The Hutt River Province Principality

[Túrin Turambar]

A more lighthearted topic for a change -

In 1970, a wheat farmer in Western Australia, Leonard Casley, got into a dispute with the State Government over draconian regulation. As a result, he declared that he had seceded from Australia and formed his own independent country, the Hutt River Principality. He now styles himself ‘His Royal Highness Prince Leonard of Hutt’. He delivered letters to Perth, Canberra and the Queen announcing his secession, and proceeded to mint his own money, distribute passports and grant knighthoods to his loyal followers. HRH Prince Leonard has claimed that he is still loyal to Queen Elizabeth II.

The province is some 75 square kilometers in size and has a population of about 30. However, it recognizes a total of 13,000 citizens. Chief exports include wildflowers, agricultural produce, and stamps and coins. Tourism is also important. The principality has no standing army, although a number of citizens have been awarded military commissions. Royal Guardsmen attend the Prince at formal occasions. It is, in effect, an absolute Monarchy, although the powers of the Prince are bound in part by the 1970 Bill of Rights and the actions of the Legislative Council. At various times, Constitutions have been considered, although none has yet been adopted. The royal family consists of Prince Leonard, his wife, Princess Shirley, and their adult children, including Crown Prince Ian.

Hutt River is the oldest and most successful mico-state in Australia. Other mico-states, including Province of Bumbunga, Sovereign State of Aeterna Lucina, the Duchy of Avram, the Independent State of Rainbow Creek and the Principality of Marlborough have generally petered out. It remains to be seen what will become of the more recent Principality of United Oceania and the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands.

The Australian Government does not reconise the Hutt River Province (nor do any other Governments), but in general Prince Leonard is considered a harmless eccentric and is something of a celebrity, with his own display in the National Museum in Canberra.

I think the whole thing raises some funny issues of soveriegnity though. Apparently, some countries have accepted Hutt River passports for border crossings. Also, letters from the Government have referred to the Prince as ‘the Administrator’, which he claims is a de facto recognition of his independance. In the end, we ask ourselves – what makes a country?

website

Wikipedia article

[vison]

Evidently what makes a country is a loony guy.

Most countries, as I recall, were made by loony guyz with guns.

What's new under the sun?

[Lidless]

What's new under the sun?

June 4th, 2006 AD

[vison]

Lidless, stop being profound.

Jeez.

[Túrin Turambar]

Some more info -

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Website also available in French, and including the Constitution and a confirmation of the Principality’s commitment to pursuing causes of justice and independence worldwide.

Official website of the Royal Hutt River Navy. No ships yet, but they’re working on it…

Coins of the Hutt River Province.

HRH Prince Leonard is a scholar and philosopher of some note, holding a number of honorary degrees. He presides over the Royal Hutt River Academy, which studies various branches of knowledge, including mathematics and metaphysics. Heraldry is issued to knights and peers of Hutt River by the Royal College of Heraldry.

[Jnyusa]

Does he pay taxes to the Australian government? That's where claims of sovereignty usually go awry.

Jn

[Túrin Turambar]

As far as I know, he doesn't. I think the insistence of the Government was one of the major reasons why he declared war on Australia in 1977 (the war was brief, no-one was hurt and there has been peace ever since, thankfully).

Nor does he abide by local regulations. The council threatened to tear down his royal palace at the Hutt River Capital of Nain when he didn't ask permission or anything to build it. They didn't enforce it, though.

[TheWagner]

Casley should declare victory and get out.

[Túrin Turambar]

Why get out? He's been living quite happily in Nain for 36 years. He argues that the fact that his little principaility came out from a war with the Federal Government still independant is another reason why it has sucessfully seceeded.

[samaranth]

Casley should declare victory and get out.

Besides which he owns the land he's living on.

[Jnyusa]

I think Wagner was making a joke.

"Declare Victory and get out," is an expression meaning something like, "Quit while you're ahead."

Jn

[samaranth]

What TheWagner said= "Quit while you're ahead"?

I'll take your word for it.

[Jnyusa]

Yeah ... when you're in a situation where you're not likely to come out on top, or a mess you can't possibly untangle, you pretend that you've won (declare victory) and try to back away from it.

I've no idea where it originated but it's a fairly common expression in the US. It's not exactly 'quit while you're ahead' but very much like that.

Jn

[Túrin Turambar]

I'd say that Prince Leonard is fairly safe for the time being at least - the Government that ordered the annexation of the Hutt River Province would not be popular.

[Holbytla]

What if Princess Shirley decides to divorce Prince Leonard?
Does she get half of the principality?
Does he have to sleep on the couch in his own kingdom?
Will there be civil war?
Or uncivil more likely.

[Whistler]

After Hurricane Katrina, a New Orleans man who had refused to evacuate declared his yard an independent country of which he was ruler. He even had his own flag.

He threatened to shoot any guardsmen who attempted to move him. I'm not sure how that story played out.

