The Principality of Hutt River, Sovereign Land within Australia

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River



The Principality of Hutt River was declared an independent province in 1970 by Leonard Casley, in response to a dispute with the government of Western Australia over what the Casley family considered draconian wheat production quotas. The Casley farm had around 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres) of wheat ready to harvest when the quotas were issued, which allowed Casley to sell only 1,647 bushels or approximately 40 hectares (99 acres). Initially, the five families who owned farms at Hutt River banded together to fight the quota, and Casley lodged a protest with the Governor of Western Australia, Sir Douglas Kendrew. The Governor replied "no rectification of our Quota would be allowed".

Casley reasoned that as the Governor acts as the Queen's representative, this made Her Majesty liable, in tort, for applying an unlawful imposition as the quota had not yet been passed into law. Casley lodged a claim under the Law of Tort for A$52 million in the belief the claim would force a revision of the quota. Two weeks later, the government introduced a bill into Parliament to "resume" their lands under compulsory acquisition. After approaches to the government to reconsider the acquisition bill failed, Casley and his associates resorted to International Law, which they felt allowed them to secede and declare their independence from the Commonwealth of Australia. Casley has claimed he nonetheless remains loyal to Queen Elizabeth II. He was elected administrator of the new "sovereign state" by his family.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/LocationPHR.svg

The government of Western Australia determined it could do nothing without the intervention of the Commonwealth. The Governor-General of Australia, Sir Paul Hasluck, later stated that it was unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to intervene in the secession.[3] In correspondence with the governor-general's office, Casley was inadvertently addressed as the "Administrator of the Hutt River Province" which was claimed (via Royal Prerogative as the Queen's representative) to be a legally binding recognition.[3] After prime minister William McMahon threatened him with prosecution, Casley styled himself His Majesty Prince Leonard I of Hutt to take advantage of the British Treason Act 1495; that a self proclaimed monarch could not only not be guilty of any offence against the rightful ruler, but that anyone who interfered with his duties could be charged with treason.[1] Although the law in this matter has since changed, the Australian Constitution prevented its retrospectivity and the Australian government has not taken any action against Hutt River since the declaration.[4] Under Australian law, the federal government had two years to respond to Casley's declaration; the failure to respond gave the province de facto autonomy on 21 April 1972. The Western Australian state government can still dispute the secession but choose not to do so.




In 1976, Australia Post refused to handle Hutt River mail, forcing mail to be redirected via Canada. Following repeated demands by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for the payment of taxes, on 2 December 1977 the province officially declared war on Australia. Prince Leonard notified authorities of the cessation of hostilities several days later. The mail service was restored after a court case deemed that Hutt River stamps and coins were legal within the Principality and the tax requests also ceased. Hutt River residents are still required to lodge income tax forms but are classed by the ATO as non-residents of Australia for income tax purposes; thus income earned within the province is exempt from Australian taxation. The province displays documents supporting that no tax is paid but the ATO can not verify the provinces tax status as they can't by law comment on the affairs of individuals. The province levies its own income tax of 0.5% on financial transactions by foreign companies registered in the province and personal accounts. While the principality does not pay taxes, the Australian government's current official position is that it is nothing more than a private enterprise operating under a business name.

In the early 1980s, the Hutt River Province declared itself to be a kingdom, but soon after reverted to its original status of a principality. The principality proceeded to release a number of its own stamps and coins. In September 2006, Prince Leonard decided to change the name to "Principality of Hutt River" and dropped the word "Province".



Although Australia still claims the land as their own, inhabitants pay no taxes and receive no Australian services.


Thoughts?

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

Casley states that the use of titles is purely practical as they are required for legal purposes.





They have a .999 silver coin and a 24k gold coin in circulation.

[Serpo]

They have a .999 silver coin and a 24k gold coin in circulation.

What................ isnt that a barbaric practice...............

[Glass]

I've written quite a bit about this guy on this forum. I have been to visit him 3 times in my life. 2 times some 30 years ago when news of what he had done got into the local news. The most recent time was just about exactly 2 years ago. Myself and a friend had an opportunity to talk with him for about 1 hour. We tried to pre-arrange a visit to talk about what he had done but he was not interested so we went up there anyway and visited as tourists.

I have quite a large amount of information collated about what Prince Leonard did.

