They didn't spend all their mining windfalls on terrible musicals. They also invested in real estate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_House. It was the tallest building in Melbourne for a year. Looks like they sold it for $140 million in 2004.

I was going to link this if I didnt already see it. Worth a listen for sure.

Moose and Flamingos are aquatic animals. They don't swim around like a dolphin. It's not a popular theory because it attracts lunitics. I'm indifferent on the subject, but if cast the loonies there are hundred of evolutionary quirks that are hard to explain. Seriously, when I actually had exposure to biological journals, every year quirks pop up.Seriously, who gives damn?

Because the multiple waves of plagues decimated the urban populations in Western Europe and prevented them from reaching the 1 million mark.

The phosphate mining peaked in the 1980s, the nation was rich enough from the proceeds of phosphate exports that there were no personal taxes, and still there are none. The people blamed migrants for their problems and forced the government to deport them, which it did. The migrants, seeing no reason to stay and every reason to leave, including a hostile native populace, often left of their own accord. The warnings of labour shortages went unheeded. One right-wing publication proudly proclaimed that "It just means there are lots of jobs for our people". This then caused an economic crash, as the jobs which migrant labour was doing, weren't done. There was a population crash. The last holdouts, migrants from Tuvalu and Kiribati, numbered 1,500 and left in 2006.

Today, Nauru's ecology is decimated, most native seabirds are extinct, the forest they lived in all cleared. 90% of the population is unemployed, and of the 10% which are employed, 95% of them are employed by the government. Private enterprise doesn't really exist. Most of Nauru's income comes from international deals, such as hosting one of Australia's refugee prison camps. The government lacks the income to be able to carry out its functions, its national bank is insolvent and it is reliant wholly on handouts from the United Nations and Australia.

I also would sink under the waves rather than become part of Australia

I’m going to go with “yes”, but a positive “yes”, not a “I don’t know what any of that means” yes.

That's just basically an NFT right

I always thought "repopulate" was about focused procreation to rebuild population.

Repatriate? Relocate?

You haven’t seen the production. It was just off off off.

Zing I gots a million of them!

That was a deep dive on that page. They even had a 10 year civil war during the 1880s

Nice job skipping my main point. Illegal immigrants should be treated identically, no matter their race, country of origin, or wealth. They aren't. Certainly not since Howard figured out how to use them to prompt racist Aussies to keep electing him.

I'm not an open border fan. I'm a fan of Australia not being an international embarrassment due to our mistreatment of refugees. I'm a fan of adhering to the conditions of international agreements that we sign. I'm a fan of basic decency towards people.

We literally put children in prison because their parents tried to move them to a country that might provide them a better life. That is unjust and inhumane.

>At what point does a country say enough is enough? When it serves our politicians' agenda.

The open border fans like you never provide a number of how many refugees should australia take in a year. 100k, 200k, million?

..

Nauru has a few things about it that are utterly fascinating. The this American life episode about it is a gem

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/253/the-middle-of-nowhere

At what point does a country say enough is enough? When it serves our politicians' agenda.
When neither politicians nor the media refer to or care about one form of illegal immigration, but claim to care greatly about another, the numbers clearly aren't the problem.

>You do realise that the vast majority of refugees

Maybe a 1/4 of the worlds population could pass the refugee test. If numbers of refugees had stayed low then they would have been let in.

Problem was that the refugee industry industrialised shipping refugees to Australia, there was vast profits to be made. Back in 2007 there was 25 boat refugees, this jumped to 4940 in 2010 and just two more years to 25173.

It was more than doubling each year. At what point does a country say enough is enough?

Year Boat Refugees

2007–08 25

2010–11 4940

2011–12 7983

2012–13 25 173

Nauru is a raised coral atoll, which is where much of its phosphate comes from. Though bird crap had its contribution as well.

> You mean the ones that dont come via international recognised channels, the ones that pay thousands to people

A refugee is someone who is fleeing. There's no requirement to follow "recognized channels." If things go to shit in your country they're not expecting you to go to the border guards with your immigration papers. That's not how refugee works.

And even if it was, that doesn't really excuse detaining someone in a random pacific island.

5,570 kms away is certainly "off off Broadway"

They’re my go to performers for way off off broadway

It's not only the few refugees that meet that criteria that are imprisoned there.
You do realise that the vast majority of refugees are not what bigots, LNP politicians, and our right-wing media's propaganda portrays them to be, right?

Our offshore detention policies are literally unlawful and "cruel, inhuman or degrading" according to the International Criminal Court.

"Boat people" are dramatically outnumbered by people who fly in legally, but never leave, but they're also far more likely to not be white. Guess which group Border Force cares about and which group are virtually never even looked for let alone imprisoned or deported?

> We imprison refugees there.

You mean the ones that dont come via international recognised channels, the ones that pay thousands to people smugglers?

There should make that one of the great works of art in CIV 6

So... are you saying she should have just not had kids because she liked her job?