[Túrin Turambar]

These things often don’t succeed. Either there are too few people and resources and not enough space to make it sustainable (this is the usual ‘run up a flag in the backyard’ sort of microstate), or the membership breaks down. For example, the United Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands has since deteriorated into warring factions. In other cases, the founder decides that there are better ways of achieving their objective. This happened when his Grace the Duke of Avram, an anti-tax campaigner who had been holding out in the wilds of Tasmania, decided to end his secession and run for State Parliament. In other cases, the law steps in and ends the claim by force, as with the arrest of His Royal Highness the Prince of Marlborough, who mistakenly thought that he would escape persecution for certain minor offences by seceding.

The Hutt River is different, though – it has managed to hold out. I think that there must have been a high degree of loyalty towards Prince Leonard, and a general agreement of purpose.

You can see how I think this applies to website experiments.

[Jnyusa]

You can see how I think this applies to website experiments.

Oh, now I'm really interested. Internet governance interests me very much. But I don't see how the Hutt River experiment specifically applies to website experiments, beyond perhaps the importance of having a general agreement of purpose.

I suppose the ease with which groups seem able to secede from Austalia is somewhat analogous to internet fluidity.

It is much, much harder to secede from the United States. No one so far has actually managed to secede from the U.S., though Texas and Puerto Rico talk about it a lot. We have a lot of territories that hardly anyone knows about and they've also been unable to make headway on independence. But then, it's very difficult to run while carrying an island. (Or an oil well.)

Do you think it significant that Hutt River is a principality and not a democracy?

I am still amazed that they get away with tax refusal.

It is the trend internationally these days to grant the status of 'autonomy' to regions that want independence but have no prayer of getting it. Usually there is some historical basis brought into play, e.g. colonial charters or ancient treaties granting different religious rights and so forth, which become the basis for an autonomy statute. But the big bone in the throat is always taxation. Will taxes collected in the autonomous region stay in the autonomous region, or will they go to the national government while the autonomous region remains dependent upon national budgetary disbursements? Control over natural resources is also a biggie, though it doesn't sound as if Hutt River has oil reserves that the Aussie government should covet.

I am pretty amazed at how relaxed the Australian government is about movements like this, successful or otherwise.

Jn

[Túrin Turambar]

You can see how I think this applies to website experiments.

Oh, now I'm really interested. Internet governance interests me very much. But I don't see how the Hutt River experiment specifically applies to website experiments, beyond perhaps the importance of having a general agreement of purpose.

I was referring to the failed experiments in particular (see my examples above). I think that web communities are vulnerable to the same sorts of things, as b77 perhaps showed.

I suppose the ease with which groups seem able to secede from Austalia is somewhat analogous to internet fluidity.

It is much, much harder to secede from the United States. No one so far has actually managed to secede from the U.S., though Texas and Puerto Rico talk about it a lot. We have a lot of territories that hardly anyone knows about and they've also been unable to make headway on independence. But then, it's very difficult to run while carrying an island. (Or an oil well.)

It is possible to take this too seriously. The Hutt River Province has not seceded from Australia, as no-one recognizes its secession. A nation is not considered to be a nation unless its nationhood is recognised. As far as everyone bar Prince Leonard and his supporters are concerned, the Hutt River Province is part of Australia.

Seceding from Australia is also quite hard. Western Australia tried it in 1930. They took an application to the Privy Council in London. Unfortunately for them, the Australian Constitution reads that the Federal Commonwealth is ‘indissoluble’, so they were sent back. There was also some talk of secession in Queensland in 1977, but that was mainly by Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, whose approach to Government was somewhat…idiosyncratic.

Part of it might just be that there’s obvious difficulties in controlling a continent as barren and sparse as Australia. IIRC, it’s the world’s fifth largest country with the fiftieth largest population, or something similar. At any rate, it has the area of the mainland US (excluding Alaska) with twenty million people living on it. This is probably part of the problem with the aboriginal communities. If someone in the bush wants to declare an independent kingdom, it’s an awful nuisance to sort them out. People out there mostly look after themselves, anyway. I remember an old story about a policeman who was posted to a small town in Western Queensland. When he arrived the local people confiscated his gun because they considered that particular model to be unsafe.

Do you think it significant that Hutt River is a principality and not a democracy?

Yes. As I said above, I think that part of its strength is the loyalty that Prince Leonard’s followers have towards him.

I am pretty amazed at how relaxed the Australian government is about movements like this, successful or otherwise.

Well, no-one takes it really seriously (I have no idea whether or not the Prince himself does). As I said above, Prince Leonard is viewed as something of a harmless eccentric, human expression of the Australian spirit and a useful tourist attraction. Having twenty people sitting out on a wheat farm playing at nationhood isn’t too much of an issue in the big scheme of things. The State Government tried to make life difficult for him in the early days, but now he’s pretty much left alone.

Typically, of course, the different levels of Government keep passing the problem up and down the line. The Federal Government insists that it’s a state issue, and visa-versa.