The Gap, Gangs and Golliwogs

Chapter 18 Language and the Law

2011-07-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Deaths in custody

The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody found that Aboriginal prisoners were not dying at a greater rate than whitefella prisoners. The unfortunate truth it did find is that Aboriginals are jailed at a disproportionate rate and that is how a disproportionate number out of the total population are dying in prisons.

We are not treating Aboriginals worse when they are in custody, we are simply taking more into custody more often.

The Commission’s final report contained 339 recommendations, one of which was comprehensive training for people in the judicial system. The training would cover contemporary society, customs and traditions, as well as emphasising historical and social causes of Aboriginal disadvantage, and looking at the nature of relations between Aboriginals and whitefellas.

Following this recommendation, the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration Inc [AIJAI] produced an Aboriginal Benchbook designed to be used in Western Australia. This was intended as a template for other jurisdictions, and some other states have since produced similar handbooks. In these, the topics mentioned in recommendation 339 are well covered, in a legal context and complete with a million references to statute and case law.

Aboriginal English

In 1992 Dr Diana Eades’ published a book called Aboriginal English and the Law, and shortly after that the Queensland Attorney-General published a more straightforward guide called Aboriginal English in the Courts. This guide is very easy and very interesting reading.

Eades says Aboriginal English did not develop from pidgin English, but from the way English was Aboriginalised as it was being learnt, in terms of grammar, accent and traditional ways of speaking.

For a very long time, white people might have heard Aboriginals speaking what sounded like English and misinterpreted what was actually a distinct language, differing from English in very systematic ways. For a very long time, Aboriginals have been disadvantaged, legally and in other ways, by this misunderstanding.

Just one of the barriers to effective communication is a phenomenon known as:

Gratuitous Concurrence

Quite simply, this is a tendency for automatic agreement. It’s not necessarily from fear of authority; often it’s a cultural signal showing a person is ready to engage in a conversation. Two examples might help:

1. An Aboriginal man was in court to testify as a witness. He was not charged with anything, but when he was being sworn in he pleaded guilty.

2. A barrister asked a series of questions to which a witness kept replying yes.

Barrister: Do you understand you don’t have to answer my question?

Witness: Yes

Barrister: Now, do you have to tell me the story?

Witness: Yes

The judge noticed that several Aboriginals sitting in the public area of the court were also all mouthing the word yes and nodding along with the witness.

Other aspects of communication

We looked in an earlier chapter at traditional practices relating to eye contact, silence, and direct questions. Everything in English/Australian law sets up a traditional Aboriginal to fail.

Traditional concepts – along with whitefella assumptions – befuddle successful communication. Some relate to a difference in the way time and quantities are processed and classified as opposed to the western way of dealing with them.

Gestures are sometimes used in place of words, and there are some things Aboriginals are traditionally not permitted to speak about.

In a court room, where questioning might go on forever to clarify a single point, someone might use a word which several meanings. The western desert language Ngaanyatjarra, like many others, has had to develop new words to describe new, western concepts. The word town, which has become tawunpa, might mean settlement, city, town or house.

Aboriginals might use words like hit or kill interchangeably.

It’s not hard to see how, in the remote past, on the rare occasions Aboriginals were given a chance to seek justice, justice was not always done. What many whitefellas are simply unaware of is that, even today, there are many Aboriginals for whom whitefella language is still as incomprehensible as the law.

Interpreters

There is a large pool of accredited interpreters in Australia for the most common European or Asian languages, but there are not even courses available for many Aboriginal languages.

To be effective, an interpreter needs to understand a language, its associated culture and shades of meaning, as well as being alert to the possibility of an individual misunderstanding. An interpreter must not only understand legal concepts and be familiar with court procedures, he/she must also understand medical and other matters which might be raised in court.

Because some indigenous languages might only be the first language of 30 or 40 people, it would be great to have members of that language group as interpreters, not just for the benefit to the community but also to preserve the language. In a court room, however, that person cannot be someone who stands in a taboo relationship to the people involved in the case, though the probability they are also involved in what happened or have a conflict of interest is also rather high.

Help

Because so many Aboriginals live in remote areas, are isolated by language and cultural barriers, and are more likely to rely on legal aid, they are further disadvantaged when a solicitor is appointed to help.

Contact with clients will be minimal because of travel and distances involved, and Aboriginals are more likely to meet with a different solicitor at each stage of the legal process; when they are charged and applying for bail, at a hearing, and at a sentencing [assuming they do not apply for appeal].

Sentencing and Circle Courts

Sentencing in Australia is lenient compared to some other countries, with the emphasis often placed on the possibility of rehabilitation, rather than just punishment for the crime, or protecting the public from the criminal.

Since the late 1990s, changes have been made in mainland states [including the Northern Territory] in the way the law deals with many Aboriginals charged with breaking a law. The aims of these changes are a reduction in Aboriginal distrust of the law, a reduction in the disproportionate numbers of indigenous peoples finding themselves in custody, and providing outcomes which are more likely to prevent re-offending,

In urban areas there are special courts, the first of these being the Nunga Courts in South Australia, to which more courts have since been added. There are Koori Courts in Victoria, Circle Courts in New South Wales, and a Murri Court in Brisbane. There is a further court in Rockhampton treating Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders and South Sea Islanders all separately by racial or ethnic identity. A Circle Court has also been established in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

In addition to these new urban courts, new approaches are used when circuit courts travel to remote areas.

Each state has its own rules regarding, amongst other things, what crimes these special courts may deal with and how the local Aboriginal community is involved. The Queensland sentencing act requires Magistrates and Judges to take into account the views of community members when passing sentences.

In some areas of the law, such as sexual offences, indigenous people may prefer not to participate in sentencing.

In the Northern Territory several laws require Judges to take account of payback punishments when sentencing. Australian law does not authorise or encourage traditional payback, but if someone is likely to be speared then they certainly don’t deserve the same whitefella punishment a whitefella would get for the same crime. For this reason, the judiciary is required to seek advice from the local community.

In some courts, the local community can help clarify exactly what happened as well as help decide on an appropriate punishment, and monitor the offender’s progress in terms of rehabilitation.

Side effects of this approach might be reinforcing the authority of elders where this seems to be breaking down, and strengthening a sense of community.

Mandatory sentencing

To create a balanced picture of indigenous rates of incarceration, we need to allow for Mandatory Sentencing – the three strikes laws – passed by the Northern Territory and then later in Western Australia.

Before the Northern Territory law was repealed, there was a public outcry when Jamie Wurramurra went to prison for stealing biscuits and cordial.

That indigenous incarceration rates are highest in the states where the Aboriginal population is highest should be no surprise, nor should it be a surprise that where a three strikes law is in force, incarceration rates will naturally go through the roof.

Law and Order is not just the name of a successful TV series. It’s one sure vote-catching issue just about anywhere in the western world. As a nation, we need to decide whether we want to trust our judicial system or not, because a three strikes law says we do not.

Are indigenous people imprisoned in disproportionate numbers because they deserve it, or because they are unfairly targeted? One obstacle to answering this question is the political correctness that prevents anyone from recording or reporting crimes based on the race or ethnicity of the offender, the race or ethnicity of the victim, and the number of repeat offences by individuals in each case.

Superficially, one might assume that the number in prison matches the number of criminals, but it is impossible to penetrate the fog without more details. Keeping these details hidden away simply makes it easier for the ‘get tough’ brigade to make accusations without having to offer proof, and it makes it harder for those who are slandered to defend themselves.

One very open secret I cannot therefore prove is that Aboriginals harm each other more than they harm anyone else. That they harm each other so often is a tragedy, but it certainly doesn’t make Aboriginals a threat to whitefellas.

Chapter 17 Once again, whitefellas get it terribly wrong

2011-06-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

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As traditional Aboriginal life had adapted so well to station life, the displacements following the equal wages case were almost as destructive in spiritual and cultural terms as the first displacements caused by white settlement.

Perhaps the only difference is that Aboriginals were now less likely to be shot.

Before the equal pay decision, station children were still learning to be traditional Aboriginals with all the freedom, relationships, skills, practices and values of their forebears. They were still valued members of their own community. If moved on as a result of the equal wages decision, the prospect of a future was suddenly snatched away. They were now required to live an alien life, learning about new authority figures, attending white schools, and being restricted in their movements by a whole new set of social assumptions.

For many other Aboriginals unlikely to be ‘hired’ as skilled stockmen - older Aboriginals, women, or mothers - equal wages robbed them of their access to country, and a chance to contribute to their station dwelling community by performing regular tasks such as tending gardens, sweeping, chopping firewood, or passing on laws and traditions which required access to country.

Few skilled Aboriginals were westernised enough to consider being cut off from their own communities, just so they could stay on stations and work for wages.

For all Aboriginals who had lived through the killing times and the worst of the child theft, who had had a [short lived] taste of equality during World War II, the outcome of the equal pay case could only confirm their suspicions there was no place for them in a white world and, if there was, they would be crazy to want it.

Needs claims

Many pastoralists moved Aboriginals away from the vicinity their homesteads, onto other sections of their property, ceding a portion of their lease to Aboriginals as ‘needs claims’. This reflected the fact that a lease is not ownership, that Aboriginals were still entitled to stay on their land to live in the manner they always had [allowing for the disappearance of a great deal of their natural food sources or water].

These removals were a physical signal to governments that pastoralists no longer accepted any responsibility for Aboriginals, though it meant that there was still a pool of workers nearby if needed.

The good, the bad and the ugly

One family which owned several stations in the Kimberley region of WA was concerned about the future of Aboriginals, only recently advanced to the level of serfs, if they were forced onto the fringes of towns and within reach of white vices but without any practical skills to adapt. They ceded parts of their leases to the local people, then ceded a little more to allow a government school to operate away from the town, then ceded even larger slabs of their leases, encouraging the state government to step in and provide proper housing.

Thousands of Aboriginals ended up living on the fringes of towns as a result of this wage decision. Without housing or proper amenities or any chance of keeping themselves ‘presentable’, their rejection became complete.

The Kimberley was not only a remote area: For most of the region the sole industry had been the pastoral industry, so there were few towns with any infrastructure at all. Some towns were no more than a general store and a pub.

As happened when Aboriginals were first forced onto reserves or missions, people from different clans and language groups were thrown together on country that was not their own, and the whole of their social fabric was in tatters.

Some station owners forced people off passively, by refusing to give them transport to find firewood, and no longer providing rations or any other assistance.

One station owner waited until ‘his’ Aboriginals were away at a picnic race meeting, bulldozed their humpies and possessions and shot their dogs. When they came back, he simply told them they had 48 hours to clear out.

Government responses

There was no coordinated government response. Predictably, the federal government [welfare payments], the state government [allocating reserves or town camps, providing education and health and welfare services] and local government [there's a whole in the road] ran around in circles doing [or not doing] their own thing without telling each other what they were doing or not doing.

This was an especially big problem in WA, where the government had long relied on pastoralists to do as much or as little they would for Aboriginals; where the government had no practical experience of doing anything for Aboriginals themselves.

Given the official assumption of most policy makers was that Aboriginals cannot cope with a white world, they were appallingly indifferent to the plight of these people who had just been “thrown into the pool to sink or swim”.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

The most common result, initially, was that thousands of people were living in unproductive camps on the fringes of what little town there was, without ready access to any sort of pre-established social service payments outlet. They often had no access to a balanced diet or medical attention; there was not enough room to live without toilets; they were suddenly living close to people with whom they had a taboo relationship; they had no housing.

Without access to country, life could have no meaning. Being unable to fulfil obligations to country was akin to every refugee’s dilemma on leaving family behind; never knowing their fate and having to live with guilt.

But this was worse: Aboriginals were in Limbo, with no hope of building a future for their children. These were not the consequences people must bear when they make a bad choice, for they were given no choice. Life was effectively a prison without walls.

For a few, this situation was a steep learning curve they would survive. People worked together to organise decent food, or to fight for land rights or to lobby for some form of housing. For too many, the damage would be permanent, and has passed from one generation to the next.

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Limbo: In the older Catholic tradition, a place of nothingness where innocent souls spend eternity, because they have no right to Heaven but have committed no crime that condemns them to Hell.

Chapter 16 Western Australia Before Equal Pay

2011-06-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

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While Aboriginal stockmen were granted equal pay in the Northern territory with a starting date of December 1968, Western Australia did not follow suit until 1972.

When I first set out to write about the consequences for Aboriginals of these equal pay decisions, I began to wonder why things were so much worse in Western Australia than in the Northern Territory. Hopefully, this little detour will provide some clues.

