Seeking a ‘Standard of Living at Least as High’: The Context and Motivations of Australian Policies on Nauruan Migration and Resettlement, 1950 to 1964

ABSTRACT From around 1950 to 1964 Australia, supported by the United Kingdom and New Zealand—its partners in a United Nations trusteeship over Nauru—envisaged that the Nauruans would leave their phosphate‐rich island. Into the early 1960s the idea of resettlement helped fend off UN pressures for Nauru's political evolution. But in late 1964 the Nauruans unequivocally rejected their resettlement on Curtis Island in Queensland, opting to remain on their home island. Drawing mainly on Australian official documents, this article argues that at first Australia's advocacy of Nauruan resettlement (or at one point migration) was mainly motivated by concern over Nauruan living standards once the phosphate was exhausted, rather than concern over environmental degradation or population pressure. From the late 1950s, however, this motivation was reinforced a wish to resettle the Nauruans to head off their attainment of self‐government, which would lead to their gaining control over phosphate exploitation, and by concern over probable future population pressure on the available land area in the context of poor prospects for rehabilitating the mined‐out land.