Harry C. Giese
Harry Christian Giese was an Australian public servant. He was the longest-serving member of the Northern Territory Legislative Council, from 1954 to 1973, administering Australian federal government policy for the people of the Northern Territory after being appointed Director of Welfare for the Northern Territory Administration by Paul Hasluck, then Minister for Territories under Prime Minister Robert Menzies. In 1978, after the NT gained self-government, Giese became the first Northern Territory Ombudsman.
Early life and education
Harry Christian Giese was born on 9 December 1913 in Greenbushes, Western Australia, a third-generation descendant of a German family who migrated to Australia in the 1870s. The family had originally migrated to Clare, South Australia, then Victoria, and then to Western Australia.Giese attended Bunbury High School, during which time his father was killed by a falling tree when Harry was 14. His mother sold the family assets, and it was thanks to a generous bursary scheme and help from his uncles that Giese was able to attend the University of Western Australia in 1932.
He played Australian Rules football for UWA in 1933. Later switching to rugby union, he became a skilled full-back player and went to Ceylon with a combined Australian team. In 1937 he played for a WA team against the South Africa national rugby union team, and in 1946 for a New South Wales country team against the All-Blacks.
Career
In 1954, after senior public service jobs in Western Australia and Queensland, Giese moved to Darwin, Northern Territory as the Director of Welfare in the Northern Territory Administration, after being appointed by Paul Hasluck. The Welfare Branch managed a suite of programs for Aboriginal advancement in health, education, housing, job creation and training, and cultural preservation. Giese saw education as key to social change. He established pre-school and primary school services throughout the Territory, and provided opportunities for secondary and tertiary education, and adult education in parenthood and child care, literacy and Australian society. Welfare Branch officers worked with missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, in child, family, and social welfare.Hostels and institutions included Carpentaria Junior Residential College, Retta Dixon Home, and Garden Point Mission. The Welfare Branch worked with the Retta Dixon Home at Bagot Aboriginal Reserve in Darwin, a home for Aboriginal children, and some mothers. In response to hearing that the older children were not allowed to attend the cinema or social events in Darwin unsupervised, in 1955 Giese asserted that, since they were wards of the state, the government should have a say in what they were permitted to do "as they approach the age where they will need to undertake their own responsibilities". He also recommended encouraging children from the home to join groups such as the Scouts and Girl Guides and Police Citizens' Youth Clubs, now Police and Community Youth Clubs.
Giese, as director of welfare, was responsible for the Aboriginal Australians in the territory. However he did not appreciate the sophistication of Yolngu culture and law, when he was party to deals with a mining company that wanted to extract bauxite on Arnhem Land which involved excising land from the Yirrkala mission. The lack of consultation with the local leaders led to the submission of the Yirrkala bark petitions to the Australian Parliament in 1963. After an inquiry by a Committee appointed by federal government, they published a report that implicated Giese for his advice to the Governor-General with regard to excising land belonging to the mission, in which he said that the excision would not affect the welfare of the Aboriginal people living there. Giese was further alarmed by the report, that also suggested that Aboriginal people had rights as citizens, and therefore were not wards under his care and control. However, according to historian Clare Wright in her 2024 book about the bark petitions, Giese was "the fall guy, in a sense, for the failings of Hasluck's department in negotiating the original mining agreements".
Giese remained Director of Welfare until 1970. Giese was the longest-serving member of the Northern Territory Legislative Council, from 1954 to 1973, pushing through policies that progressively removed legislative restrictions on the rights of Aboriginal people, and moved towards their citizenship and equality with other Australians.
After Cyclone Tracy devastated much of Darwin on 25 December 1974, Giese headed the Darwin Disaster Welfare Council.
In 1978, after Territory self-government, he became the first Northern Territory Ombudsman.
In 1979, Giese recorded an oral history interview for the Northern Territory Archives Service, in which he denied that the Aboriginal leaders had not been consulted about the mining in Gove.
Other activities
As founding chairman of the Northern Territory Committee of the Menzies Foundation, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Menzies School of Health Research, serving on its Board of Governors from 1985 to 1995 and as deputy chairman from 1987 to 1995. His committee brought together as stakeholders the NT government, the Menzies Foundation, the University of Sydney, and the embryonic Northern Territory University, to set up the Menzies School of Health Research. HE strongly supported the work of the school.Recognition and honours
- 1965: Member of the British Empire in 1967.
- 1991: Honorary fellow of the University of Sydney
- 1997: Member of the Order of Australia
Personal life and death
Giese married schoolteacher Nancy Wilson at St John's Cathedral in Brisbane on 4 May 1946. She went on to have distinguished career of her own, and the couple had two children.Giese died on 4 February 2000 in Darwin.