Western Australia

Western Australia’s approach to Aboriginal welfare had been a little different from the approach of the other states, and not just because if was the home of A.O. Neville.

In some ways, early WA legislation relating to Aboriginals was enlightened, in others it was not so good.

One significant proclamation made in 1850 stated

‘nothing contained in any pastoral lease shall prevent the aboriginal natives from entering upon the lands comprised therein, and seeking sustenance in their accustomed manner’

[The significance of this will be clearer when I do actually talk about the results of the equal pay decisions.]

In 1905 The Aborigines Act ignored an enquiry recommendation that Aboriginal pastoral workers be paid in cash, and everything seemed to go downhill from there.

By the 1920s, vested interests were each pushing for something different:

Pastoralists looking for cheap labour wanted Aboriginals rounded up onto stations;
Churches wanted Aboriginals segregated from whites partly to protect them and partly because this would help them Christianise Aboriginals;
The labour movement wanted Aboriginals kept away from white jobs;
Everybody wanted land so nobody wanted Reserves set aside for Aboriginal only use.

In the heavily settled south west of the state, the government created native camping reserves. Much like what happened under apartheid in South Africa, Aboriginals were far enough away from towns, and close enough to farms which might occasionally need workers, to suit everybody except Aboriginals. There were no amenities to speak of, so it’s no surprise Aboriginal children were not allowed to attend white schools.

A O Neville

When he was appointed Protector in 1915, Neville took over a system which was already more or less segregated. The whites, originally not too shy about creating a mixed race population, now had a better ratio of males to females, and had decided to shun their darker skinned relatives.

Neville did not set out to actively harm full blood Aboriginals, though he certainly did neglect them.

I suspect what he saw was that although full blood Aboriginals were supposed to disappear through a process of natural selection, the half-caste population was not likely to disappear: The ‘problem’ would not go away and must be dealt with. He set out to make the most of the segregation already in place, perhaps believing assimilation would be preferable to annihilation.

While no state can reasonably claim that its hands are clean, Western Australia was the most blatantly racist in its determination to take mixed race children from their families.

As part of his plan for miscegenation, Neville closed ration depots, cutting funding to missions so they would concentrate on religion rather than providing accommodation or education.

Perhaps as a side effect of Neville’s focus on half-castes, pastoral stations became de facto ration depots and welfare bodies for any Aboriginals not targeted for assimilation.

Pastoralists were not required to pay wages, nor was their treatment of Aboriginals properly monitored.

Frederick Aldrich

In 1920 the state was divided along the 25^th parallel of latitude into two administrative districts.

Frederick Aldrich was appointed Deputy Chief Protector of Aborigines, and responsible for administering the southern portion of WA.

Instead of rounding up Aboriginals and removing them to settlements when white people complained about Aboriginals in their towns, Aldrich saved money by gazetting native camping reserves, including Albany, Gnowangerup, Katanning, Pinjarra, Williams and York.

New reserves were added and some were shifted further out of towns as more and more Aboriginals struggled to eat during the depression. By 1937 Aboriginals who weren’t already permanent residents needed a pass to go into Perth.

Mary Bennett and H B Moseley

In 1933, Mary Bennett read a paper “The Aboriginal Mother in Western Australia’, to a women’s league gathering in London. The British were scandalised by reports of Aboriginal slavery, and the scandal created headlines back home. Not for the first time, the WA government was under pressure to enquire into the condition of the state’s Aboriginals.

The Royal Commissioner of the new enquiry, H B Moseley, dismissed complaints about pastoralists’ treatment of Aboriginals as isolated incidents.

With respect to Aboriginal wages in the Kimberley region he reportedly said

“as he never had any money and would not recognise it if he saw it, he [the Aborigine] is not deprived of anything.”

To support this argument, he pointed out that Aboriginals had been paid wages in the Pilbara for some time, and had only developed an insatiable desire to spend their money.

In 1936 the 1905 act was replaced with a new Native Administration Act, written with a great deal of input from Neville. In exchange for increased responsibility for any destitute Aboriginals on their station, pastoralists were given strict control of Aboriginal wages.

By the end of the 1930s there were 40 segregated native camping reserves in the state. Neville remained in charge of Aboriginal Affairs until 1940.

After Neville

1936	Leprosarium at Derby opens, offering the first live-in care in WA. Sufferers of leprosy are no longer mandatorily shifted to Northern Territory.
1941	To minimise the spread of leprosy, WA’s northern Aboriginals are prevented from travelling south beyond the 20^th parallel [the ‘Leper Line’]
1941	the federal government makes child endowment payable to ‘detribalised’ Aborigines
1942	[federal] age and invalid pensions extended to Aboriginals
1944	[federal] unemployment and sickness benefits extended to Aboriginals
1944	WA Native (Citizenship Rights) Act provides a Clayton’s form of citizenship available to Aboriginals
1948	Bateman provides a report on Native Affairs. He recommends a new policy of assimilation and supervision, but with separate education for Aboriginal children.
	SG Middleton, the new Commissioner for Native Affairs ushers in an era of reform. Nothing moves quickly, but by the mid 1950s things are improving.

In 1954 a new Native Welfare Act was passed in Western Australia.

Aboriginals were no longer barred from towns and cities;
penalties for ‘cohabitation’ were removed;
Protectors could no longer demolish camps, move residents on or restrict them to one area;
Police could no longer force Aboriginals to leave a town for loitering or for being poorly clothed.

The next major steps forward in Western Australia were taken in 1972.

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Clayton’s form of citizenship: from an ad for a non-alcoholic drink “the drink you have when you are not having a drink”; - Clayton’s describes something that is just for show but has no real substance.

The Leper line: Numerous sources state that the leper line was set at either the 25th or 26th parallel. The only government source I have found which even mentions this line was the Western Australian government's Lost Lands Report, 2003. This sets out the history of WA legislation relating to Aboriginals and land, and states that the line was set at the 20th parallel [page 20], with the 25th parallel being used to divide administrative districts when Aldrich was appointed Deputy Chief Protector [page 17].

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Chapter 15 Equal Wages

2011-06-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

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We might think when The Northern Territory Aboriginal pastoral workers were finally granted equal pay in 1965 that this was only right and just, and long overdue. Unfortunately, in many ways it would only compound the damage whitefellas had already done.

To appreciate how this happened and the damage done, let’s look at

the changing attitudes of the pastoral workers’ union;
the laws in place at the time equal pay was granted;
changes in the government’s attitude to Aboriginals;
how the equal pay decision was made;
and what happened afterwards.

The Australian Union Movement

Trade Unionism in Australia was not only widespread and strong by the beginning of the 20^th Century, it provided the foundation on which the Labor Party was built.

In Australia, (most) people had freedom of association (unlike the English), and the right to go on strike and withdraw labour had not been outlawed in Australia.

Few Australians wanted to see Britain’s class system replicated here; it’s one thing to give entrepreneurs a higher income as a reward for the risks they take, and quite another for people to have privileges simply because they were born into the upper classes.

A great deal of the Union movement’s early support for a White Australia Policy grew from a determination not to let anyone work for less than an agreed minimum wage. Anyone – regardless of race – prepared to undercut wages was, and is to this day, ostracised as ‘scab labour’.

The determination to keep Australia white was partly good old fashioned racism, and partly a fear that ‘foreigners’ would accept lower wages. Of course, when a community is ostracised for any reason, they can’t be expected to feel any sense of loyalty to the majority group, so the fear of wages being undercut was a self-fulfilling prophecy (or karma).

The Northern Australian Workers Union (NAWU)

For quite some time the NAWU supported the White Australia Policy.

It’s an open secret that nobody liked the Chinese, not even that great melting pot America:

On anti-Chinese immigration in USA: Justice Harlan, in Plessy v Ferguson 1896, said Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens…[but] There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race.”

Just as the USA had restricted Chinese immigration, Australia sought to keep the Chinese out of Australia.

There were massacres of Chinese diggers on the goldfields.

*Contemporary accounts show reasons the rest of the population's attitudes to the Chinese were negative include:

Opium smoking was widespread [and some Europeans became addicted];
Drinking;
Gambling;
Brazenly offering to sell 'disgusting and filthy' pictures to Europeans;
Spread diseases such as leprosy [e.g. 27 cases in the Bendigo area];
Wasting water/ refusing other diggers access to water;
Unwillingness to convert to Christianity;
It was very rare for Chinese men to bring women with them.

Until the mid 20th Century, wowsers fought a long and dogged campaign to enforce their strict, pure, Christian standards on the rest of the European community. The opium smoking, drinking and gambling were not just degenerate vices, along with plain bad luck on the diggings these vices left many Chinese without the money they needed to survive and were believed to encourage all kinds of thievery and trickery.
Opium dens brought about the downfall of far too many European women. The shortage of Chinese women no doubt exacerbated this effect, but shortages of women had long been a problem in the Australian colonies so jealousy may have been an added factor in the undercurrent of mistrust.

One report in The Argus newspaper said
'... that all the vices which have been noticed are those which must be expected to flourish among a population composed wholly of males. The history of some of the Australian colonies, cursed with convictism, in which not the least evil was the disproportion of the sexes speaks eloquent of the social and moral plagues which such a state of things brings.'
[Readers should read into this what they will!]

An important idea - restated by Pauline Hanson in Parliament in 1996 - was the danger that Australia would be swamped by Asians. The principle objection in both eras is not to differences of race per se, but to the perceived unwillingness of newcomers to assimilate. In the 1850s more than in the 1990s this was obviously the case, the threat of separatism was that Europeans now settled in Australia, who had found a country with values that suited them, might lose that type and quality of life. Unable or unwilling to adopt Chinese values and their way of life, they might ultimately have to migrate from Australia .*

Away from the goldfields, many Chinese stayed and succeeded by managing to merge into the background.

Despite their willingness to treat Aboriginals as outsiders, the Union had long been aware of how badly Aboriginal stockmen and other pastoral workers were exploited.

In 1932 one member of the NAWU said of the conditions Aboriginals worked in on stations,

“A slave owner would not allow his slave to be decimated by preventable disease and starvation the same as these people are in the country or bush. If there is no slavery in the British Empire then the Northern Territory is not part of the British Empire, for it certainly exists here in its worst form.”

Despite this acknowledgement of Aboriginal reality, the Union had boycotted business owners in the past for hiring Aboriginals – not because of their colour but because of the threat to white jobs and wages.

This threat had been exacerbated by the depression of the 1930s when a large number of white men were unable to find work while Aboriginals, at least, were guaranteed rations.

The union was also worried because Aboriginal stockmen far outnumbered white workers in the Territory, and it would be impossible to visit hundreds of stations to sign them all up as union members.

Communication would be a problem, and there was a risk station owners might exert an undue influence on Aboriginal members.

After World War II the Union changed its position and worked with Aboriginals towards having the laws relating to Aboriginals changed.
Although the Union initially resisted the idea of equal pay for Aboriginal workers, by 1948 they had a change of heart – only to be told the Arbitration Commission had no power to act on Aboriginal rates of pay in the Northern Territory.

Acts relating to Northern Territory Aboriginals

A really, really rough guide to Australian Legislation (if you need one)

1. An Act (or Ordinance) is passed by government which

delegates authority to someone (such as a Protector) or some organisation (such as a Department); and
sets out who it affects (e.g. ‘an Aboriginal native of Australia; or a half-caste who lives with such Aboriginal native or lives …’); and
outlines the basic intent of the Act and what types of decisions should be made (e.g. decide how much an apprentice should be paid).

2. Regulations are then made which set out the decisions of the delegated authority (e.g. Aboriginal stockmen should be paid 5 shillings)

3. The Regulations are printed in a Government Gazette (that is, they are ‘Gazetted’)

A ward is effectively a child of a guardian (responsible ‘parent’). Under the Aboriginal Ordinances this would be ‘the State” or ‘the Protector’. The guardian then makes decisions a parent would ordinarily make relating to the ward’s welfare, managing the ward’s money and so on.

Initially, Protectors had to prove in each case that someone should be made a ward, but as there were so many cases, some Ordinances made all Aboriginals wards (under certain conditions). A ward would then have to apply for exemption from wardship.

…all of which reminds me of the contract scene from ‘A Night at the Opera’ …

Referred to by some as the “stud book”, a Register of Wards was kept by the Administrator of the Northern Territory. The idea was that any Aboriginal not listed must have applied for an exemption from being a ward.

