16 - ‘A Slur upon the Colony’

Summary

In 1885 and shortly afterwards, Western Australia witnessed a remarkable coincidence in timing. Just as colonists at last asserted a united, multi-partisan movement for settler self-government on the basis of the colony’s economic and social advancement, accusations that settlers in the north were imposing a form of slavery on Aboriginal people became a matter of public controversy. The charge of slavery was not only disturbing in itself, but was a clear allusion to a backward social and economic system that stood against everything colonists wanted to proclaim about themselves – civilised, progressive, and responsible. As this chapter outlines, the conjunction of these two developments had a significant impact on the negotiations for self-government. One result was the insertion, on British insistence, into the colony’s constitution in 1889 of a clause, Section 70, that mandated that even with self-government Aboriginal policy remain under British control through the governor, and that the colony direct one per cent of colonial revenue to Aboriginal welfare. The clause would last only seven years, however, and was ineffective in preventing the continuing dispossession and exploitation of Indigenous people under the new system of responsible government. Western Australia would continue to witness extensive frontier violence for several decades.