Perish the thought: populating white Australia and the role of child removal policies.(Essay)

'... we endeavour to make them self-reliant, God-fearing citizens and Empire builders.' (1)

Dr Barnardo's Homes booklet, 1913

'The stockmen and servants of the future.' (2)

J W Bleakley, Queensland Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 1929

In contemporary popular discourse, the motives for child removal practices in Australian history are contested. A misguided interpretation of the child's best interest was portrayed in Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) through the Western Australian Chief Protector of Aboriginals, AO Neville. Prime Minister John Howard's rejection of the term 'stolen generations' further underscores the contemporary political relevance of this period in Australian history, as the future of reconciliation is partly dependent on how the nature of child removal policies is reviewed. In an attempt to contextualise child removal policies more broadly within Australia's social and political character in the early twentieth century, this paper assesses the legislative context for the removal in the first four decades of the twentieth century of both Indigenous Australian and white British children from their families. While these two incidents of child removal practices differed in many respects, a comparative study reveals strong themes of the nationalism of a white Australian identity that influenced both legislation authorising the removal of Aboriginal children in Queensland and legislation regarding migration schemes that brought hundreds of unaccompanied British children to Australian shores. Specific motives converged on the key fronts of the racist white Australia: a desire for cheap labour and social control. The Australian and British governments operated deliberately to encourage child removal practices within colonial and modernist parameters. This paper will conclude that these practices were driven by a conflicting set of principles that did not benefit the children themselves. The White Australia Policy welcomed white child migrants, yet immigration restriction heightened the need for Aboriginal labour. Segregation of Aboriginal people on reserves was intended to prevent miscegenation; however, rural labour needs turned reserves into pools of cheap labour. Overall, the state intervened in children's lives where poverty and/or racial degeneration appeared to threaten imposed work, religion and social norms.

After Federation, the separation of Aboriginal and British migrant children from their families continued through various legislative means. The British and Australian state and federal governments passed enabling legislation and provided the majority of funding to sustain child removal practices until well after World War II. In the period from 1901 to 1939, child migrants primarily entered institutions established in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Aboriginal children in Australia were removed from their families according to state legislation and, while other states followed similar paths, Queensland's leglisation is the focus of this paper. The first section of this paper will analyse relevant legislation in Queensland relating to the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, and the second section will assess the legislation that led to the emigration of destitute British children to Australia.

The power to remove Aboriginal children from their families was authorised by the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (hereafter, the 1897 Act). This legislation afforded the police and government staff enormous control over Aboriginal people, who effectively became wards of the state. The 1897 Act was amended in 1901, 1927, 1928 and 1934 before it was repealed and replaced by two Acts in 1939: the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act and the Torres Strait Islander Act. (3) The 1897 Act was the first piece of legislation introduced in Queensland to deal specifically with the Aboriginal population. (4) Previously, Aboriginal children could be removed from their families under the Industrial and Reformatories Schools Act 1865 (5), which allowed for 'neglected' children to be removed to an institution. (6) The 1897 Act signalled the Queensland government's attempts to deal with the 'problems' of the Aboriginal population, including residential patterns, child welfare and drug usage. Relevant to this paper are the provisions that extended mainstream welfare policy by targeting and removing 'neglected' Aboriginal adults and children up to sixteen years of age. (7) These provisions, unlike mainstream legislation, empowered officials to circumvent the courts to execute a removal order of an Aboriginal person.