Power and Dysfunction: The New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines 1883–1940

Abstract

By 1911 all mainland Australian states had enacted restrictive legislation concerning their Aboriginal populations. In New South Wales such legislation was passed in 1909 and by 1936 had been amended on three occasions. The enormous damage of these policies on Aboriginal people and their communities has been well canvassed. Several issues are less clear: how the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines (1883Aborigines ( -1940 (hereafter the Board) functioned and interacted with Aboriginal people; who of the sixtyfour Board members drove the policy agenda; and what other factors influenced Board policy?Through an exploration of the Board's records, and of its interaction with the Dharawal people (who occupied the mainly coastal land south of Sydney to the Shoalhaven River), together with research on the biographies of its members, this thesis tracks in detail the Board's policy shifts.Three significant conclusions emerge. First, most Board members had little influence, while a few others drove policy. Second, the Board went through three quite different stages.Initially, from 1883 to 1897, the Board was cautious and, at times, indifferent to its clientele. The next period, up to 1916, witnessed a burst of legislative activity driven by powerful and zealous individuals. In its final phase, the Board was characterised by a small, unaccountable cabal of Board officials who dominated the policy agenda. With minimal external scrutiny, the Board became insular, paranoid, secretive and reluctant to embrace new thinking on Aboriginal affairs.Despite the Board's power, a third conclusion of this research has exposed the Board's limitations. Through its bravado, structural dysfunction, flawed policies, and general indifference, it failed to manage core aspects of Aboriginal policy.

Administering and encountering the poor: Poverty from above and below in Brunei Darussalam

“…What this narrative does, however, is place the locus of explanation on the shortcomings of the poor, along with the disamenities associated with KA living, rather than on the shortfalls of government initiatives to address poverty in place . It also resonates uncomfortably with attempts in other countries to separate children from their (poor) families, such as the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families in Australia (Merkel, 1990; Egan, 2021).…”