Nauru

I had a friend who spent an interesting couple of years in Nauru in the 80s. By and large he was bored out of his mind. He used to crudely (but perhaps accurately) refer to it as a pile of bird sh*t. Referring to the fact that it is essentially a block of phosphate rock in the near Pacific...or I should say was.(see what the CIA tells us about Nauru here)

It is now mined out, and its income stream severely diminished.

We forget (or perhaps never knew) that though Nauru is a "republic" it has less than 10,000 inhabitants. It is one tenth the area of Kangaroo Island...though admittedly Kangaroo Island has only half the population of Nauru!

What really worries me about the Liberal's Pacific solution is that the Liberals shift the responsibility of our modestly sized nation, to an economically vulnerable island with little or no natural resources (I note that they have 0% arable land!). And who have no real political clout in the scheme of the world or the region.

Assuming also that power is likely to be concentrated in the hands of a few privileged individuals who have benefited from the former largesse it is nonsense to suggest that the "President" is anything more than the equivalent of a small town country mayor. (He represents less than the Mayor of Mitcham!)

This is nothing less than using money to attempt to bribe those who can exercise disproportionate influence in what, despite the nomenclature, is not really a nation at all!