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injurious punishments and the practice of holding inmates up to ridicule, such as dressingthem in old sacks or shaving girls’ heads’ (Neville 1947 page 113).Failure to involve parentsThe third type of breach was the failure to consult the living parents’ wishesconcerning the religion and education of their children. Not only were very manychildren brought up to despise Aboriginal people such as their own parents, many weretold falsely their parents were dead.Forcible removal itself a breach?Even with the knowledge and by the standards of the times, Protectors and Boardsmay have breached their fiduciary duties to many children by the very act of removingthem from parental or other family care.We would argue that the removal from the family was so casual as to allow unnecessarydeprivation to be experienced by all the children regardless of whether some special care wasnecessary because of the context of their situation. We would argue also that other basic rightswere totally ignored in the structure of care of the children, basic human rights. So much so as tosuggest that all institutions involved in the care of the children during that period [early 1960s]failed in their fiduciary duty to some extent … I think we would want to say that the failuredoesn’t mean that many individuals in government and the churches were uncaring and did notwork unstintingly to love and care for the children (Rev. Bernie Clarke evidence 119).We have spoken with people who, even today, honestly believe that it was right to transferindigenous children into white families because this would give them the material benefits theywould not otherwise have.We contend that this motivation does not in any way morally excuse, or legally justify, the takingof children from loving families, and robbing them of their culture and identity (Phillips FoxSolicitors submission 20 page 7).International human rightsBy 1940 assimilation had become official policy in all Australian mainland Statesand the Territories. In fact the practice of child removal with the aim of children’s‘absorption’ pre-dated the term ‘assimilation’. The assimilation policy persisted until theearly 1970s and continues to influence public attitudes and some official practices today.Yet within a few years of the end of the Second World War, Australia, together withmany other nations, had pledged itself to standards of conduct which required allgovernments to discontinue immediately a key element of the assimilation policy, namelythe wholesale removal of Indigenous children from Indigenous care and their transfer tonon-Indigenous institutions and families.The United Nations Charter of 1945, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of1948 and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of RacialDiscrimination of 1965 all imposed obligations on Australia relating to the elimination ofracial discrimination. Genocide was declared to be a crime against humanity by a United