Patrick Killoran

PJ (Pat) Killoran was a Queensland bureaucrat who, for a number of years, headed that state's Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs. He was a protector on Thursday Island, before being made Director of the Sub-Department of Native Affairs in 1964; a position maintained until his retirement in 1985. Killoran remained opposed to the payment of award wages to Indigenous workers, and was implicated in the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents. He oversaw the police raid on an Aboriginal community at Mapoon, on the Cape York Peninsula. Families were forced from their homes which were burnt to the ground, before being moved 200 kilometres to form the community of New Mapoon.^[1]

He also ran as a National Party candidate for the Queensland state seat of Cook (which included Cape York and the Torres Strait) in 1983, but attracted just 17 per cent of the vote.

Killoran died in 2010.

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