5 - New South Wales

Summary

Saxe Bannister was appointed Attorney General of New South Wales probably at least in part because his interactions with the Six Nations had brought him to the attention of the Colonial Office. He found himself plunged into conflict with competing settler factions. The chapter focuses primarily, however, on his interaction with Indigenous resistance, particularly by the Wiradjuri, in the context of the violent conquest of Australia. Bannister tried to apply the British rule of law as he saw it to frontier contexts, calling for the declaration of martial law during warfare in both Bathurst and Hunter Valley. He also tried unsuccessfully to prosecute police officers and local settlers for extrajudicial murders. Bannister left New South Wales in disgrace but his legal legacy persisted in debates that had implications across the British settler empire: the court case would later lay the groundwork for the legal refusal of Indigenous sovereignty in exchange for the protection of Indigenous people against settler violence. The chapter highlights the importance and the contradictions of the British ideology of the rule of law.