 Until 1886 dealings with "natives" in Western Australia had been the responsibility of the British Colonial Office.A "Royal Commission on the Administration of Aborigines and the Condition of the Natives" chaired by Dr Walter Edmund Roth (1861–1933), Chief Protector of Aborigines in Queensland, was conducted in 1904, and discussed the growing "half-caste problem".Most Aboriginal people were living in regional areas, where sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women by whites led to an increasing number of "degenerate" mixed-race children who were subsequently abandoned by their fathers.