The University of Queensland

"I heard white men talk openly of the share they had taken in slaughtering whole camps, not only of men, but of women and children," wrote Charles Heydon, a settler of the Cardwell district, in 1874." ¹

Eleven years later Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon expressed similar dismay. "There has been far too much shooting down in cold blood deliberately done ... ," he wrote. ²

Journalist Archibald Meston, speculating in 1889 on the scale of the atrocities in Queensland, estimated that "in the North as many as fifty Aborigines had been slaughtered to avenge the killing of each European." ³

The 1939 laws explicitly excluded indigenous people from voting in state elections, made it unlawful for any indigenous person in Queensland to knowingly receive or possess alcohol, restricted their movement, denied them any right to the lands of their birth or even the land where their reserves were located, and curtailed their access to the normal processes of justice available to the rest of the community.

It gave the relevant authorities the power to resettle them by force, remove their children without proof of neglect, forbid them to marry, censor their mail, compel them to work for low wages, withhold their wages without their consent and seize their property on the flimsiest pretext. ⁵

As the Cairns Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders Advancement League (CATSIAL) declared in July 1960, "the shadow of 'the Act' hangs heavy over the lives of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples." ⁶

One of the more pernicious aspects of the Queensland regime was the systematic theft by the state and its officials of Aboriginal wages and savings.

Through control of Aborigines' earnings and bank accounts, millions of dollars of private savings were expropriated by the Queensland state to meet its own expenditure commitments or as a source of investment revenue. By 1960 the department controlled over £258,596 (almost $15 million today) belonging to Queensland Aborigines. By 1969 it controlled over 10,450 private bank accounts. ⁷

Image 2J: Mapoon Mission Store, 1936

Little of this money was ever seen by its rightful owners who continued to live in extreme poverty on the reserves, stations and the fringes of white settlements. It was not until 1972 that indigenous workers could request permission to control their own accounts. CATSIAL was one of the first organisations to campaign publicly against Queensland's repressive management of indigenous affairs. In July 1960 over 100 representatives from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island groups, trade unions and other organisations attended a CATSIAL conference in Cairns, called to launch a movement which, they declared, would "sweep away the whole disgraceful, sordid regime of injustice and humiliation to which the Aborigines and island peoples are still subjected in Queensland." ⁸ FCAA and the Queensland Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Straits Islanders (QCAATI) also took up the fight.

In 1963 the conservative Nicklin state government set up a special parliamentary committee to review the 1939 Act. It was in part a response to growing political pressure from the campaigners and trade unions. But there were other pressures too.

In 1955 mining company Consolidated Zinc had discovered rich deposits of bauxite on Aboriginal reserve lands at Weipa, Mapoon and Aurukan in the state's far north-east.

In 1957 Comalco, a subsidiary of Consolidated Zinc, was granted a mining lease over vast tracts of Mapoon and Weipa land. With the cooperation of the Presbyterian Board of Missions which administered the communities, the local people were evicted and their homes destroyed to make way for the world's largest bauxite mine.

For the government the process had been cumbersome, requiring special legislation to override the reserve system. With a minerals boom in the offing, state cabinet had its own reasons for wanting to review the laws governing Aborigines and their reserves.

Image 2K: Mapoon Mission homes, 1936

Image 2C: 1962 CATSIAL bulletin publicising the plight of Mapoon Aborigines

Both the Cairns league and QCAATI made submissions to the committee, the latter’s a detailed 31-page document authored by Eunice Gilmour and Rodney Hall. ⁹ Both groups called for a complete overhaul of Queensland policy and laws dealing with indigenous affairs. The Queensland Trades and Labor Council also made a submission, citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and calling for "full legal rights" for indigenous people, including voting rights and freedom of movement. ¹⁰

When the committee presented its final report in November 1964, it recommended the repeal of some restrictive measures but stressed the need for assimilation, as agreed by state and Commonwealth ministers in 1963. The Government's response mirrored this thinking. It eventually legislated to give indigenous people full voting rights, and it replaced the old Acts with the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders' Act of 1965, which the Director of Aboriginal and Island Affairs, P.J. Killoran, claimed in his 1966 annual report was designed "to remove all restrictive measures yet provide for assistance and guidance where needed". ¹¹ QCAATI had a somewhat different view, writing to the press on the day of the Bill's final parliamentary reading:

While we regard the Bill as an improvement on existing legislation ... we very much regret the continuance of the Government's paternalistic attitude. Far too many powers remain in the hands of the Director ... ¹²

Aborigines were still given no land tenure over reserve land and could be ordered by the Director to move to another reserve. On the other hand, with the Director's approval the holder of a miner’s right could be granted a mining lease over any area within a reserve. Far from delivering justice, the 1965 Act set the stage for a new wave of confrontations in Queensland over indigenous rights.