Government responses

There was no coordinated government response. Predictably, the federal government [welfare payments], the state government [allocating reserves or town camps, providing education and health and welfare services] and local government [there's a whole in the road] ran around in circles doing [or not doing] their own thing without telling each other what they were doing or not doing.

This was an especially big problem in WA, where the government had long relied on pastoralists to do as much or as little they would for Aboriginals; where the government had no practical experience of doing anything for Aboriginals themselves.

Given the official assumption of most policy makers was that Aboriginals cannot cope with a white world, they were appallingly indifferent to the plight of these people who had just been “thrown into the pool to sink or swim”.