Things to note about Prince Leonard:
He is top level mason in an ancient division of the brotherhood. One that goes back to the Crusades. His declaration of independence identifies the one he is a member of. The Crusaders Cross of Jerusalem.
He is a highly intellectual person who has very strong knowledge in mathematics. He contracted to NASA to assist them with some very difficult work related to something with the Shuttles I think it was. He had citations on the wall etc. He actually has a lot of stuff like that.
Australia is run by freemasons. It was establised by them and appears to have been governed by freemasonry ever since.
He has a pyramid in his yard. I recall it was there 30 years ago and it still is there today. A very pharosean(?) bent.
His logo includes the image of baphomet in it - IMO. He tried to convince us it was a Bull, being in farm country, but he doesn't run cattle, never has so it didn't seem likely to us. It was designed by a long time american freemason he knows...... again my recollection is that this was someone famous like an actor or someone.
He has a chappel on his land and there was a disturbing painting in there. Not sure what to make of it. I'll see if I can find a photo I took of it.

he spent many years in court and he says they really attacked him and threatened him during this. He was even called to a session of the houses of parliament to explain himself.

his advice to us was, there are many people in jail now who tried to do what he did. Also I think the law was tightened up to make this not possible to repeat. Don't know exactly if that is the case.

anyway interesting guy. he did do this. he does live as a sovereign but it is with 1 caveat. The Principality is a protectorate for the Queen. He pledged to be the safe keeper of the land for the Queen because he says The Australian Fed Govt and State Govt are unable to do it.

[Hypertiger]

well to avoid counterfit money it's fine...because to increase the money supply requires a counterfiter to issue gold and silver coinage.

Of course the actual owners of the money can change it into whatever they want...bascially the top or owners say...this is money...and if you refuse to accept what the owners decree money to be.

You starve.

That is how what the owners of the previous monetary system did when they ran out of gold and silver to supply the demand for money.

They issued IOU's that and said...this is money...accept it or starve.

It's called credit...

Go on strike all you want but civilization will then collapse all around you.

The top of course have plenty of secret stashes of resources to outlast any strike or most collapses of civilization.

When it comes to that...

[Neuro]

Amazing story! First I have heard of it! Thanks for sharing NE and Glass!

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

Glass I follow your posts with great interest, I don't know how I missed the Hutt River Principality posts.

Interesting that this gentleman was connected via grip to the square and compass folk. More interesting that you met him. Even more interesting that he "taught" the administration of Australia on how to prevent it from happening again.

[Ponce]

Another Ponce Jr in trainning haahahahahahaah........in 17 more days I'll find out if I and the "crown" of the US and I are going to war over my land.........

[Glass]

Even more interesting that he "taught" the administration of Australia on how to prevent it from happening again.

There are quite a few people and groups in Australia who have done similar things. I do not know how they all fared. There was a guy who ran a property called Brumby Valley or Ridge or something. He seemed to disappear from the radar about 2 years ago. Only info was via a web site which wasn't there any longer the last couple times I looked.''

Some one did post a web site that denigrated these people and then listed all of the ones who were in jail or charged with fraud as a "demonstration" that you shouldn't do this. Scare mongerer kind of thing. Oh and was done by a person with one of those "special surnames".

There was another community in NSW that did the same. They had a big stand off with the police. I don't know what happened to them. Nothing on the news for several years now. They declared themseves to be the Kingdom of Yahweh. There is a man living in a town not far from Perth, 70 - 100kms in Toodyay (two-jay) . He declared himself to be the Blokeman of Pentacost. He was on the local evening current affairs program. I've wanted to go see him these last couple years but I don't have good enough transport to get out there and back.

There have probably been a couple dozen or more who were doing this across australia. All described as micro nations by the media here. Not sure if they are all micro nations but anyway thats the media for you.

Ultimately I want to do the same thing. Hopefully sometime in my life I will get the opportunity to do so. Need land first.

[Neuro]

Another Ponce Jr in trainning haahahahahahaah........in 17 more days I'll find out if I and the "crown" of the US and I are going to war over my land.........
What will your title be? El comandante? ;D

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

well to avoid counterfit money it's fine...because to increase the money supply requires a counterfiter to issue gold and silver coinage.

Of course the actual owners of the money can change it into whatever they want...bascially the top or owners say...this is money...and if you refuse to accept what the owners decree money to be.

You starve.

