Future of Nauru’s Population

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28010, 3 July 1956, Page 12

Future of Nauru’s Population

The future of the people of Nauru is again before the United Nations, which has been informed that after the phosphate deposits are exhausted the islanders may be resettled in Australia. No doubt it will be necessary for the Australian delegation to point out again that resettlement, if, indeed, that becomes necessary, will not be the result of spoiling good land by phosphate mining but the result of ending the islanders’ present source of income and employment. The land from which the phosphate is being taken was barren and uninhabited before the fertiliser industry was established. The small area that has been cultivated round the coast has no phosphate deposits and will therefore remain as it is. It is insufficient to maintain the growing population of Nauru at the living standards the islanders now expect. Without the phosphate industry the island would be too small for its people. What the industry has done is to provide them with work until about the end of the century, and to assure a large capital fund to help them re-establish themselves. Possibly some will wish to remain on, !the island, but many of the young i islanders now being educated in Australia and their descendants will probably seek better opportunities elsewhere. The United Kingdom, Australian, and New Zealand Governments, which are jointly responsible for the well-being of the islanders, will find resettlement, where necessary, a much simpler matter because of the annual allocation of royalties from phosphate towards the financial independence of the people. In addition to lump sum payments to islanders on whose property phosphate is worked, the British i Phosphate Commission pays a j royalty of Is 4d a ton. Of . this • amount, 6d is paid to t|ie landowner I concerned, and another 2d is

invested at compound interest on the landowner’s behalf. After 1970 the landowners will be able to draw the interest on the sums that have accumulated. The remaining 8d of the royalty goes to the islanders generally. The Administrator receives 3d to be used for the benefit of the islanders, and 5d is paid into a trust fund for the community to accumulate until the year 2000, when the deposits will be worked out, or nearly worked out. On present production, 5d a ton amounts to more than £25,000 a year. Even if the present population of 1700 is trebled in that time, the fund will have approximately £ 1000 for every man, woman and child when it is wound up. Nauru will not be a wealthy community; but with private savings, it will be a prosperous one, so that those islanders who do wish to move will find reestablishment elsewhere not too difficult financially. They will undoubtedly feel deeply the closing of the phosphate industry, because it plays so large a part in their life. As they will be a more sophisticated people in another 40 years, this closing of their own particular industry may then seem more serious than the possible need to I find a new home on another, more j fertile, island dr even in Australia.