This gazetted list was full of duplications, omissions and inaccuracies, reflecting the confusion caused when a person might have several different names, be identified by the wrong person, or move freely from one place to another.

---o0o---

New Northern Territory Ordinances 1953

In 1953 the Aboriginals Ordinance was replaced by the Welfare Ordinance and the Wards Employment Ordinance.

These new laws were thinly disguised as race-neutral documents.

In theory,

they would also apply to any white children made wards of the state;
Aboriginals would no longer automatically be deemed wards of the state, only becoming wards if the state decided they needed help;
Aboriginals who had merged with the modern world need no longer apply for an exemption in order to achieve the full benefits of Australian citizenship.

The new Assimilation Policy

The new Welfare Ordinance reflected a shift from the era of ‘Protection’ to a new era of ‘Assimilation’.

The old Protection era focused on the idea of ‘breeding out the colour’ of half-castes, or miscegenation.

The new policy of Assimilation was defined by Minister of Territories Paul Hasluck in 1951:

“Assimilation means in practical terms, that in the course of time it is expected that all persons of Aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia, will live like white Australians do. The acceptance of this policy governs all other aspects of native affairs administration.”

Under this policy, not just half-castes but full blood Aboriginals would be free – so long as they were no longer ‘Aboriginal’ in any way other than colour.

Hasluck was actually a voice of sanity in many respects, believing that some Aboriginals would need more help than others, and that absorbing Aboriginals into mainstream Australia would take time.

We might (quite rightly) interpret the Ordinance as patronising and interfering, or even promoting exploitation. It certainly showed whites were determined Aboriginals should abandon any trace of Aboriginal beliefs, practices or identity, so a cultural form of genocide was to continue.

On the other hand, if it had been implemented by people of good will and in the right spirit, the Ordinance might have been more constructive than it turned out to be.

Australian wages

When it comes to wages in Australia:

The basic wage is supposed to be a living wage; enough for a man, his wife and two children to live in ‘frugal comfort’.
An award wage is a basic wage plus an allowance for special skills or qualifications required in an industry.

When equal pay was discussed in a hearing of the Arbitration Commission in 1965, pastoralists complained they could not absorb increases in the Aboriginal wage. They not only wanted any wage increase to be phased in over a number of years, they insisted there should be an award allowance reducing the pay of Aboriginals who were slow, unreliable, or less skilled than other workers.
While some awards allow for slow workers, the idea there is that the employer would apply for permission to pay a lower wage to an individual, not a whole class of people, and certainly not to such a large number of people.
The Commission decided it was all or nothing - if Pastoralists wanted to only hire the best workers at the award rate and not employ others at all, then that is how it would have to be.

All references to Aboriginals were deleted.

Going Walkabout

Just one of the examples Pastoralists gave of Aboriginals unreliability was that they had a ‘habit of going walkabout’. For thousands of years Aboriginals survived by working only when they were hungry, and not all Aboriginals were keen to put in the extra effort white bosses expected.

There was a time when a white boss might be told, by an Aboriginal worker ‘we're going walkabout’. This is, more than anything, a polite Aboriginal way of explaining the unexplainable, of saying “we’re leaving for a while and we are not going to tell you where we are going or why’.

It wasn’t the ‘can’t-be-bothereds’ that drove Aboriginals to go bush from time to time, but secret business, sacred or family business, or a sorry time. These were not matters Aboriginals could or would freely discuss with outsiders.

The white perception that this leave-taking was purposeless was so widespread the expression ‘to go walkabout’ became part of the Australian language. If some thing 'went walkabout' it was lost or missing (like my car keys, maybe). Any person who ‘went walkabout’ was someone whose mind wandered because they lacked focus.

No one bothered to include Aboriginals in these wage negotiations. Given a chance, they might have pointed out they were reliable. The station work was seasonal and when required Aboriginals worked their buns off, often existing on rations that were not nourishing.

If given a chance they might have pointed out that no sane white person would bother doing more than their wage justified. They might have asked how anyone sitting on a horse not yet broken in could ‘go slow’.

On the other hand, some Aboriginals were more westernised and more suited to station work than others.
In many instances, it was an Aboriginal person who allocated Aboriginals to tasks, because they knew who could work with whom (based on relationships), who was free or who needed to go away for some reason, and so on.
Pastoralists wanted workers they could deal with directly, who would be literate, and had a 24/7/52 desire to work hard.

The new award

For all this, Pastoralists were quite aware of the likely disruption the award would cause. Instead of a part wage plus keep for a bunch of people, Aboriginals would now get one wage, and have to spread it around.
This is probably the opposite of what many Aboriginals were hoping for - they were hoping bosses would acknowledge a reciprocal obligation; Aboriginals would do their share of the work, and the bosses would make sure all the dependants have decent clothing and accommodation, and that kids would have a chance to start school and so on.

What the case summary shows is that Pastoralists, Unions and the Arbitration Commission alike had all made an effort to understand the reasons for Aboriginal economic and social practices, to understand the various stages Aboriginals were at in adapting to the whitefella world, and the probable impact of equal pay. (The decision certainly makes interesting reading for anyone who wants more detail of Aboriginal progress in the 1960s than I am offering here.)

Despite the arguments of the Pastoralists, the world was changing and by now there was no way Equal Pay could be denied. Different basic wages for different races were not an option. In handing down his decision, Chief Justice Kirby made it clear that awarding Aboriginals equal pay would create welfare problems and other government departments would have to step in and deal with them.

“The introduction of award coverage for aborigines will therefore come into operation on 1^st December 1968... The intervening period will enable the parties [to consider] questions such as accommodation and rations which may require change when aborigines are covered by the award.”

Kirby’s intention was to allow time for Pastoralists to make adjustments to their labour force, allow time for responsible government departments to plan housing, infrastructure, and rationing arrangements for those Aboriginals who might no longer have a place on stations in the future, and allow time for Aboriginals to decide how they would adapt to the changes.

A Queensland Trades & Labor Council Pamphlet

Before this decision was made there were around 600 Aboriginals employed in the Northern Territory pastoral industry, but a total 4,000 Aboriginals dependent on these jobs.

The consequences of this decision were felt in two main ways:

it led to the displacement of thousands of Aboriginal people
it precipitated more strike action, culminating in the famous Wave Hill walk off, setting in chain a whole swag of land rights problems.

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From * to * above text was expanded 12/07/2011 to discuss reasons for European resentment of the Chinese in 19th Century Australia.

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Chapter 14 The Blackfella's Eureka

2011-06-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

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The whitefella's Eureka

The original “Eureka” – a whitefella rebellion – took place in 1854 on the Victorian Goldfields when diggers [miners] had had enough of unreasonably priced mining licences, and the brutality with which the money for licences was collected. The rebellion, and the Eureka flag raised during the rebellion, came to represent the willingness of Australian people, when treated unjustly, to stand up to authority.

The Eureka Flag, designed 1854 by a Canadian

The Blackfella’s Eureka

The Blackfella’s Eureka had much the same spirit but was a far more important achievement.

During World War II – which for Australians started in September 1939 – many Aboriginal station-workers worked alongside whitefellas doing wartime type things like building roads, moving supplies and so on. For the first time, there was an awareness by station Aboriginals they could be treated decently, or as equals, and that away from station properties, whitefellas were actually paid regularly and reliably in cash.

Just how a white prospector named Don Mcleod came to be involved in the Blackfella’s Eureka depends on whose version of the story you trust, but the important parts of the story are not in dispute:

Don McLeod, who worked in the Pilbara region, agreed to help Aboriginals act to improve their situation on one condition: They needed to prove to him first that they could organise everybody to work together. Given the size of the area, the distances and differences between Aboriginals, this was a fairly large challenge.

In 1942, three Aboriginal law men escorted Don – for whom it was illegal to talk to more than 2 Aboriginals at a time – to a place called Skull Springs. For more than 6 weeks Aboriginals from around the state; including 23 language groups and 16 interpreters, spoke about their situation and what they might do. McLeod’s involvement seems to have taken the form of providing answers to questions. For example, when asked why Aboriginals could be caught by police and returned to a station if they left without permission, McLeod was horrified to discover how repressive the legislation relating to Aboriginal welfare actually was.

In 1946, 6,500 sq miles of the Plibara was sheep country

It was agreed that no action would be taken until the end of the war, with the 1^st of May 1946 eventually chosen as the date of the walk off.

One of the criticisms levelled at the action was that the whole business had been manipulated by white communists.
McLeod had at some stage been a member of the Communist Party, and it was the Western Australian Communist Party newspaper, The Worker’s Star, which had provided publicity while the WA commercial press had censored reports of the strike, either by saying nothing or being dismissive and negative when it did have something to say. Choosing Mayday – the international day for celebrating communism – confirmed, for many people, the idea that the whole business was a communist plot.

Not only did Eastern newspapers report more fully on the strike, the strike had attracted the support of church and other charitable organisations. More muscle was obtained with the support of 19 Western Australian trades unions, seven federal unions and four Trades and Labour Councils. The Port Hedland wharf workers banned any handling of wool from the sheep stations involved in the dispute.

Despite the widespread obsession amongst some politicians with trying to ban communism, full credit for organising the strike, taking action and seeing it through to the end belongs to no one but the Aboriginal workers themselves.

The resourcefulness with which Aboriginal organisers helped everyone know what day to walk off is impressive: Using scrap paper, they developed ‘calendars’ with big red circles around the date. Although ‘employees’ were confined to stations, there were always itinerant Aboriginals arriving at and leaving stations, so distributing calendars was not too hard.
On some stations, people who could not follow the calendars would just keep asking the white bosses how many days to the first of May.

On the 1^st of May, over 800 pastoral workers from two dozen stations walked off the job. Many white people were shocked – before they become furious – to think Aboriginals would be able to organise something so well.

To survive during the strike, Aboriginals made money by ‘yandying’ (surface mining) for gold and tin, or trading skins and pearl shells.

Wartime rationing was still in place, and station managers had sent the workers’ food coupons to the police station at Marble Bar. The police tried to bribe workers back by saying they wouldn’t hand over ration coupons, but the workers persisted. McLeod did explain the coupon system to the workers, but they were the ones who went and demanded the coupons be returned.

The strike lasted til 1949, when some of the workers were enticed back to stations by offers of a better rate of pay, though some workers did not go back at all. The strike had been as much about dignity as it had been about money.

Despite whitefella Australia raising union membership and strikes to an art form, this Pilbara strike still has the record for the longest strike in Australia’s history.

Although at one point McLeod had been arrested, as had some of the workers, the strike turned out quite well. One large group of workers were released when each of them had claimed to be the leader, and the Police Officer couldn’t name any individual so he couldn't charge them with any offence. McLeod was released on bail and ended up with a rather large fine.

This was not the first action taken by Aboriginals, but it was the first strike over wages and conditions.

Two encouraging things resulted from the strike:

For the first time, Aboriginals from different clans and language groups had joined together to achieve something, without letting traditional differences influence them.

The workers themselves were able to prove to themselves that they could achieve for themselves.

A movement grew out this experience which is sometimes called the ‘Pindan” movement – pindan being the name of the red, Pilbara sand.

Some of the workers registered a mining company; this venture ultimately failed, but then the group split and two stations were bought, owned and operated by Aboriginals. Some of that land has been handed to the traditional owners.

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Chapter 13 The Pastoral Industry

2011-06-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

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The pastoral [grazing] industry which developed from the 1840s onwards had a special role to play in shaping Aboriginal Australia.

Early Days

James “Hungry Jim’ Tyson (1819-1898).

Establishing their first successful grazing venture on a half million acre property in south-central New South Wales, Jim and his brother began building a cattle empire just in time for the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s. When the gold rush started, he moved his cattle south and set up business as a butcher and, with a knack for good timing, sold his butchery just before the gold rush collapsed.

The first of the “cattle kings”, Jim eventually owned a string of stations (ranches) ranging from Queensland to Victoria. Making good use of ‘the long paddock’, as the overland stock routes were called, he not only sold beasts to the Sydney and Brisbane markets, but also used a Victorian property as a ‘feedlot’, fattening beasts before sending them to market.

Hungry Jim sank bores on his properties and, despite his legendary frugality, spent money making sure he always had water. He did so well, at one stage he was able to lend financial support to the failing state of Queensland.

A great part of his business involved moving stock from one state to another, his largest property straddling the Queensland / New South Wales border. It should be no surprise he was an early supporter of the Constitutional Movement which aimed, amongst other things, to guarantee free trade between the states.