That is how what the owners of the previous monetary system did when they ran out of gold and silver to supply the demand for money.

They issued IOU's that and said...this is money...accept it or starve.

It's called credit...

Go on strike all you want but civilization will then collapse all around you.

The top of course have plenty of secret stashes of resources to outlast any strike or most collapses of civilization.

When it comes to that...


In your humble opinion, if one does not want for food, is one exempt from the system? I know food is the source of it all. Does controlling land, water, and seed exempt an individual? Can it exempt a society?

Hypothetically, should society "open source" it's food?

[Glass]

I saw this story a couple weeks ago from the BBC. Countries that don't exist on any map. Please read the last paragraph, which I have bolded. Comments at the end.


The Countries that don't exist

When I first see Nick Middleton, he is surrounded by globes and atlases showing the most exotic places on the planet. We are in the basement of Stanfords, London’s largest travel bookshop, visited by such intrepid explorers as Florence Nightingale, Ernest Shackleton and Ranulph Fiennes.

Middleton, however, is here to talk about countries missing from the vast majority of books and maps for sale here. He calls them the “countries that don’t exist”, but although their names may seem fantastical – Atlantium, Christiania, and Elgaland-Vargaland – they are all real places, occupied by fervidly patriotic citizens. In fact, you have almost certainly, unknowingly, visited one.

The globe, it turns out, is full of small (and not so small) regions that have all the trappings of a real country – a fixed population, a government, a flag, and a currency. Some can even issue you a biometric passport. Yet for various reasons they are not allowed representatives in the United Nations, and are ignored on most world maps.

Middleton, a geographer at the University of Oxford, has now charted these hidden lands in his new book, An Atlas of Countries that Don’t Exist (http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/nickmiddleton/anatlasofcountriesthatdontexist) (Macmillan, 2015). Flicking through its pages, it feels like you have entered a parallel world with a vibrant, forgotten history and a rich culture. This parallel world even has its own international football league (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFI_Wild_Cup).

Middleton’s quest began, appropriately enough, with Narnia. He was reading CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with his six-year-old daughter, and the main character Lucy had just passed through the mothballs and fur coats into a magical land. Something about the whimsy appealed to Middleton. As a geographer, he realised that you don’t have to use magic to visit a country that “doesn’t exist” in the eyes of most other states. Even so, he didn’t expect them to be quite so widespread. “Once I started looking into them, I was amazed by how many there are,” he says. “I could have filled the book several times over.”

The problem, he says, is that we don’t have a watertight definition of what a country is. “Which as a geographer, is kind of shocking,” he says. Some cite a treaty signed in 1933, during the International Conference of American States in Montevideo, Uruguay. The “Montevideo Convention” declares that to become a country, a region needs the following features: a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and “the capacity to enter into relations with other states”.

Yet many countries that meet these criteria aren‘t members of the United Nations (commonly accepted as the final seal of a country’s statehood). Consider Taiwan – which held a seat in the General Assembly until 1971, until mainland China entered and took over its position. Even the United Kingdom is a somewhat strange case, Middleton says. Within our law, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are considered individual states. We have our own sports teams and compete against each other – but we only have one shared seat in the UN. “So is England a country? By this criterion, no,” says Middleton.

BBC link

(http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151103-the-countries-that-dont-exist)The last paragraph is very interesting. It is interesting because Australia which was a series of colonies, the same as the US of A. Australia was Federated in 1901. It has a constitution granted by the UK Parliament in 1900 and adopted in Australia in 1901. Western Australia was late to join the Federation, joining sometime in the first year (IIRC).

Australia is now considered a Nation in it's own right and this claim is based solely on participation in the Leargue of Nations. The League of Nations is the precursor to the UN.

Australia attened and participated in some Major League of Nations event, possibly at the Treaty of Versaille. I would need to check. Anyway, we did not have our own seat at this event. We used the Brittish chair - basically we shared it with them.

It was duiring this time that it is considered thagt Australia was first recognised as sitting in the chair and as a result is recognised as a nation.

HOWEVER, as the last paragraph suggests, the UK or Brittain is not a nation either on that basis. There fore, Australia may still not be a nation at all.

But this is what you need for nationhood, you need to be recognized by another nation. I wonder where the first nation got it's recognition from? AND the freemen, sovereign principality guys know of this requirement which is why they pursue it.

