Documents on Australian Foreign Policy

The 432 documents in this volume—many of them not previously publicly available—have been selected to illuminate Australian policies towards Nauru in the first half of the 1960s. The previous volume, Australia and Nauru: Phosphate, Trusteeship and the Resettlement Issue, covered the period from 1945 to 1962, while a third volume will take the story from mid-1965 through to Nauru's attainment of independence in January 1968.

Since 1947, Australia had governed Nauru in its capacity as the leading partner, with New Zealand and the United Kingdom, in a joint United Nations trusteeship over the island. Australia's core interest in Nauru comprised the extraction of Nauru's high-quality phosphate for the production of superphosphate for the rural industries in Australia, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, on extremely favourable terms.

As these documents demonstrate, during the first half of the 1960s the context within which Australia developed its policies on Nauru became more difficult. Reflecting the expansion of UN membership following the emergence of newly independent countries in Africa and Asia, the United Nations General Assembly and its committees took a more concentrated interest in decolonisation and the exploitation of developing world resources. New Zealand and the United Kingdom began to seek to influence Australian policies on Nauru more than before. Last but certainly not least, the Nauruans began to campaign more effectively in pursuit of political and phosphate industry reforms.

For several years, there was a general consensus among Australian, New Zealand and United Kingdom policymakers, the United Nations Trusteeship Council and the Nauruans themselves that the best way to secure the future of the Nauruans was to arrange for their resettlement elsewhere. Doing this would also facilitate continued access to Nauruan phosphate. In the late 1950s, after efforts to find a suitable location in the Pacific Islands region had come to nothing, Australia proposed that the Nauruans migrate to Australia and become assimilated within the wider community. The Nauruans declined this proposal because of their wish to maintain their distinctive identity.

At the request of Nauruan leaders, Australia next turned its attention to identifying an island off the Australian coast as a suitable site for resettlement and eventually decided on Curtis Island, near Gladstone in Queensland. But agreement was not achieved, mainly because the Nauruans, while making important concessions, wanted 'sovereign independence' in order to preserve their national identity. Although understanding this aspiration, Australian policymakers were unwilling to surrender sovereignty over an Australian territory and instead offered local self-government powers on Curtis Island. Negotiations finally broke down in August 1964, with the Nauruans deciding to remain on their own island and seek independence, along with control over the phosphate industry and a larger share of the returns from phosphate extraction.