The people of Norfolk Island want to get closer to the rest of Australia, but they don't want to pay for it with their hard-won local democracy.

So the tiny Pacific territory's leaders say they were shocked to discover the federal government is planning to strip the historic island of its parliament as the price of entry into the mainland's taxation system.

Chief Minister and Minister for Tourism Lisle Snell and Minister for Finance Timothy Sheridan took Norfolk Island’s case to Parliament House on Thursday. Credit:Jay Cronan

To add insult to injury, Norfolk's Chief Minister says, the Commonwealth is planning to snuff out the island's micro-democracy, "without meaningful consultation", in the centenary year of the territory's handover from Britain to Australia.

The islanders are proudly Australian but fiercely independent and their Chief Minister Lisle Snell says they fought too long and too hard for their quirky form of local government to return to the "colonialism" of direct rule from Canberra.