PROFESSOR ELEANOR A BOURKE AM, Chair MS SUE-ANNE HUNTER, Commissioner MR TRAVIS LOVETT, Commissioner

20 But the development of the settlement, the conquest, whatever words you choose, of Victoria, came very specifically in a particular period and that was the period from the mid-1830s up to the 1850s. [...] 25 And that was the foundation of Australian law, and that's what I think is the original sin of the British, to make that decision that they didn't have to concern themselves about the rights of the native people in Australia. [...] 25 Victoria's 1869 Act, which established safe havens to protect the remnants of the tribes from the excesses of the settlers, became the model for legislation in the rest of the country decades later. [...] But it needs to be said that these records are the tip of the iceberg, and that most of - 40 MS MCLEOD: That is the massacre records? PROFESSOR LANGTON: The massacre records are the tip of the iceberg. [...] 5 MS MCLEOD: And I think you've written - correct me if I am wrong - was that one result of the creation of the missions and the passage of the Aborigines Protection Act was the expulsion or expelling of children of mixed descent from the reserves into the terrible economic conditions of the 1890s.