15 - ‘Little Short of Slavery’

Summary

Western Australia experienced low rates of immigration and population growth from the 1850s to the 1880s, when the situation changed dramatically with the discovery of gold and the expansion of pastoralism. With its tiny settler population and reception of convicts until 1868, the colony did not gain representative government until 1870. Only in the mid 1880s did a strong campaign for self-government emerge. For the previous thirty years, British officials reduced funding and support for protection and ‘civilisation’ policies, and focussed on punishment and imprisonment to manage both frontier conflict and labour relations. Still, Western Australia did not experience the killing fields on the Queensland scale; in its place was public display of the justice system – police, courts, and prisons. Aboriginal policy varied somewhat between governors, but the realities of settlement over vast distances meant that governments of all political hues instituted systems of summary (in)justice conducted by magistrates who were themselves settlers and employers, leading to a harsh system of policing, trial, and punishment that lacked any semblance of judicial independence. British governors presided over the extensive and often brutal use of Aboriginal labour in the pearling and pastoral industries, making only sporadic and largely ineffective attempts at regulation.