted full independence from any country, and 3 per cent wanted to fully integrate with Australia.
Norfolk Island is half the size of Auckland's Waiheke Island, covered in endemic pine trees and surrounded by churning waves.
Norfolk Island was settled by East Polynesian seafarers either from the Kermadec Islands north of New Zealand or from the North Island of New Zealand. They arrived in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and survived for several generations before disappearing. They must have disappeared at least a few hundred years before Europeans arrived as the island was covered with forest by then.
It also served as a British penal colony before it was settled by 200 descendents of the mutineers from Captain Bligh's ship, The Bounty.
Since 1914, it has been an external territory of Australia. It was self-governing for 40 years until Canberra dissolved its parliament and set up a new regional council to run it, subject to New South Wales law, in 1015.
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There is opposition to the reforms, led by Norfolk Island People for Democracy Inc., an association appealing to the United Nations to include the island on its list of "non-self-governing territories". There has been movement to join New Zealand since the autonomy reforms.
