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Western Australia - Event

Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly on the Mental Deficiency Bill (1929)

From
17 September 1929
To
16 October 1929

The 'Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly on the Mental Deficiency Bill' was set up on 19 September 1929 to investigate a bill that was firmly based on eugenics principles, seeking to protect the community from the disease of 'mental deficiency'. Key issues for the Select Committee were segregation and sterilisation. The Bill lapsed due to lack of support.

Details

The progress of the 'Mental Deficiency Bill' was described in the index to the Parliamentary Debates in 1929:

A Bill to make provision for the care of feeble minded and other mentally defective persons and for other purposes [was introduced] by the Minister for Public Health (Hon. S.W. Munsie), 14th August, 1929. Referred to a select committee and reprinted in accordance with the committee's recommendations. Received in the Council, 30th October. In the Committee stage the Chairman was moved out of the Chair and the Bill was lost. At a later stage a motion was moved by the Honorary Minister (Hon. W.H. Kitson) to revive the committee stage, but it was defeated.

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In concluding his second reading, which explained the Bill to the Legislative Assembly before it was referred to the select committee, the Minister for Public Health reflected that the WA parliament spent a lot of time dealing with 'protecting or improving the breed of animals' and should give as much attention to the people in the State:

J.H.Curle, in his book 'To-day and To-morrow' says -

Australians still have it in their power by excluding colour, limiting entry to the best whites, and preventing the unfit from breeding, to become and remain about the finest white strain in the world.

I agree absolutely with that sentiment…(Hansard 17 September 1929, p.747)

Arthur Lovekin MLC, former owner of The Daily News, was greatly in favour of sterilisation. Edmund Gray MLC raised the issue of children with intellectual disabilities. If parents couldn't manage these children at home, they had to be sent to Claremont Hospital for the Insane. This was not desirable, but Gray was concerned that if Western Australia invested in a purpose-built institution for these children people in other States without such places would dump their 'mental defectives' in WA. This would, he felt, place an undesirable economic burden on WA taxpayers.

The Bill lapsed on the basis of lack of support for sterilisation and a lack of desire to invest money in facilities and treatments for 'mental deficients'. Nonetheless, the debates that surrounded the Bill give great insight into the beliefs and practices to which Western Australians with intellectual disability were subjected in the first half of the twentieth century.

Publications

Book Sections

  • Gillgren, Christina, 'Once a Defective, always a Defective: Public Sector Residential Care 1900-1965', in Errol Cocks (ed.), Under blue skies : the social construction of intellectual disability in Western Australia, Centre for Disability Research and Development, Faculty of Health and Human Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Perth, 1996, pp. 53-91. pp.69-72. Details

Reports

  • Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly on the Mental Deficiency Bill, Minutes and votes and proceedings of the Parliament ... with papers presented to both Houses., Western Australia Parliament, Government Printer, Perth, 1929. Details

Online Resources

Sources used to compile this entry: 'Parliamentary Debates [Contents]', in Hansard Archive 1870 to 1995, Parliament of Western Australia, 1930, https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Hansard/hansard1870to1995.nsf/83cc4ce93b5d4e0b48257b33001cfef6/4ECD7BA1B1B4B31748257A5300146891/$File/1929%20Index_1.pdf. pp.xx, xxii.; Gillgren, Christina, 'Once a Defective, always a Defective: Public Sector Residential Care 1900-1965', in Errol Cocks (ed.), Under blue skies : the social construction of intellectual disability in Western Australia, Centre for Disability Research and Development, Faculty of Health and Human Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Perth, 1996, pp. 53-91. pp.69-72..

Prepared by: Debra Rosser