Patrick Durack (1834-1898)

Initially claiming thousands of acres in south west Queensland, Durack stocked that land and sold it to settlers moving in behind him. He later took more than two years to move over 7,000 head of cattle 4,800 kms (3,000 miles) to the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Sir Sidney Kidman (1857-1935)

Kidman was another of the Cattle Kings: Setting out to drought-proof his properties, instead of sinking bores he simply bought more properties.

While Hungry Jim had developed the industry in the eastern states, Kidman concentrated on central and southern Australia. He made a great deal of his fortune supplying meat in mining areas including Broken Hill. At one stage Sir Sid owned about 3% of the Australian mainland, and his company still owns what is the largest station in Australia today, the Anna Creek Station.

Nat Buchanan 1(826-1901)

Another man who was important to the pastoral industry was the Irish born Nat Buchanan. A failure as a property owner, Nat spent the greater part of his life droving stock across the top end of Australia.

1 Hungry Jim; 2 Sidney Kidman; 3 Victoria River Downs; 4 Elsey Station

Size is Everything

The north-west corner of Australia, near the WA /NT border was the home of Victoria River Downs. While huge-mungous when first established, it wasn’t long before the original partners had to hand Victoria River Downs back to their bankers; parts of the station were sold, but it still exists today.

Largest Ranch in USA (King Ranch, Texas)	825,000 acres
Largest Station in Australia today (Anna Creek Station)	6,000,000 acres
Largest ever in Australia (Victoria River Downs)	10,255,000acres

Different sources provide different figures setting out the size of Australian properties but I think the confusion, in part, is due to the difficulties involved in converting square miles to square kilometres, but most sources have the same figures when they talk in terms of acres. Apparently, the King Ranch in Texas is about the size of Rhode Island.

Recently, after 10 years of drought, Anna Creek was only running 3,000 head of cattle, or one beast per 2,000 acres. The number of beasts per acre held on any property will depend on the amount and type of feed available – the recommended rate for central Kansas in the U.S.A. is 1 for every 3 acres.

It had been believed, for a long time, that a great portion of Australia was wasteland and therefore unsellable, but when pastoralists started to take up the land in spite of its poor condition, the government was able to derive some income by charging for pastoral leases.

Another Feudal System

As pastoralists moved further into remote areas in the second half of the 19^th Century, they naturally moved on to Aboriginal land. Unlike farmers with small holdings close to cities, station owners or managers discovered that Aboriginals could be very useful. What evolved in these areas was a new type of feudal system for providing answers to the economic questions of what to produce, how to produce it, and how to share what was produced.

Benefits to Aboriginals of Staying on Pastoral Leases

Less likely to be shot if they could be watched;
Able to stay on their own country;
Freedom to tend to spiritual obligations;
Freedom to retain most of their culture and language;
Able to recommend alternatives if a sacred site was at risk of being disturbed;
Elderly, children or relatives passing through had somewhere to stay;
(Depending on the morals of station managers) access to food, education, clothing and medical help;
A sense of purpose and achievement when working on the station.

Benefits to Station Owners or Managers;

Less likely to lose stock to uncontrolled hunting parties;
Access to knowledge of land, seasons, water sources;
Cheap labour when it was most needed;
Aboriginals could make up for the lack of fencing by monitoring stock movements over country they knew.

Police/Protectors

Reliant on Station owners/Managers for rations or meat
“good behaviour” of Aboriginals kept Station owners happy
Having both parties in one place made it easier for Protectors, who were working on their own.

The success of this arrangement – of mutually interdependent obligations – varied depending on places Aboriginals could go to if unhappy, how desperate the Station Owners were for help, and the values of the Station Owners and/or their white station hands.

Aboriginals took to station work as if born to it. (Well, the men perhaps, I don’t think I would say the same for “domestic” staff, or women who were often used/abused).

Naturally, there were downsides to this arrangement.

Laws affecting Aboriginals on Stations

Western Australia

Before it was granted self-government, the state constitution required a portion of money be set aside from each budget for Aboriginal Affairs. A few years after self-government, this was removed, and the Protection Act re-written.

‘Natives” were not to leave their place of “employment” without written permission of their employer or a police officer. (i.e. Station owners could get away with brutality).

It was also illegal for any white person to speak to a congregation of 2 or more natives with the intention of encouraging them to leave or cause some other trouble.

Northern Territory

A few years after the federal government took control of the Territory, station owners needed a licence to hire Aboriginals, and were required to pay them up to five shillings a week.
To avoid this obligation, station owners could show on an annual return how many (unproductive) dependants were living on the station. Most station owners received subsidies based on how many dependants they said they were looking after.

Queensland

A portion of all wages was to be lodged with the Queensland government for deposit into a trust fund. When Aboriginals wrote asking to withdraw funds to buy something, they were usually told they didn’t need or couldn’t have what they were planning to buy.

Money matters

White station hands did not need cash. Quite often, they would get paid 6 months’ wages at a time, go to the nearest big town and blow the lot. Nonetheless, they understood the nature and purpose of money.

Never handling cash, Aboriginals developed little or no understanding of how money worked, how to budget, or the possibility of saving. Whatever they were given or took from the station store was charged to their account, at whatever price the station owner wanted to charge. Like many children exploited in third world countries today, Aboriginals might suddenly learn they were actually in debt: The longer they kept working, the bigger the debt.

Naturally, any Aboriginal could go to the store when they wanted something and just ‘book it up’ to someone else who was working on the station, with no idea of the consequences.

Nothing in this feudal system helped Aboriginals become aware of the idea of saving (or deferred gratification), and it preyed on the traditional rule that what belongs to one belongs to everybody.

Stolen Wages

In every state, there was an arrangement of some sort to ensure Aboriginal earnings were kept in trust. Many half-castes from settlements, schools or missions were required to leave and start working at 13 or 14, as domestics, farm hands or in ‘apprenticeships’.

A (federal government) senate committee inquired into the nature and extent of trust fund or other payments which had not been given to the people who earned them.

The final report, Unfinished business: Indigenous stolen wages was released in December 2006. It contains an exhaustive outline of the arrangements under various state Protection Acts, and responses from state governments with their estimates of numbers of people, amounts, lost records and so on.

Before the report was released, the New South Wales government had already established an Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme. Payments under this scheme were expected to be finalised in 2010.

The Queensland Government later established a stolen wages and savings (reparations scheme); this has been criticised as mean and inadequate, especially compared to the NSW scheme.

Remaining states and the Federal Government (who administered the Northern Territory from 1912) have been dragging their feet.

Sometimes an apology simply isn’t good enough.

Station Life – Before the Equal Wages Case

The movie Australia provides a reasonable picture of what these stations were once like. During World War II, there was a great trek with cattle to prevent the Japanese taking them, but it travelled from north-western Australia in a southerly direction.

A 1946 movie The Overlanders, also based on this journey, starred Chips Rafferty, Australia’s answer to John Wayne.

You can see some clips from this movie on a National Film and Sound Archive website. Not so schmaltzy as the movie Australia, the Overlanders shows that Aboriginal stockmen were a vital part of the whole industry.

You can also take a peek at some clips from another movie, We of the Never Never, made in 1982. It was based on a novelised autobiography by Jeanne Gunn which, in keeping with the times, was published under her husband’s name Mrs Aeneas Gunn.

Jeanne only spent a year at Elsey Station (number 4 on the map above) before her husband died, but she provides a contemporary account of life on a station at the close of the 19^th Century. This story looks at the question of whether whitefella women had a place in the outback, and at the relationships between Aboriginals and whitefellas.

The book Kings in Grass Castles by Mary Durack (Patrick’s niece) is another classic story of Australia’s pastoral industry.

Like government records and other archival material, personal stories can tell us something about early Australia, but both sources should be approached with an open mind. Daisy Bates' book The Passing of the Aborigines – there’s that old vanishing race story again – was on one of my reading lists at school, but it has since emerged that Daisy was either a pathological liar or something of a fruitcake, (possibly both).

The families I came from all settled in north eastern Victoria around 1840-1850, which was Daung Wurrung country. There are many stories of my own family that have been passed down to me, but none of them refer to Aboriginals. In this case, silence probably speaks volumes.

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Shilling: Before Australia changed to decimal currency in 1966, our money system was pounds, shillings and pence (£/S/d). 5 shillings is about 50 cents but of course it was worth a bit more back then - one source says the Aboriginal wage in one state was about 1/8 of the whitefella wage.

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Chapter 12 The 1967 Referendum

2011-06-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

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Frank O'Sullivan was an Aboriginal working on a cattle station in 1899. He was allowed to vote at a state level because the Northern Territory was administered by South Australia, a state which had given Aboriginals the vote. But Frank didn't vote because he didn't know he could.

Once the Constitution came into effect in 1901 he was also allowed to vote at a federal level because he was entitled to vote at a state level. But none of this really mattered, because he didn't know.

He did find out in 1902 that he had been entitled to vote but by then it was too late, because a new law said Aboriginals could not vote at a federal level unless they had already registered.

In 1949 he heard that Aboriginals were now allowed to enrol to vote at a federal level if they were entitled to enrol to vote at a state level - or if they had served in the Defence Forces. He had kept working on the cattle station during the war because he was in an essential industry, so he couldn't use the Defence Forces angle, but he thought the state vote angle was okay. He went along to enrol and was told he could no longer enrol for South Australia as the Northern Territory was now administered by the federal government, and he dipped out again.

By 1967 he was getting a bit long in the tooth, but was pleased there might be a referendum to change the constitution to give Aboriginals the right to vote. He could have voted in the referendum but he didn't know Aboriginals had been allowed to vote at a federal level since 1962 whether they could vote at a state level or not.

I reckon if he had lived until 1983 and learned that voting was now compulsory for Aboriginals - as it had been for whitefellas since 1924 - he might have laughed. In fact, now that the government was actively asking Aboriginals to enrol, he might wish he was still here so he could say something...

The Constitution on Aboriginals

It’s a popular but mistaken belief that Aboriginals were first given the right to vote in the 1967 referendum.

Although I was a teenager in 1967 and unable to vote in the referendum, I heard many discussions about it. I recall there was a great deal of confusion over its wording or legal meaning. The general impression I received from the adults in my life was that the referendum:

· would give Aboriginals citizenship; and

· would give Aboriginals the right to vote; and

· that these changes were long overdue.

Nonetheless, it would be rude of me to suggest that nobody understood the real meaning of the referendum’s proposals.

There are only 3 main sections in the original constitution that refer directly or even indirectly to Aboriginals. These included:

· Aboriginal voting rights (S 41);

· the Commonwealth could make special laws with respect to anyone except Aboriginals (S 51); and

· Aboriginal people should not be counted in the census (s 127).

In part, the confusion may have arisen after the Warburton Ranges scandal showed whitefellas what was being done (or not done) in their name. It was widely believed the Federal Government had done nothing to help Aboriginals in the past was because they had no Constitutional power over a state matter.

Aboriginal, white and mixed groups campaigning for change were looking for full voting rights, and full recognition of Aboriginal citizenship. Posters urging people to vote Yes in this referendum carried simple messages such as “Vote Yes for Aboriginal Rights”, and “Right Wrongs Write Yes for Aborigines”.

A Petition's Progress

We might wonder why it took ten years for the referendum campaign to finally achieve its goal.

Paul Hasluck, Minister for the Territories, pointed out to campaigners that Aboriginals "born in Australia are Australian citizens by virtue of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948-58".
Between the lines of a letter to one of the campaign leaders, he implied that if Aboriginals were at a disadvantage in terms of what they could or could not do, it might be a state law that was the problem.

Prior to this, he had written to another petitioner saying "Most of the practical work which can be done to advance the welfare of [Aboriginals]... has to be done in the States by State Departments... ".
His view was that state departments of Lands, Health, Agriculture, Child Welfare and so on would be in the best position to help advance Aboriginals.
If the federal government got involved, they would have to use state departments to deliver services anyway.

The Nexus Question

Another 1967 referendum question – unrelated to Aboriginal issues – asked Australians to alter Section 24 of the constitution, which originally fixed the size of the House of Representatives at twice the size of the Senate. In other words, this question was designed to change the link or nexus between the size of the two houses of the Federal Parliament.

It's possible this “nexus” question was the main reason the government finally agreed to a referendum in the first place. It has been suggested the question relating to Aboriginals was something of an afterthought – perhaps in the hope that people voting yes to the Aboriginal rights question would be more likely to vote Yes to the nexus proposal as well.

