Did you know that notaries operating in England and Wales are regulated by the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury; colloquially known as the Faculty Office (FO).
The FO do not supervise notaries in Scotland – Scottish lawyers providing notarial services have their own regulatory system. However the Faculty Office do regulate notaries on Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and bizarrely – Queensland in Australia! Most people are surprised by this fact – even many solicitors and barristers!
There is a historical connection between Britain, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands (the western portion of the island is occupied by the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Irian Jaya).
On 6th November 1884, a British protectorate was proclaimed over the southern coast of New Guinea and its adjacent islands. The protectorate, named British New Guinea, was annexed outright on 4th September 1888. During World War I, Papua New Guinea was occupied by Australia, which had begun administering British New Guinea, the southern part, as the re-named Papua in 1904.
It now starts to get complicated… Indonesia became independent in 1949, and a plebiscite was held in 1969.
“Plebiscite” is the electoral process by which an initiative on the Constitution is
approved or rejected by the people. It is not the same as a referendum. “Plebs”
a Latin word meaning common person
Papua New Guinea was granted independence within the British Commonwealth in 1975.