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control over health services in Aboriginal communities, although its authority came under strong challenge from
the Commonwealth Department of Health in the 1960s. A housing program for part-Aboriginal families living in
urban areas was also established.
Even with respect to the wider community, Giese did not see the Branch’s role as limited to providing a residual
support service for the poor and needy, but rather as being a vehicle for social development. Giese believed that,
while the government was not the appropriate body to provide social and recreational services, it had an obligation
to facilitate the growth of a strong non-government community sector by offering incentives to bodies such as
the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) to set up
branches in the Northern Territory. A pre-school centre program was also put in place.
Throughout the 1950s, Giese enjoyed considerable authority. He had the support of an energetic, interventionist
minister in Hasluck, who in turn articulated a coherent policy. Although many of the assumptions upon which the
policy rested subsequently came under attack, and the policy itself was later abandoned, it undoubtedly provided
at the time a framework conducive to the development of educational, economic and other institutions. Giese’s
dominance, however, helped to create countervailing currents. By the early 1960s, he was being criticised as an
empire builder, both by locally elected members—who saw him as a principal representative of Canberra’s social
agenda for the Northern Territory—and by some of his colleagues in the NT Administration, who resented his
influence over what they considered to be their own specialist domains. By this time, too, the assimilation policy
was coming under increasing criticism. Ironically, Giese was caught between those critics who claimed that his
Branch was allocating too many resources to Aboriginal development, and others who believed the policies of the
Branch offered too few opportunities for Aboriginal advancement.
In 1962, the NT Administrator’s Council, a body made up of the Administrator and two elected members,
refused to approve a supplementary list of wards submitted by the Welfare Branch. In the same year, locally elected
members of the Legislative Council attempted to introduce a new Child Welfare Bill, under which responsibility
for non-Aboriginal child welfare would have been hived off from the Welfare Branch, leaving the latter, in effect,
in charge solely of Aboriginal welfare. The move failed, but it signalled a desire on the part of some local members
both to curtail Giese’s power, and to promote an alternative social agenda for the Northern Territory. An even
bolder attempt was mounted in 1964. In February of that year Giese, representing the Commonwealth, formally
introduced into the Legislative Council three bills that incorporated radical changes in social welfare, the removal
of restrictions on Aboriginal access to alcohol, and changes in Aboriginal employment conditions. Disgruntled
local members responded by setting up a Select Committee, from which Giese was pointedly excluded.
Once again, the attempt by local members to wrest control over social policy away from Canberra failed.
The Select Committee accepted the broad direction of the new bills, which together constituted a dismantling of
most of the remaining restrictions on Aboriginal people. A new Social Welfare Ordinance was passed in May 1964
and took effect in September of the same year.
Giese retained the position of Director. In 1965, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire
(MBE) in recognition of his public service, and in the following year won a Churchill Fellowship, which he used
to visit indigenous communities in Canada and the United States.
In retrospect, the awards came at a fitting time, for his position in the NT Administration was soon to become
increasingly contested. By now, Hasluck was no longer Minister for Territories, having been replaced in 1963
by CE Barnes, who displayed little interest in the ambitious reform programs associated with Hasluck and
Giese. In 1967, following a referendum that conferred expanded powers on the Commonwealth with respect to
Aboriginal Australians, the Commonwealth Government established two new bodies in Canberra: a Council for
Aboriginal Affairs to provide policy advice, and an Office of Aboriginal Affairs, set up within the Prime Minister’s
Department, to service the Council. Together, these bodies represented a new locus of influence over Aboriginal
policy. The Council comprised three people: HC Coombs (Chairman), Barrie Dexter, and the anthropologist
W E H Stanner. Dexter headed the Office of Aboriginal Affairs.
At around the same time, administrative responsibility for the NT was shifted from the Department of Territories
to the Department of the Interior.
These institutional changes were accompanied by a policy shift, away from the assimilationist emphasis
on preparing indigenous people for citizenship within mainstream Australian society, towards greater stress on
indigenous people’s own cultural roots, and on their right to determine their own places within a multicultural
Australian society.
In 1970, Giese was effectively sidelined in a restructuring of the Northern Territory Administration, which
resulted in the creation of a Deputy Administrator under whom sat three Assistant Administrators. Giese became an
Assistant Administrator, in charge of four branch heads, one of whom—Ray McHenry—became the new Director
of Welfare.
Even more traumatic changes were to follow. Following the election of the Whitlam Labor Government in
December 1972, Giese was summarily removed from his position as Assistant Administrator. The former Welfare
Branch was incorporated into a newly created Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA), with Dexter as Secretary.
Giese became an ‘unattached’ member of the new department, and was advised informally that he was unlikely
to be considered for any position involving Aboriginal policy in the Northern Territory. The Secretary of DAA
even took the extraordinary step of officially banning the former Director of Welfare from visiting Aboriginal
settlements in the Northern Territory.
On 3 April 1973, Giese’s status as a nominated member of the Northern Territory Legislative Council was
terminated. Giese later claimed that at no time was he formally notified of the termination, nor was his contribution
as the longest serving nominated member of the Council ever acknowledged.