The Vote

State voting rights had been granted (or withdrawn) in the following years:

South Australia	1856 (Aboriginals included)
Victoria	1857 (Aboriginals included)
New South Wales	1858 (Aboriginals included)
Queensland	1859 (after separating from New South Wales) – in 1885 Aboriginals were specifically excluded
Western Australia	1893 – (Aboriginals were specifically excluded)
Tasmania	1896 Aboriginals included by inference as they were not specifically excluded.

Some of these (male) voting rights had residence and/or property qualifications.

Votes were granted to women before federation as follows:

SA – 1894 (Aboriginals included)

WA - 1899

In 1902 the federal government did not stop Aboriginals from voting, it legislated to stop them from enrolling to vote. This is more or less like the literacy tests used in America to stop African-Americans from voting before the Civil Rights Movement had achieved its goals.
This attempt to thwart the Australian Constitution was ruled invalid in 1925.

In 1949 The Commonwealth Electoral Act restored the federal vote to those Aboriginals who were entitled to vote in state elections, whether they had enrolled before 1901 or not.

In 1962, the Commonwealth Electoral Act finally allowed all Aboriginal people to enrol to vote in federal elections, regardless of whether they were enrolled to vote in state elections.

Western Australia gave Aboriginals a state vote in 1962, with Queensland waiting til 1965.

The 1967 Referendum – at least in legal terms – had nothing to do with voting rights. The saddest part of this story is that those Aboriginals who did have the right to vote on the questions asked in the referendum, did not necessarily know they had that right.

Educational programs and mobile polling booths have since helped increase the Aboriginal vote in remote areas – with mobile polling booths benefiting white voters as well.

Laws for the benefit of Aboriginals?

Section 51 of the constitution originally said:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:-

The people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws.

Effectively, after federation, the states were welcome to continue whatever they had been doing to “protect” Aboriginals in their own state, and the federal government was not welcome to intervene.

This section was not really about Aboriginals, but about solving other “problems” related to keeping Australia white.
The words “any race” could naturally include Chinese, (Asian) Indians, indentured labourers from the South Sea Islands, “Ghans” or Malays (though not New Zealand’s Maori who, because of the Treaty of Waitangi, were British citizens).

The new federal government agenda included - amongst other things - repatriation of indentured labourers who had been lured to Australia from the Pacific Islands.

One of the 1967 referendum questions asked voters if they wanted to alter the wording of this Section 51, to remove the phrase relating to making special laws for Aboriginals.

Most Australians believed that by deleting this reference to Aboriginals, the federal government was finally ready to step in and take over Aboriginal Affairs from the states.

Yet the federal government had already had power over Aboriginal Affairs in the Northern Territory since 1912 and hadn’t done a great deal for Aboriginals there, so there was no reason to expect any improvement.

Usually, when a referendum is put to the people of Australia, an argument for the proposition and an argument against the proposition are both presented to voters, in writing. In 1967, there wasn’t a No case prepared for the proposed changes with respect to Aboriginals – both sides of the political divide supported the changes.

Counting Aboriginals in the national census

Another part of the referendum question covered Section 127 (the “census” issue).

When the Constitution was first agreed to, Section 127 said

In reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.

From time to time various governments or other parties had made estimates of the numbers of Aboriginals in one place or another, but there was no nationwide, inclusive census until the 1967 Referendum result changed Section 127.

The census question was not about seeing if the Aboriginal population was in decline, or growing; in many states numbers were already counted by Protectors.

The underlying intention of the clause, in 1901, was to provide a formula for calculating the distribution of funds to the states, and the apportionment of parliamentary seats to the states, based on the size of a state's population.

The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders suggested

“This clause (in Section 127) made ‘the original Australians’ feel they were ‘a race apart in the land of their birth’ and it insulted them by implying they were not worth counting, indeed the national census enumerated the number of sheep and cattle but not the number of Aboriginal people.”

To be fair, it is difficult to imagine how it would have been possible to conduct an accurate census in 1901, given the nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles of some Aboriginals, and the enormous distances that would need to be covered – at best by horse or camel.

Many Aboriginals were still living as nomads. The last ‘first-contact’ nomads were located in 1964, when a handful of Aboriginals, who were still living a traditional lifestyle, were seen in a rocket test area. They managed to elude whitefellas for quite some time before being coaxed away and out of danger.

The difficulties of counting Aboriginals in 1901 notwithstanding, so many Aboriginal people were on reserves or in missions, or otherwise living in one place, that there is really no excuse for failing to count some Aboriginals in the census.

The Referendum Results

Of the 44 referendum questions put to voters since federation, only 8 have been approved. The Aboriginal question received the highest Yes vote ever. Ironically enough, the nexus question put to voters at the same time – the original reason for having a referendum in 1967 – ended up on the shelf with all the other losers.

The Yes vote on the Aboriginal question was close to 91%. The No vote was highest in the states with the largest number of Aboriginals, and, in other states, highest in the rural or remote areas where there were large numbers of Aboriginals.

In retrospect, this was not a surprising pattern. In some areas with a high Aboriginal population, there is even today some lingering animosity, and distaste for the squalor and unacceptably anti-social behaviour of some Aboriginal fringe-dwellers.

I can't imagine an Aboriginal committing any crime no white person has ever committed; the problem seems to be one of visibility. From an Aboriginal perspective, visibility is not the problem: Getting drunk in public or engaging in acts of domestic violence is something white people are hypocritical enough to keep private.

Despite the widespread lack of information about Aboriginals, or lack of power to influence the lot of Aboriginals, there have always been whitefellas fighting alongside Aboriginals for Aboriginal rights. More importantly, when we consider the absolute rubbish we were fed as a part of our education, and the accusations we are an indifferent and racist people, the 91% yes vote is pretty high, really.

The beginning of the end of a bad beginning

The

· Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act 1908;

· Maternity Allowance Act 1912;

· Child Endowment Act 1941;

· The Widow’s Pension Act 1942; and the

· Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act 1944

all excluded Aboriginals. These exclusions were progressively dismantled between 1959 and 1966 - before the Referendum. Some of the original legislation had excluded Aboriginals who were 'nomadic or primitive'.

In the early 1970s it is estimated about 45% of Aboriginals had no health insurance of any kind, and were (like some other Australians) dependent on the charitable inclinations of doctors.

Medibank (which has since morphed into Medicare) first provided free, universal health cover to Australians in July 1975.

In 1968, the Commonwealth commenced funding Indigenous programs in health, education, housing and employment by subsidising state government programs.

Given the political will, this could have happened a heck of a lot sooner.

The 1967 referendum did not lead to any great change except at census time, but it was a turning point in Australia’s legal history.

In 1972, Labor swept into office with Gough Whitlam at the helm. No lover of state governments, his was to be the first federal government which used the new constitutional wording to actively intervene in Aboriginal Affairs.

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The reason our Constitution could not deny Maoris the right to vote was because of a treaty signed by the British in 1840. In the 1840 of Waitangi the Maori

“gave the Crown rights to govern and to develop British settlement (in New Zealand), while the Crown guaranteed Maori full protection of their interests and status, and full citizenship rights.”

Britain had exerted pressure on Australia not to make a White Australia part of our new 1901 constitution: A great proportion of the British Empire’s citizens weren’t white, and Britain wanted all of its subject colonies to be sensible about this fact.

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Chapter 11 The Campaign for a Referendum

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Clueless

Australia has, until recent times, been quite a backward country.

Few of us knew what was happening to Aboriginals, just as we had no idea what was happening to a lot of whitefella kids. Apart from problems like distance (especially distance from large Aboriginal populations), communication was limited (it was 1968 before we had a telephone in my home), and local television content was not only limited but quite ludicrous.

When I started school in 1959 the curriculum was pretty much the same as it had been 30 years before.

School

The Victorian State School readers for grades one to eight, used as a literacy text and teaching tool, were virtually unchanged from the late 1920s the early 1960s. One of the benefits of using the same text year after year was that they could be handed down from sibling to sibling, or continually recycled in other ways. One of the costs was educational stagnation.

The stories and poems I read at school (predominantly British and occasionally Australian) were the same as those my mother had read during the depression. The rare mention of Aboriginals in standard readers was patronising to say the least, and there was no mention of any “current events”.

The supplementary ‘School Paper’ used in the 1960s – the school equivalent of a newspaper – was more current, but similarly patronising. Regular issues provided a promising and sanitised impression of Aboriginal progress, and contentment with reserve or mission life. In short, they contained a lot of what we might now call “propaganda”.

A sample from another of my old school books shows that it was still widely accepted in the early 1960s that ‘full-blood’ Aboriginals would soon disappear from the face of the earth.

The sample Arithmetic page shown here is from an earlier edition than the one I used at school, as farthings (quarter pennies) were no longer in circulation. Nonetheless, the layout of these books was consistent from one generation to the next. The picture and story of the boys going to a fair is content obviously imported from England. (Australians don’t go to ‘fairs’ – we go to fetes, carnivals or shows.)

Growing up White in a White World

None of this – if you’ll pardon the expression – coloured my opinions of race because I was born into an extremely white world. There simply weren’t any people in my world I could associate, in either a negative or positive way, with what I was reading.
For most of us, these references to race were made in a contextual vacuum.

We did have charity boxes at school with pictures of ‘little black babies’ on them. (Donating pennies to the ‘missions’ meant supporting the efforts of the Catholic Church to spread god’s word, not mission in the sense of Government Policies relating to Aboriginals.)

The first time I consciously remember seeing an Aboriginal - and being aware he was Aboriginal - was at my local pool when, one day, a whole bunch of brown-skinned, blonde-haired kids arrived for a swim. Naturally, every white (or orange speckled) kid at the pool was curious and, naturally, I paddled up to one of these newcomers and asked him if he was a piccaninny: An excellent judge of character, he just looked at me like I was an idiot… so I paddled away again.

I grew up in Victoria, and the state of Queensland was so far away it might have been the moon. A friend of my uncle would sometimes come from Queensland to stay for a week or two and, although I now guess he must have been Aboriginal, at the time I just thought he had a really good tan; I’d been taught at school that Queensland is a very sunny state. Race was never an issue in my world before the 1967 Referendum.

None of the above is to deny the very strong, negative feelings of whitefellas who lived in towns where Aboriginals were fringe-dwellers, or saw customs practised which were, from a white point of view, abhorrent.
Spittle flew from the mouth of a white woman when she raged at me, one day, ‘you didn’t have to grow up with them!’

It was not until non-Anglo Europeans arrived in large numbers after World War II that many of us ever had to question our assumptions about what was 'normal' or 'different', or even how insignificant some of the differences really were.
Unfortunately, it seems some people [like the 'lady' who spits] don't question their assumptions enough.

Enquiries and Censorship

It would be wrong to think nobody knew how bad conditions were on many of the Aboriginal Missions of Reserves in the first half of the 20th Century. If our governments are good for nothing else, they are world champions in the art of initiating endless inquiries into inconvenient truths - then finding reasons to do nothing.
The 1890s depression, World War I, the 1929 depression, World War II... were all deemed higher priorities than Aboriginal Welfare.

A convention held in Melbourne in 1929 by organisations who wanted some action on Aboriginal issues resulted in a succession of further inquiries and recommendations. Aboriginal affairs were gradually becoming politicised, Aboriginals would soon become more active themselves and, Heaven help us, some of the whitefellas stirring things up were Communists.

In 1946, the Western Australian born poet Dorothy Hewett went to the Pilbara region to report on a strike by Aboriginal stockmen. Western Australia’s commercial press effectively censored all reports of the strike and the Communist Party’s newspaper was the only one to give the story any coverage at all.

The Warburton Ranges Scandal

Following World War II, the Australian and British governments agreed to cooperate for the purposes of testing rockets and atomic bombs in a desert area of South Australia. Some of the Aboriginals in this area were removed before testing began to other parts of South Australia, and some to Western Australia.

In late 1956 a Western Australian Parliament Select Committee tabled the results of an inquiry into the living conditions on the Aboriginal reserve in the Warburton Ranges. Christmas came and went.

In January 1957 the Communist Party paper, the Tribune, continued its support of Aboriginals by reporting on the inquiry’s outrageous findings. East coast newspapers picked up the story and, as always, demanded positive action.

In February, a South Australian newspaper published an equally outraged rebuttal, the journalist claiming the inquiry’s criticisms were grossly exaggerated. Further, the journalist claimed, white settlement had made life easier for the natives. At that stage, Australian television was only six months old, and newspapers were assumed to report whatever people needed to know.

A pamphlet rebutting the rebuttal was then widely distributed.

