This paper examines Aboriginal governance in Australia in the 1890s, at a time when the mission station was the main instrument used to manage certain categories of Aboriginal person.  The paper compares these arrangements with aspects of current practices of the Howard conservative government that deploys techniques such as ‘Shared Responsibility Agreements’ in order to govern Aboriginal communities.  These forms of governance are compared and contrasted in terms of their attachment to liberalism, understood as a distinct form of political reason that is concerned with the practical implications of the belief that members of the population are endowed with, or capable of acquiring, a capacity for autonomous, self-directing activity.  Finally, the paper draws connections between liberal and neo-liberal political reason on the one hand, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical relations with the criminal justice system.