Prince Leonard from the OP knew this and pursued regonition with several different nations. He was able to gain that recognition. I might have mentioned who in an earlier post, but I know his web site did describe the process and which nations.

[Glass]

Australian Taxation Office Sues Prince Leonard - Hutt River Province for $2.6 million dollars

The long-running war of independence waged by the self-proclaimed ruler of the Hutt River Province has been challenged by the Australian Taxation Office, which claims he owes $2.65 million in unpaid tax.

In a writ filed in the WA Supreme Court, the tax office alleges Leonard George Casley, who calls himself His Royal Highness Prince Leonard, failed to pay income tax between June 2006 and November 2013 — a period spanning eight financial years.

The ATO is suing the 91-year-old monarch to recover the alleged multimillion-dollar debt, which is made up of $1.47 million in unpaid income tax and running balance account debt, $756,000 in penalties and $415,000 in interest.

But yesterday Prince Leonard said he would continue the fight against the establishment that he has carried on for 46 years.

“The ATO has made some false claims, and all the claims are denied,” he said.

On the Principality of Hutt River website, Prince Leonard has published letters sent to him and his late wife Shirley from the ATO stating they were deemed non-residents of Australia for tax purposes in 2005. In 2012, Prince Leonard reiterated that he and the citizens of Hutt River were exempt from paying taxes.

“We’ve got assessments from the Australian Taxation Office saying they’re non-residents of the Commonwealth and there’s no tax to pay,” he told The West Australian. “The Australian tax department clearly recognises that fact. That is a diplomatic recognition.”

But the ATO has stated for years that the “the Australian Government does not legally or otherwise recognise the so-called Hutt River Province.

It also warned potential investors to avoid any involvement with Hutt River Province international business companies and “any other entities as well as any associated international dealings because they have no legal basis and could be illegal”.

Prince Leonard instigated the “secession” of the micro-nation from Australia in 1970 in protest against the low wheat production quotas being imposed by the WA government.

The property near Northampton has its own postage stamps, currency and its own visa requirements. It attracts thousands of local and international tourists annually.

The Queen wrote to Prince Leonard this year conveying her good wishes for the celebrations marking the Province’s 46th anniversary. She was replying to his letter congratulating her on her 90th birthday.

Prince Leonard’s son, Prince Richard, said yesterday the family continued to consider Hutt River a separate entity from the Commonwealth. “That has never changed in 46 years,” he said. Asked if he believed that would ever change, he replied: “Hopefully not.”


The West Australiam (https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/tax-office-sues-hutt-river-prince-ng-b88329279z)

[Glass]

Prince Leonard - Hutt River Province steps down as Regent. Son takes on role.

Micronation to start accepting Imigrants


Australia's oldest micro-nation officially has a new leader who says he hopes to significantly grow its population under his reign.

For almost half a century, the Principality of Hutt River in Western Australia's Mid West has been guided by its self-declared sovereign — Prince Leonard.

Through a series of legal manoeuvres, the former wheat farmer claims to have seceded from the state in 1970, after a dispute about wheat quotas.

During his reign, the self-taught physicist started his own currency, declared war on Australia and set up a "royal" college of advanced research.

The 92-year-old monarch is battling emphysema and has officially abdicated from his role.

"Three months ago I realised at any time my body might close down," he said.

"So I thought I better do something about this."

Prince Leonard has handed over the sovereign reigns to his 59-year-old son Prince Graeme.

"It's my great pleasure to pass them over," he said.

"It's my pleasure now to watch the change and see how it progresses before I depart."



Hopes of broader community

The micro-nation, which has its own flag, currency and constitution, has become somewhat of a tourist attraction.

Prince Graeme said while he was happy to have a constant stream of visitors, over the next few years he would be looking at attracting permanent residents to the 7,500-hectare enclave.

"I'm hoping to have a broader community, not a big metropolis, but a broader community of diverse people," he said.

"We're hoping to build a harmonious relationship with the Australian governments and the Australian people, and develop a letter of understanding so commercial ventures can come and people can live and earn an income.

"We can have a school and a small community of people working and living together."

He said early feasibility studies suggest groundwater on the land could sustain about 20,000 people, while energy would primarily come from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

"Of course that's some years down the track, but I'm hoping for 1,000 or 2,000 [people] in the next five years," he said.


ABC news (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-12/prince-leonard-abdicates-long-live-prince-graeme/8262748)