The inquiry into conditions in the Laverton-Warburton Range Area had been chaired by William Grayden. When the truth of the report was questioned in the press, Grayden returned to the area with cameras, inviting Pastor Doug Nicholls to accompany him.

The resulting footage became a documentary titled Manslaughter and was shown not only on TV (which would have reached a very limited audience) but in public meetings around Australia.

Pastor Nicholls said "I wish I hadn't seen the pitiable squalor, the sights of my people starving - the most shocking sights I have ever seen. Never, never can I forget."

Just a few months later a petition was launched, demanding a referendum to change the constitution and make the federal government responsible for Aboriginal Affairs. The campaign for a referendum lasted ten years.

The It's A Conspiracy Theory Theory (Part 2)

Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls was quite an active campaigner for Aboriginal people, but obviously even he was surprised as much as he was shocked by what he saw.

When Keith Windschuttle says the Stolen Generations is a myth because otherwise Aboriginal leaders would have spoken about it, I think his argument is a bit strained. Few Aboriginals were able to move around freely for many years, and it was only in the 1970s that Aboriginals really had a chance to meet and talk with each other about what had happened to them in different parts of the country.

I think Windschuttle is way off the mark - if Aboriginals were supposed to have known, that means everyone must have known. If everyone knew what was happening and we still did nothing about it, this would be a more shameful blot on our history than it already is.

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fringe dwellers: people who live on the edges of a town, in really poor conditions

To learn more about Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls, MBE:
http://www.afl.com.au/News/NEWSARTICLE/tabid/208/Default.aspx?newsId=59827

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Chapter 10 Size is Everything

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Low population, little infrastructure

In Chapter 6 we looked at the size of Australia, and the communication problems caused by the distance between our small, scattered colonies.

In the 1860s, ten years after the Australian gold rushes had got under way, most of those who had left to join the Californian gold rush had returned. Many more also made their way here, but the whitefella population was still only around the one million mark.

Many people wishing to migrate from Europe chose a 2 week trip to America over a 7-10 week trip to Australia. Private investment funds, too, were quite sensibly finding their way to America rather than Australia. This left our governments - with a very low number of taxpayers - to provide for essential services and infrastructure.
Australia was well on its way to becoming a mixed economy rather than one driven by the prospect of reward for effort or investment risk.

Towards the close of the 20th Century there was a shift to privatisation of services which had once been the responsibility of government. There is a tendency now for governments to think of the next election rather than plan for the country's longer-term needs. Growth in infrastructure has also been held back by the usual cycle of natural disasters - drought, flood, bushfire and cyclone.

Our 5 yearly census is due soon [2011] so the following figures are possibly dated. While they don't account for recent natural disasters either here or in the United States, they can still give us an indication of the infrastructure problems we face.

We're so short of places to land planes, signs like this one are found in remote areas, including Hwy 1 across the Nullarbor.

There is little danger of being hit by a plane while driving across the Nullarbor, you are more likely to die of boredom, or perhaps encounter other types of trouble:

Transport is an expensive business and, with a small population, goods must travel further to reach customers, making transport a significant portion of the cost of everything we buy.

Where is Woop Woop?

Woop Woop is an imaginary Australian town in the middle of nowhere. It's a useful expression in a big country where roughly 80% of all people live within 100 kms (60 miles) of the coastline. Put another way, this means 20% of Australians are a great distance from important services and facilities, such as specialist medical treatments, business services or other essentials.

Just one of the important determinants of a healthy community is the number of opportunities for social interaction. For me, this might mean travelling ten minutes or an hour to visit someone, or to see a live show.

For some people living in the outback, an opportunity for social interaction might mean having a conversation with someone new for the first time in weeks, or even just having any conversation at all for the first time in weeks.

Remote is not just something we use for TV viewing

The United States Census Bureau website provides general population figures in two geographical categories:

· Urban, and

· Rural.

(I'm sure there are lots of more complex measures, but these are the straightforward classifications offered in the 'first glance' section of the website.)

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) most commonly publishes population figures in five geographical categories (again, different categories are used by different government services):

1. Major Cities

2. Inner Regional Australia

3. Outer Regional Australia

4. Remote Australia

5. Very Remote Australia

These Australian categories measure how far a community is from the nearest town of more than 250,000 people, assuming a town must be at least this size before it provides access to:

· all the services a person might need; and

· the best opportunities for social interaction.

It doesn’t matter what these services are: Like a consumer price index, it’s just a useful way of making a comparison.

When they say these measures reflect how far people are from services, this is based on road distance. A quick glance back at the charts comparing our airport infrastructure might provide one clue about why measuring remoteness in road distances is appropriate.

Some of our capital cities are in Woop Woop

The capitals of the Northern Territory and Tasmania, Darwin and Hobart, are not classified as major cities. In fact, on the Remoteness scale above, the busiest parts of the Northern Territory are in category 3: Outer Regional Australia.

“In any given Remoteness Area there may be rich people, poor people, indigenous and non-indigenous, graziers, manufacturers, town dwellers and rural people.”

Some people who live in the middle of nowhere do live in towns, but still have extremely limited access to services, or opportunities for social interaction.

Although Tasmania is one of the oldest States and reasonably well developed, people who need specialist surgery or cancer treatments must either fly or travel by overnight ferry and car to Melbourne in Victoria.

Access to services, by road, in remote or very remote areas

Even in good weather, many outback roads are dangerous, just one of the problems being “bulldust holes” – craters in the road surface which have filled up with dust. Driving into one of these at high speed can completely wreck the front end of a car.

Can You Spot the Bulldust Hole?

Once it rains, roads become severely chewed up and impassable, especially while still wet if used by road-trains.

Signs advising whether or not roads are closed can be found everywhere in the outback. Many roads are maintained by mining companies or other private concerns, and the cost of grading them before they can be used again (once they dry out) is quite substantial. Penalties for driving on closed roads are severe.

…Road distance … changes considerably when a road is cut by flooding and travel time can vary considerably with road conditions which in turn can change from season to season or even from day to day…

The following communities in the Northern Territory, for example, had no effective road access due to seasonal flooding for over 100 days in the past year (2000) and their… score is not… a good indicator of their relative remoteness. They are, however, already in the Very Remote Class.”

Community	Population
Nhulunbuy	3695
Yirrkala	521
Oenpelli	741
Maningrida	1328
Milingimbi	941
Ramingining	473
Gapuwiyak	447
Numbulwar	619
Lajamanu	591

(A good way of picturing how remote these places are – in terms of access to services – is to search for them using Google Maps – satellite view.)

To get a good picture of just how much of Australia is remote or very remote, you can use this link:
http://www.doctorconnect.gov.au/internet/otd/Publishing.nsf/Content/locator

If people are genuinely unable to go to the services they need, the services must go to them. This sort of compromise is almost financially and physically impossible. When it comes to health, however, time and distance are important. About 24% of Aboriginals live in what might as well be called the middle of nowhere. Nowhere is a special place where you can actually hear silence.

In remote areas there is little chance of gathering economies of scale, not just for private enterprise but also for governments which must consider:

1. how much “bang” taxpayers get for their bucks; and (let’s be frank)

2. how many votes every budget dollar can buy.

A weakness of the five measures of remoteness, acknowledged by the ABS, is that they do not measure

“impediments to ‘accessibility’ such as time/cost of travel and the socio-economic capability of the community to overcome these impediments.”

In other words, if people don’t have access to a working vehicle, they can’t get to important services.

If the problem of delivering services is a thorny one, it became a whole lot pricklier with each successive attempt to solve questions of land rights. Before we get to land rights, however, there are some other topics to tackle: With a clear idea of distance and communication problems, it's time to move on - to the 1967 referendum !

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Woop Woop: I'm not sure who dreamt up this name, but it's a good one. We have lots of places with names like Wagga Wagga, Woy Woy, or Gumly Gumly.
graziers: people who farm sheep or cattle.

road trains: trucks with up to 100 trailers attached. The record was 112 trailers, a total of 1 ½ kms in length hauled by one truck.

economies of scale: the more you make of some item or the more customers you have, the cheaper it becomes to make one unit of that item, or to serve one customer.

bang for your bucks: how much you achieve with each dollar spent

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Chapter 9 Separation

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Separation

Up until the mid 20^th Century, the western world did not worry much about the significance to children of attachment to and separation from their mothers/parents, and how these affect the lives of separated children.

Separation can take many forms, such as:

being dumped in an orphanage so parents can take a holiday;
being removed from a dysfunctional family when there is no other option;
being betrayed within an apparently stable home; or even
the unthinkable displacement that follows military conflict.

The Consequences of Separation

Chief Protector Neville’s theory that it’s best to take children when they are very young fails to consider, seriously enough, the impact on the family from which they are taken. It also fails quite badly to consider the impact on the child himself.

Infants go through stages of developing a sense of themselves as individuals.

The temper tantrums of a two year old mark the beginning of a child’s realisation that she is a separate person from her mother figure. During these ‘terrible twos’ a child comes to understand

· there are rules;

· she does not make the rules;

· she needs to work out what the rules are;

· she will be happier when she understands and follows the rules.

(If my own behaviour as a teenager is any guide, the terrible twos can go on for a very long time!)

No matter how independent a young boy may appear, he does not really let go of his mother-figure’s apron-strings until about 7 years of age. Until then, no matter how adventurous he is, he relies on the certainty that his primary carer is there for him.

The need for certainty

No matter what our age, as human beings, we all need some certainty to live bearable lives; we need to see a future in order to achieve it; and to imagine a future we need certainty.

While discipline in a functional home may be balanced by confidence that we are really loved unconditionally, in cases of sudden separation, discipline takes on a whole new meaning.

Each change in an infant’s living situation brings with it a new set of rules to identify and learn. Within each situation, each worker, carer or other authority figure will have their own personality and some unique rules about what is the right way to do something, or even about what makes them cross.

Rules can seem to change constantly. As a result, one of the most significant lessons a life in care can teach a child is that they will never win. There can be no clear link between actions and consequences because consequences are so often random. Defeat seems inevitable and effort pointless. A paralysis of purpose and cycle of failure can set in. All of these factors make separation a recipe for dysfunction.

Invisibility

A care situation can rob a separated child of a healthy dose of intimacy. This creates an enormous internal conflict: If the only way to avoid attention is to remain invisible – if attention is usually negative – how can there be any chance of intimacy?

But there is another cost to invisibility: A person in care may act invisible because they want to avoid trouble: On the other hand, they may feel invisible because they are just one in a sea of many.

At some point, a person who is invisible becomes aware of a sense of powerlessness, and they will feel violated. At its most extreme, being invisible renders someone a ‘non-person’.
It is precisely for this reason that ‘sending someone to Coventry’ can be a terrible punishment for anyone. In a social context, when people are ostracised like this, they become exiles in their own world.

When this sense of being ‘invisibled’ becomes unbearable a person can either run away, accept it or fight it. Running from an institution was a good way to invite some fairly extreme punishment.

The fight response to being invisibled is at the core of a great many social problems today – such as gang membership, so-called race riots or even shooting sprees. Most often, it probably just reveals itself as domestic violence.

Alternatively, when people resign themselves to being invisibled this can lead to severe depression, or trouble building a good future for themselves.

Left in Limbo

A lot of Australians have, in the 20^th Century, left care without basic skills – skills such as finding a job, budgeting income, renting accommodation or dealing with bureaucracies. Many people leaving care have had no clue about how to establish or maintain a normal relationship with anyone, either in a workplace setting or on a personal level. They can’t feel anything but invisibled.

Sometimes children are left in a dysfunctional situation which does more damage than separation can. Sometimes children are removed from one dysfunctional situation and placed in another. Sometimes children are removed from a dysfunctional situation and provided with excellent, loving care – but no matter what the circumstances, the experience of separation is, in its own way, invariably damaging. The impact of separation is inevitable, unavoidable, and unending.

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Sent to Coventry: pretending that somebody can't be seen or doesn't exist. For example, a number of schoolchildren might all agree not to talk to one child at all

Limbo: A state of uncertainty, not belonging anywhere

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Chapter 8 Suffer the Little Children

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BRITISH FAMILY VALUES

I must confess that when politicians, lobbyists or community leaders talk about Australia’s "sound family values", I always feel a little surge of cynicism.

For millennia in the west, a family has been a unit which, above all else, defined a person's social and economic rights, inheritance and responsibilities based on provable blood lines. The notion of a [nuclear] family unit consisting of two or three generations with a strong emotional bond is a relatively recent construct.

