A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Why should they just sit in the sun?,” The Australian Financial Review, September 26, 1975, p. 3.

One thing is very important in politics, and that is to make certain that everyone has equal opportunities.

So when I heard that the Government was determined that the Cocos Islands were going to be brought directly under the control of the Australian Government, so that the simple people who live there could not escape having equal shares of misery with us, I became quite enthusiastic in support of the Government.

“What right have the Cocos Islanders to be left alone in their island paradise while we suffer under socialism?” I asked Mavis petulantly. “If we are miserable in Australia why should they also be as miserable?”

My determination to drag the Cocos Islands reluctantly into equal partnership with us was strengthened when I heard that they were using plastic currency.

“Why should they have this unfair advantage?” I snarled. “Paper money is good enough for us. Why should they have the advantage of a more durable plastic currency? Our paper money loses its value with frightening speed. Why should these simple people have plastic currency that seems to hold its value quite unfairly? We must put a stop to this.”

And then I heard that each Cocos Islander was regarded as a personal responsibility of the owner of the island, Mr Clunies-Ross.

“This is awful,” I said to Mavis. “There ought to be a Welfare State machine with a great bureaucracy spending its resources sustaining itself. Surely there ought to be a department in control of welfare with proper channels through which the red tape could run. How dare they help people in this cheap and simple way!”

And then I heard that the all wise Australian Government was going to see that unemployment payments were to be made on the Australian model.

“That’s very proper,” I said to myself. “We will be able to pay people to sit in the sun and be happy. How thankful they will be. They may have been doing it for centuries, but why should they do it without the skill and the experience of the Australian Government who are, after all, experts at sustaining people in indolence?”

But what really decided me to fight to impose civilisation on the Cocos Islands was the knowledge that these poor people didn’t have the advantages of democracy.

“It’s absolutely unfair,” I said to Mavis. “Here we are in Australia with democracy running out of our ears, with committees of inquiry, with parliamentary debates broadcast and with members of Parliament fighting each other with eloquence and ferocity. Why should not these happy people be as we are?

“We’ve got Whitlam and Cairns and Connor. Why should the Cocos Islanders not be afflicted also? Why shouldn’t they have elections and parliamentary broadcasts and constitutional crises? What right have they to just sin in the sun and smile? After all they cannot really expect to enjoy themselves forever.”

And there are other reasons for being angry with the islanders. We have just been afflicted with a great expensive women’s conference in Canberra where everyone let their hair down and their inhibitions loose and hated everyone else. It was degrading to listen to and made even Mavis ashamed of her own sex. Yet the Cocos Islands, not being yet liberated, seem to be as happy as larks.

Mavis certainly agrees that we must put a stop to this, so that they, too, can have their hates and fears, can hit one another with their haloes and their handbags, can have time to be miserable, the same as our ladies.

Unfortunately Fred got to hear of my enthusiastic support for the Government’s plan. Fred knows a chap who has recently returned from the Cocos Islands and who was most impressed by the obvious happiness of the islanders and he thinks that making them like us would be a rotten thing to do.

So I had to point out to Fred that evidently the United Nations wanted the islanders to have freedom as they have in Portugal, Timor, Uganda, India, Bangladesh and so on.

“They are jolly well going to be force fed with freedom if they don’t like it,” I explained to Fred. “Whatever happens, we must do what the United Nations people want. It doesn’t really matter if the people don’t want to be free like us. We must be prepared to sacrifice them on the United Nations altar.”

But I am afraid that Fred was unconvinced. He is a simple soul, and has queer old fashioned ideas about happiness and things like that. He even put forward the theory that the best thing we could do for Australia would be to ask Mr Clunies-Ross to come over and manage the country instead of Mr Whitlam.