ABSTRACT
Aborigines also suffered considerable discrimination through federal and state statutes. Although after 1927 Aborigines were eligible to receive the New South Wales family endowment, after 1930 it was distributed to almost everyone in rations, furniture, household or even station improvements. The very fact that Aboriginal children were removed to be raised as whites gave the lie to the official dictum that Aboriginality was a matter of genes rather than culture. Clearly it was the socialisation of the children as Aborigines which the officials feared most. At the root of dispersal lay the fear of Aboriginal community from which Europeans were to be kept excluded. In New South Wales, the dispersal policy was allowed to proceed because the public had fallen victim to that most dangerous of administrative myths, that the repression of a minority was for its own ultimate good, and that good coincided with the greater good of the public weal.