White Australia was built, initially, on British values, and the popular idea in Queen Victoria’s Britain was that "children should be seen and not heard". Where possible, children were hidden away in nurseries, ignored by all except nannies and tutors, and only trotted out for display on appropriate occasions.

The middle classes, who could only afford to imitate the upper classes, were often similarly cold, distant, and demanding of disciplined behaviour. The era of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ would be a long time passing.

Prior to this, during the dawn of the industrial revolution, children had been little more than factory fodder. Children as young as 9 were transported as convicts; the youngest on the first fleet being a John Hudson aged 13.

While there were some small numbers of Asians and non-Anglo European settlers in Australia from the mid 19th Century on, it was really only with Post-World War II immigration from non-Anglo Europe that Australians finally came to accept, more than once was the case, that it is okay to take children with them to restaurants or when visiting friends; we are now generally more tolerant, for example, of the screaming and tantrums which are part of a two-year-old's job description.

It is now socially acceptable to "enjoy" children more, but that seems a recent phenomenon. In truth, children have not always been viewed by everybody in this country as an essential component of a family unit but, rather, as things or as potential people with as yet unformed feelings or personalities.

British Children in Exile

From the 17^th to 20^th Centuries, the British have, under a succession of schemes, rounded up hundreds of thousands of ‘abandoned’ children and sent them to colonies to provide labour. These colonies include Virginia (USA), India, South Africa, Rhodesia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Several schemes operated from the 1920s until the late 1960s, though only a small number of these supposedly abandoned children went to New Zealand. Canada put a halt to these programs in 1933 on the grounds that institutionalisation led to abuses and psychological damage to the children. Some children were exported to Australia in the late 1930s but this program was interrupted by World War II.

The British Immigrant Children Scheme

One peculiarly Australian version of these schemes was the ‘Post-war Mass Migration Scheme’ first proposed by the Australian Government in 1941, just before the United States entered World War II.

At the onset of World War II Australia had a population of only 7 million people, but we had dutifully sent the greatest part of our army to help ‘the mother country’, our soldiers being stationed in Europe, Africa and Malaysia/Singapore.

Once it was clear Singapore would fall to the Japanese, we found ourselves under threat of invasion, without the troops or infrastructure to defend ourselves. This prompted the Government to consider our future, deciding that we must ‘Populate (Australia) or Perish’.
Because the White Australia Policy had been a spectacular success, 99% of Australians were white, and we wanted to keep it that way.

It was assumed that following the enormous displacements of WWII there would be an infinite pool of ‘war babies’ available in Europe for the taking. Arthur Calwell, Minister for Immigration from 1945 felt we could take 17,000 children in the first year, building up to a rate of 50,000 per year.

A White Assimilation Policy

The Australian government preference was for children from six to twelve years of age.

Theoretically, we would take the children young and train them to become farmers, tradesmen or domestics. Two special considerations were that they would be white, and they could be ‘Australianised’ before merging with the community at large.

Under the ‘Post-war Mass Migration Scheme’, representatives of the Australian government and a number of religious and charitable organisations made regular recruitment drives in the UK, but by 1955 the well was dry. In truth, large numbers of children simply weren't available for import, and at this stage Britain no longer had a surplus stock – the children would be needed at home where they could, in a few years, assist with post-war recovery.

A further complication was that in the years immediately after the war, the British themselves were beginning to realise institutionalisation was as bad as the Canadians had believed – this change in attitude culminated in the passage of the UK Children Act of 1948. The act highlighted the many needs of children, focusing on the need to foster children or arrange for their adoption rather than institutionalise them. This way they would have some chance of a normal life.

Despite the UK requiring minimum care standards for these kids, there were early hints in official correspondence that the British government would turn a blind eye to whatever happened out here.

Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Salvation Army and Anglican church groups were amongst the busiest operators, but there were also several secular organisations involved. At some point, Dr Barnardo’s homes were unhappy with the way things were going and distanced itself from the scheme.

The stories of many of these children are horror stories – already traumatised by family separations and/or war experiences, they were sent halfway across the world. Some were given new identities, separated from siblings, told that their living parents were dead or disinterested in their fate, or conned into agreeing to a ‘better life’ – as if a child of 7 would have enough insight to make such a decision for himself.

Stuck in extremely isolated areas, some children were used as unpaid labour for building everything from office blocks to accommodation, and farming sheds. Amongst the most notorious of the institutions the children were sent to was Bindanoon, in Western Australia. It had such a tough reputation that some Western Australian courts used it as a reform school.

The British had hoped to send undernourished, underdeveloped or even mentally feeble kids to Australia under this scheme. Unsurprisingly, some Australian organisations complained to the government of the ‘poor quality’ of children they were receiving. Operations were subsidised by the British Government, the Australian Commonwealth government and state governments. The children were also used by some institutions as an excuse for fundraising, so there was little financial incentive to seek foster or adoptive families for the children.

Despite protests in Parliament and from the states, the Australian Minister for Immigration insisted that all migrant children would live in institutions, and would not be fostered or adopted out. He insisted he become the legal guardian of all of these children in care.

Their story was not widely known until The Leaving of Liverpool, a film based on the scheme, was released in 1992.

While the Irish and Canadian governments had already conducted inquiries which acknowledged their governments’ roles in facilitating these abuses, the subsequent British inquiry was – like the inquiry into atomic tests at Maralinga – designed to absolve the government of any responsibility and shift the blame.

A state government inquiry in Western Australia acknowledged that approximately 3,000 Aboriginal children had been stolen, and almost the same number of British children imported to that state.

The Role of the Irish Catholic Church in this business should not be a surprise in light of what we now know about the Catholic care system in Ireland. Yet there is strong evidence the Church was one of the greatest abusers of the child migrant scheme - many of the children were sent to Catholic institutions, and there was a strong desire on the part of many Irish nuns during this scheme to ensure the Australian population would always contain a good proportion of Catholics.

The Homes System

Until the Whitlam government took power in 1972, Australian families in trouble had few resources to fall back on.

By law, women were barred from many occupations (e.g. driving trams or buses), and by tradition barred from others (e.g. being a bank teller). Women employed by the public service were required to resign on becoming married. Women’s wages were set at 2/3 of a male wage for equal work but, in truth, in industries where women did ‘women’s work’ (e.g. sewing machinists) the legal wage was inadequate. Women who left their husbands to escape violence or for other reasons were denied any kind of government support and, unless they were professionals, had little practical hope of supporting themselves.

Any single parent – unless a widow or widower – had no support systems available outside their own families. It was very common for people to voluntarily place their children “in care” before governments could apply to formally make them wards of the state.

The orphanages which provided this care– or ‘homes’ as they were called – were variously state-run, run by registered charitable or religious groups, or privately owned and operated. Parents who did use this orphanage system and wished to retain parental rights were required to contribute to the keep of their children.

It was not unheard of for people of means to use these homes as boarding kennels – somewhere to dump their children if, when and while it suited them.

Wards of the state were often fostered out – sometimes to good homes, but sometimes to people who saw the fostering system as a source of extra income, child labour, or both. Many former ‘homies’ remember being paraded, as if they were merchandise, for the benefit of couples wanting to adopt. For those who were repeatedly passed over, this process provided little encouragement for them to trust themselves or others.

In the 20^th Century, hundreds of thousands of Australian children passed through this system. Given Australia’s relatively small population, the numbers are quite shocking.

Even where we must accept that children were placed in care for the right reasons, we need not assume they were invariably better off.

Many of the charitable organisations who ran these institutions – whether for the benefit of Aboriginals, British migrant kids, or whitefella Australians – were church groups and, as inquiries have revealed, it was wrong to assume that they could be trusted more than any other organisation run by humans: Any institution, regardless of its location or denomination, provides opportunities for abuse when it is closed to outside scrutiny.

Oops
There were 3 major Australian enquiries relating to the 20th Century placement of children in care;
reports issued as a result of these enquiries are:

Bringing them home; 1997 (the Stolen Generations enquiry);

Lost Innocents;2001 (British Immigrant Children enquiry);

Forgotten Australians; 2004 (Australians in institutional or out-of-home care).

Windschuttle's argument that 'if it wasn't revealed in a timely manner it's a furphy' just seems lame.
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furphy: gossip or rumour, something that is not true

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Chapter 7 Looking After the Locals

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Before all of Australia’s new colonies even became states, the British had started to civilise their own country. Reforms were underway to ensure fairer working conditions in British factories, and slavery was outlawed.

By 1838 the British had developed a new policy for Aboriginals, called ‘Protection’.

2. Colonial Office Protection Policy

The key elements of this plan were:

· allow Aboriginals free enjoyment of their possessions;

· do what it takes to convert Aboriginals to Christianity;

· help Aboriginals become civilised; and

· use the law to protect Aboriginals from violence and injustice.

The decision to allow Aboriginals free enjoyment of their possessions was more than a bit too late – for many Aboriginals their land was already gone. In any case, land belonged to the Crown and the Crown had the right to sell the land. Lots of land had already been sold or leased, and the remaining unsold land was gradually being taken up by whitefellas.

The idea of civilising and converting a country’s natives by taking land and enforcing linguistic, cultural and spiritual change was not new (just ask your nearest Irish Catholic).

Protection Acts

The state of Victoria passed its first Protection legislation in 1860, New South Wales in 1883, Western Australia 1886, and Queensland 1887. South Australia’s parliament passed no legislation until after federation.

The nature of protection offered varied from State to State.

Western Australia

Possibly the most well-known Protector was A.O. Neville, a Western Australian Protector who has left his footprints and carefully kept records all over Australia’s History. Neville is the character portrayed as something of a Nazi Eugenicist in the movie The Rabbit Proof Fence.

Doris Pilkington’s book Follow The Rabbit-Proof Fence reads like a loving and admiring tribute to her mother, and is extraordinarily non-judgmental about whitefellas. It doesn't suggest the Moore River Settlement was anything other than a concentration camp, but it certainly does not present Neville as a monster in the way the movie does.

South Australia

While South Australia’s government established reserves and encouraged the establishment of Missions, it seems to have had a more enlightened approach to protection. In 1921, when it was proposed to extend legislation, the idea of separating children from their families was still widely opposed, and it took more than two years to push new legislation through the South Australian parliament.

Queensland

The State of Queensland on the other hand was extremely paternalistic towards Aboriginals. There was no overt policy of removing children from their families because of mixed race, but much the same result was achieved by:

insisting children sleep in separate dormitories rather than in the same buildings as their families;

though children were forced to live in separate dormitories from adults, they were required to leave at 14 to find work;

relocating ‘troublemakers’ from one mission or reserve to another as punishment for being troublemakers.

Queensland fought tenaciously until 1971 before finally losing control over Aboriginal affairs in that state.

Historians

It is the job of any historian to present a series of facts and an interpretation of them as a comment or summary of past issues. [Compiling this collection of facts and my opinions is not my day-job, and I am no historian.]

When it comes to the topic of how Aboriginals have been treated by a succession of early Governments, perhaps the most widely read author is Henry Reynolds. He is nothing if not diligent in his pursuit of the unpleasant truth. Reynolds and other historians of the ‘it was shabby’ school are referred to by those who disbelieve them as “Black Armband” historians.

One of Reynold’s earlier books discusses the curriculum in Tasmania during his school years, and I think the title Why Weren’t We Told is a fairly good clue about its content and main argument. Having learnt even less than Reynolds about Aboriginals when I was at school – and having gone to school in Victoria – there is nothing in the book I am inclined to disagree with.

Another of his many books, Nowhere People, provides extensive coverage of the theories on race – and especially theories about half-castes – prevalent in the west in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. Reynolds traces some of the history of ideas about race, right up to the corruption of Darwin's theories about survival of the fittest. He also explores the idea that half-castes were thought "worse" than full bloods because they have the worst characteristics of both races: cunning and intelligence. (I'll let you try and guess which trait came from which race.)

Was the removal of children an attempt at genocide?

While Neville was certainly meticulous in recording estimates of racial composition, I don’t believe this was exclusively because saw half-castes as genetically inferior or a threat to whiteness. I do believe that no matter how stupidly cruel his separation policy, he probably acted in what he felt was in the best interests of all concerned, believing:

· Full blood Aboriginals would never adapt to the new Australia;

· The traditional Aboriginal life was totally incompatible with the western life;

· By taking children at a young age he would prevent them from embracing ideas incompatible with the western way of life;

· Half-caste children could, given the right rules and conditions, be bred whiter and whiter until they became acceptable to the community at large.

