ABSTRACT
There was a tradition in the Northern Territory, dating from the beginning of permanent European settlement and still in evidence in the early 1940s, for juries to acquit whites charged with the murder of Aborigines, except in the most blatant and unusual cases. Juries were unwilling to accept uncorroborated Aboriginal testimony except where the accused was non-European. The first consideration in the administration of justice was the race of the accused. There was no need for a judge dealing with Aborigines to have a detailed understanding of their society, for in the case of simple, primitive people, the motivation for actions was transparent to an intelligent white observer. The proposal to build a new compound for Aborigines in Darwin, announced in June 1937, was: not only a scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money, but the worst possible thing that can be done for the aborigines.
