On behalf of the Australian Government, I am pleased to publicly release the Monitoring the Norfolk Island Economy report and baseline tool. This is part of a project to enable the community, the Council and the Government to better understand local economic conditions, trends and drivers - now and into the future.
KPMG undertook the project, assessing the Norfolk Island economy through key indicators such as population and demographics, business activity, income and employment, community and education, and macroeconomic indicators.
The Administrator, Mr Eric Hutchinson, convened an on Island working group which collaborated with the Council, KPMG and the Department to identify and gather suitable economic data for the analysis.
The Australian Government thanks the working group for its support of the project and data contributions.
The data in this report is important because it provides a baseline to measure how the economy is tracking as we move forward towards our shared goal of promoting sustainable economic development and tourism growth on Norfolk Island.
Some of the key project findings include:
- 40 per cent of Norfolk Island's economic activity is related to tourism
- Annual tourist arrivals have increased from 22,700 visitors in 2012-13 to 29,700 visitors in 2016-17
- Norfolk Island's unemployment rate was 1.6 per cent in 2016, compared with 6.9 per cent across the rest of Australia.
- While the Norfolk Island population declined slightly to 1,748 people in 2016, it has remained steady since then with 1,756 people in 2018.
I encourage you to read the Report and baseline tool which provides factual information to assist us all to be better informed. It will support us to identify priorities - and an evidence base on which to do so.
The final report and Excel version of the modelling tool is available at www.regional.gov.au/territories/norfolk_island/norfolk-island-economy/index.aspx. The monitoring tool will be published online in a dashboard format in the near future.