This reflects Neville’s measure of whitefellas just as much as it might reflect some belief in racial superiority.
For Neville, I think, the problem was not so much that blacks were genetically black, the problem was that half-castes would never be accepted by the larger (white) community, and there was no future for them in a black life.

Sounds sick just the same, but perhaps he deserves just a little credit for not being a total Nazi.

The ‘For Your Own Good’ Theory

The widely syndicated, conservative journalist Andrew Bolt has had a very public debate with yet another historian, Robert Manne, the first insisting the Stolen Generations is a myth; the latter insisting there is plenty of documentary evidence that children were removed because of their race rather than for their own good.
Bolt challenged Manne to provide names and evidence that children were stolen, and stolen because of their race.

In a Melbourne newspaper, Bolt later challenged any Aboriginal who had been removed to come forward and say why they were taken. This seems a rather desperate call as:

Not everyone, not even Aboriginals, is particularly interested in reading newspapers (especially past the sports section);
There is a possibility that even those who read papers regularly can’t bring themselves to read Bolt’s columns;
The idea that anyone taken as an infant could remember the details of when and why they were taken is preposterous – and there is something quite cruel about asking a person who has been through ‘the system’ to defend parents they might not even know the name of.

In another article, Bolt spoke of a young girl who should have been removed from her mother's care by welfare workers but was not. He believes case workers are frightened by the need to be politically correct, and that if the child were white she would have been taken from her mother.

While I agree the child's case is tragic, the article makes no mention of the enormous rate of burnout amongst child welfare workers, the difficulty in finding case workers to replace them, and the many whitefella children who are similarly left in horrible situations.

It is true that some Aboriginals believe the Stolen Generations has not ended, that it is just being continued with a different excuse. This, too, is unfair.
It is UN policy that where children are taken from their families they should, so far as possible, be fostered by people of their own culture and ethnicity.

Unfortunately, it is precisely because there is a gap between Aboriginal and whitefella outcomes that a disproportionately large number of children cannot be placed with Aboriginal families, but should be removed from their current living situations just the same.

There simply aren’t enough culturally appropriate foster homes available for Aboriginal children.

I don't doubt that Bolt is concerned for all children regardless of race, but do not believe this case is proof of his claim the stolen generations is a myth; it is simply proof that we still have a long way to go in addressing the nature and consequences of dispossession.

It is certainly not proof that all Aboriginal people are inherently bad for their children.

The conditions on the Aboriginal settlements were appalling. Residents were treated in a way which sounds cruel by today’s standards. Most of this was the result of the policy of assimilation – not a physical but a cultural genocide.

It was widely accepted the destruction of traditional thinking was necessary if the children of Aboriginals were ever to adapt to the white world.

If, with the best intentions in the world just one carer told one child ‘you’ll be better off and happier if you forget your family and learn to live like a white person’, the damage would be incalculable. It's likely messages like this were sent in much stronger terms.

The excessive, Victorian era approach to discipline must have seemed cruel, bizarre and capricious to the Aboriginal inmates.

The This Is A Conspiracy Theory Theory

Perhaps the most widely known “Aboriginal History is Fabricated” proponent is Keith Windschuttle. There is a site that provides access to his theories.

Windschuttle argues that there were no forced removals of Aboriginal Children, that the Stolen Generations is an emotional lie. If this had happened, he says in one specific article, Aboriginal members of the Aborigines Welfare Board of NSW in the 1940s and 1950s would have said something. Further, in the 1970s when the Aboriginal Land Rights movement and political activism were gaining momentum, why was no mention made then of the Stolen Generations?

We have archival documents freely available showing that Aboriginals on Reserves or Missions needed permission to marry, or to spend their own money or so on.

I do believe that when the first generation of mixed race children were born, some of them were rejected by Aboriginals, but this practice did not persist and was not universal, and we do know children were taken and that they were selected on the basis of race.

Feeling an overwhelming despair at being rounded up, many Aboriginal parents might have relinquished children in the belief they would be better off. Aboriginals would have been easily tricked if told their children were going on a ride and would be back soon (as happened in Europe).

Despite Windschuttle’s denials, Aboriginals did resist invasion, but resistance and argument did not, traditionally, come easily to all Aboriginal people and in some respects they still do not come easily today.

If protectors had the power and will to remove children, of course they took some children in an overtly forcible way as well as through manipulation.

Ordinarily I would not stoop to using a personal anecdote as evidence of some widespread ‘fact’, but in this case I will make an exception.

Before the tent embassy was set up in 1972, I went to a Social Security office in Fitzroy (Melbourne) which is a suburb with a relatively high Aboriginal population. A friend had come with me for company, and while I waited in the queue with her daughter, she went off to talk to someone else. While I was waiting in the queue with 4 year old ‘Mary’, an Aboriginal man about 50 years old came close and started telling me in a quiet but urgent tone to ‘hold the little girl’s hand’. He was quite insistent and seemed distressed – though not looking me in the eye – so finally I grabbed ‘Mary’s’ hand. Many years passed before this incident came to make sense to me.

If the Stolen Generations claim - the claim that removals were forced is not true - why was this man so distressed? We were in a room full of white people, in a government office, ‘Mary’ was obviously Aboriginal, and I was not holding her hand. Makes sense to me.

The dirtiest argument I can offer against Windschuttles denial, though, is that this happened to white kids too. It’s a dirty argument because the claims of white people should not be harder to reject. Nonetheless, the theft and subsequent abuse of white children happened in Ireland, England, and Australia. If it could happen to white kids, of course it happened to Aboriginals.

Forget the Red Herring

Perhaps the question of ‘why’ children were taken - because half-castes were defective, or because they were being rescued - completely misses the point.

Whitefellas have always known that children [not their irresponsible parents] could be charged in court with neglect. Whitefellas have always understood the law affords protection to everyone – especially those who can afford it. But Aboriginals never had an opportunity to digest these legal notions the rest of us took for granted.

Every Aboriginal person in Australia has been touched, in some way, by the whole sorry business. Peoples with little understanding of the foreigners, who displaced them and, in many ways, abused them, could only conclude that whitefellas and whitefella law are totally cruel, arbitrary and inhuman.

It is only reasonable that the Aboriginal perception of the whole business is that their children were ‘stolen’. As we try to close the gap today, it is this perception, this Aboriginal truth we are dealing with - not interpretations of the motives of white bureaucrats a century ago.

In the British mindset, cruelty to children and excessive discipline were ‘normal’. Unfortunately for Aboriginal children [and their families], the trauma would be exacerbated mightily by culture shock, the often disgusting conditions, and the constant message that anyone black was somehow ‘faulty’.

It's a cliché that if we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got. For the sake of all concerned, we need to stop squabbling and work out what we can do differently to help Aboriginals, that might actually be constructive.

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Parts of this post were corrected and expanded 16 June 2011

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Chapter 6 A New British Colony

2011-06-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

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On 22 August 1770, Captain Cook hoisted the Union Jack on Possession Island and claimed the whole east coast of New Holland on behalf of King George III, calling the newly acquired portion New South Wales.

Under International Law at that time - presumably to stop European countries from throwing tantrums over who got more than somebody else – claiming new land required either negotiation of purchase or treaty with existing inhabitants, or that the land be empty. Cook didn't manage to organise a purchase or treaty, so the country was deemed terra nullius - literally a 'land belonging to nobody'.

This transparent lie notwithstanding, when Governor Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in 1788, Phillip was under orders from the British Colonial Office that the natives should be treated kindly, converted to Christianity, offered the blessings of civilisation in the form of food, clothing and education, and hopefully encouraged to trade with Britain.

In Australia’s case there were some factors which would make this 'Church and Trade' policy difficult to implement:

· the enormous distance from Britain and the communication problems this entailed;

· the Australian colony was designed as a penal settlement, not as an opportunity to develop a new trading partnership;

· the first settlers came close to starvation and chose food over friendship with the natives; and, later

· the enormous distances between Australian settlements, and the communication problems this caused.

The belief of the Colonial Office that they could manage a colony from the other side of the world was a tad optimistic. Governor Phillip took his orders seriously but, as the voyage from England to New South Wales had taken eight months, a quick word with the boss back home was going to be a problem.

In the very first year of settlement, 1788, Governor Phillip sent a message to the Colonial Office outlining his belief that the local Aboriginals had a very strong attachment to the land. (This might sound like an understatement, but I think it reflects Phillip’s relatively decent intentions).

Tassie

In 1803, a settlement was established at Port Arthur in Van Dieman’s land; initially with 150 convicts.

In 1823 the Colonial Office allowed New South Wales to establish a 'parliament' but this was still under control of the Governor, who could allow or disallow any proposed laws.

In 1825 Van Dieman's land gained independence from New South Wales, and in 1856 it was renamed Tasmania.

Queensland

Convicts were first sent to Queensland in 1824.

Queensland remained part of New South Wales until 1859.

The shaded area on the map remained part of New South Wales for some time, and one of the reasons for the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition was to chart this area so Victoria could claim it. The Queensland border was extended to take up this area in 1862.

The West

The area we now know as Western Australia was first settled in 1827, and governed by New South Wales until 1890.

Victoria

The Port Phillip district was settled by whitefellas from Tasmania. In 1851, it became independent from New South Wales and was renamed Victoria, in honour of the Queen.

South Australia

South Australia was not governed by New South Wales directly, beginning its life as a ‘Crown Province” then, in 1842, becoming a separate ‘Crown Colony’.

The Territory

The area we know today as the Northern Territory was

originally part of New South Wales
administered by South Australia from 1863
under federal government control from 1912

Federation

Until Federation in 1901, the states still had only limited independence, each with a governor chosen by Britain to represent the Crown.

And the point of all this is...

A combination of events in Australian history were disastrous for the Indigenous population as the settlements spread;

There were only tiny settlements to begin with;
The settlements were so isolated from each other that communication with New South Wales or Britain was practically impossible;
Most of the country was a land of 'anything goes' - Native Forces under the charge of White Leaders went into some - though not all - areas with the express intent of murdering as many natives as possible - with or without an excuse.
Few settlers not at the frontier were aware of these semi-secret operations. It was widely believed that any 'retaliatory' killing of renegade Aboriginals was justified. In other areas, the absence of any practical police force to help people follow the law, settlers became a law unto themselves.
Most settlers were huddled around the first settlements or the capitals later established. As the cattle kings made their push thousands of kilometres into the interior, they moved further and further from the influence of the law.

The order in which each state was settled

A few comments and illustrations might help readers get a sense of the distance between communities, the size of the settlements, and the communication problems.

Australia is slightly smaller in area than the lower 48 states of the U.S.A. [i.e. mainland America without Alaska and Hawaii]

Although the two countries are similar in size, there is an ENORMOUS population difference. Here's a comparison 220 years after Australia was settled:

To put it another way, the population of Australia today is about 10% bigger than the population of New York State:

Australia was more or less cut off from the rest of the world until the Overland Telegraph was completed in 1872.

Approximate Route of Overland Telegraph 1872

The first railway trip across the Nullarbor - from East to West along the southern edge of the continent – was not until 1917: Camels were used to carry supplies ahead of each stretch of rail as the line was built.

Drover

If anyone wanted to travel between the eastern states and Western Australia, the standard form of transport was ship.

This part of the highway was not fully sealed until 1976

The first car trip across the Nullarbor was reportedly made in 1912, and it was 1941 before there was a graded (unsealed road) between the West and the rest of Australia. The last section of dirt road was finally sealed in 1976; a full 75 years after federation.

The Federation Movement

In some respects the word 'movement' seems an exaggeration. There were hints of an emerging Australian identity, but this was largely an expression of how the Australian colonials differed from other Britons, rather than a conviction that Australians were something other than Britons.

Each of the colonies had grown in relative isolation and the proposed Federation would be more a marriage of convenience than a mutual admiration society.

The functions of the new federal government, it was planned, would be severely limited because it was only required to solve a handful of existing problems - and even then, the states were not fully agreed on how those problems should be tackled:

Make sure the Germans don't invade Australia

Make sure non-white labour doesn't stop other workers receiving a living wage

Remove the tariffs that complicated trade between the states.

In every other respect it was, theoretically, business as usual for the States.
The states continued following and developing different policies relating to the welfare of Aboriginals.

It's unlikely Aboriginals might have suffered less over the next 80 years if the federal government had been given the power to do anything differently, but Aboriginals were disadvantaged in so far as state responsibility stopped at each relevant border. In some cases, two states would refuse to do anything because they insisted a group of Aboriginals was the other state's problem.

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