§ MR. THOMAS BAYLEYI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in reference to the fact that an Act had been passed by the Legislature of Western Australia abolishing the Aborigines' Protection Board of that Colony, and to his dispatch to the Governor of Western Australia, dated 21st August, 1896, inviting correspondence to be laid before Parliament with a view to ascertaining the general feeling of the House of Commons on the subject (C. 8350, p. 138), will he state when he proposes to call the attention of the House to the proposed supercession of Article 70 in the Western Australian Constitution Act of 1890?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIESThe correspondence referred to in my dispatch to the Governor of Western Australia was laid before Parliament in February, 1897, and elicited 1497 no expression of opinion adverse to the then proposed substitution of a Government Department for the Aborigines Protection Board. The Act of the Colonial Legislature, giving effect to that proposal and repealing Section 70 of the Constitution Act, has received the Royal assent, and I do not propose to bring the matter further before the House.