Australia: The ‘Good’ Genocide Perpetrator?

Abstract

In 1949, federal parliamentarians were indignant when asked to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter, UNGC). We could not in any way be associated with ‘the unthinkable’ crime, senior members claimed, because we are ‘a moral people’ with a ‘clean record'. This essay assesses the ‘decent’ Australian democrats who, as the indelible records show, set out to kill the Aboriginal people they deemed ‘vermin’ and then later, decided to engage in a eugenicist fantasy to rid Australia of Aborigines by intermarriage or, failing that, forcibly removing their children in large numbers. The colonial frontier killings were justified as ‘dispersing kangaroos'. Child removals were done ‘in their best interests'. This essay attempts to gain an insight into the mindset of those who did commit ‘the unthinkable’ crime of genocide: killing, removal of children, and ‘causing serious bodily and mental harm'. Subsequent policies infantalised the Aboriginal and Islander population and denied them basic human rights.