[1] The resolution was viewed unfavourably by Aboriginal leaders, with William Cooper stating that it was based on assumptions of white supremacy and lobbying federal interior minister Thomas Paterson and his successor John McEwen for racial equality.
[2] On 26 January 1938, the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) led by William Ferguson and Jack Patten organised the Day of Mourning, a protest coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet and British colonisation of Australia.
[3] Following his and Lyons' meeting with Patten's delegation, McEwen prepared a cabinet submission authorising him to development an official government policy on Aboriginal affairs.
[4] McEwen undertook an extended tour of the Northern Territory later in 1938, travelling over 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from Mount Isa through to Alice Springs in central Australia and then north to Darwin.
[14] The New Deal made provision for all Indigenous workers to receive award wages (standardised pay rates set under industrial law), to which only half-castes had previously been entitled.
[15] The implementation of the New Deal stalled with Lyons' death in April 1939, which saw Robert Menzies become prime minister and McEwen's Country Party leave the governing coalition.
[19] The failure of the 1944 constitutional referendum – which would have granted the federal government the power to legislate specifically for Indigenous Australians – also contributed to delays in the implementation of New Deal policies.
[19] Paul Hasluck, the minister responsible for Indigenous policy through the 1950s and early 1960s, regarded the New Deal statement as representing a "change in outlook", but suggested it was not until the 1950s that it developed into a "clear and practical movement [...] toward a new objective in the administration of Aboriginal affairs".
[27] Silverstein (2018) has argued that the New Deal policies envisaged a form of indirect rule, inspired by British colonial governance systems in Africa and the Pacific.