Serious Collisions: Settlers, Indigenous People, and Imperial Policy in Western Australia and Natal

When the British government passed the Western Australian constitution in 1890, granting responsible government to its sixth and last Australian colony, it sought to keep control over Aboriginal policy to itself. In doing so, it adopted an approach more like that to Natal, in southern Africa, than to the other Australian colonies that had all gained responsible government several decades earlier. Yet British attempts to retain control over Aboriginal policy within the context of responsible government were a failure in both Western Australia and Natal. As Arthur Berriedale Keith - the eminent Scottish jurist, scholar and expert on constitutional questions within the British Empire - wrote towards the end of his life, in 1937, responsible government was 'wholly incompatible with executive safeguards'. Attempts to impose the latter in order to ensure that Britain rather than the self-governing settlers controlled the governance of Indigenous people had 'failed utterly'.