Announcement of New Deal for Aborigines

Date: January 8, 1939 • Location: Canberra, Australia

The New Deal for Aborigines was a landmark Australian federal government policy statement on Indigenous Australians. The policy was announced in December 1938 by interior minister John McEwen and detailed in a white paper released in February 1939. It provided for Indigenous people to be granted full civil rights in conjunction with a process of cultural assimilation.