segregation of Aboriginal people on reserves and in institutions was never systematically accomplished due to funding constraints, differing policy priorities in the states and territories, and resistance from Aboriginal people. In the more densely settled areas of Australia, about 20 per cent of Aboriginal people lived on reserves in the 1920s. The majority lived in camps on the fringes of country towns and a small percentage lived in cities. During the Great Depression more Aboriginal people moved to reserves and missions for food and shelter. By 1941 almost half of the Aboriginal population of New South Wales lived on reserves. In northern Australia, the majority of employed Aboriginal people worked in the pastoral industry where they lived in camps, often with their extended families. Many also camped on the margins of towns and reserves where they could avoid most of the controls imposed by the administrators of reserves, compounds and missions. The 1937 Native Welfare conference of state and Commonwealth officials endorsed a policy of biological absorption of mixed-descent Aboriginal Australians into the white community.[T]he destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end.The officials saw the policy of Aboriginal assimilation by absorption into the white community as progressive, aimed at eventually achieving civil and economic equality for mixed-descent Aboriginal people."... efforts of all State authorities should be directed towards the education of children of mixed aboriginal blood at white standards, and their subsequent employment under the same conditions as whites with a view to their taking their place in the white community on an equal footing with the whites."The following decades saw an increase in the number of Aboriginal Australians of mixed descent removed from their families, although the states and territories progressively adopted a policy of cultural, rather than biological, assimilation, and justified removals on the grounds of child welfare. In 1940, New South Wales became the first state to introduce a child welfare model whereby Aboriginal children of mixed descent were removed from their families under general welfare provisions by court order. Other jurisdictions introduced a welfare model after the war. Second World War Defence policy in the 1930s Until the late 1930s, defence was not a significant issue for Australians. At the 1937 elections, both political parties advocated increased