'Thls paper focuses on the power and control over Aboriginal lives from the mid 1940s to the 1960s during the period of administration of the Queensland Preservation and Protection Acts, 1939 to 1946, whose provisions - including control of wages, property and people's movements - are indicative of increasing systematic management of Aborigines.
The Acts offered in fact no 'protection' but increasing guardianship and removal of independence. This paper also examines the ways in which ideas of racial assimilation in the 1950s and 1960s were related to policy and to the treatment of Aboriginal people, with government institutionalised racism facilitating inequality in society and employment.' (Introduction)
'Nearly everyone born in Australia before 1950 probably remembers the Dad 'n' Dave radio serial; some of us have read, or heard read, the stories from On Our Selection on which the serial was (very loosely) based; and all of the rest of you have heard a 'Dad 'n' Dave' (or, more commonly in my experience, a 'Dave'n' Mabel') joke. If you haven't, there's a good one on the last page of this book. Oh all right, here it is. But read the book, OK?
Dad and Dave were watching a dingo licking its genitals.
'You know, Dad,' said Dave, 'I hate to admit it, but all my life I've wanted to do that.'
'Go ahead,' Dad replied. 'But I'd pat him first. He looks vicious.' (p.186)' (Introduction)