After arriving in Western Australia, Neville joined the Department of Works as a records clerk; he quickly rose through the ranks due to his efficiency. In 1900, he was appointed registrar of a sub-department of Premier
John Forrest's office. In 1902, he was promoted to registrar of the Colonial Secretary's Department. Neville worked from
Murray Street, Perth and had under him a secretary and either five or six clerks. He had only one travelling inspector, E.C. Mitchell, from 1925 to 1930. That year he had to sack Mitchell due to the
Great Depression. His administration had a budget of one pound and nine shillings per Indigenous Australian. During the next quarter-century, Neville presided over the controversial policy of removing
Aboriginal children from their families, especially if they were of mixed race, for education and assimilation to mainstream Australian life. Such children came to be called the
Stolen Generations. Early on as Chief Protector, Neville took control of the mission at
Carrolup and expanded it to be self-reliant. In 1918, a mission opened at Moore River. In northern Western Australia, Neville wanted to take control of missions and transform them into self-reliant cattle stations with Moola Bulla in the Kimberley as his model. Neville believed this was a way to save government money, but it would also give Aboriginal residents on the missions work to do. Neville is quoted as saying that "scores of the children are growing up without any prospect of a future before them, being alienated from their old bush life, and rendered more or less useless for the condition of life being forced upon them". Neville acquired the former pastoral stations of Munja in 1926 and Violet Valley in 1935, with the purpose of establishing them as stations to "pacify the natives and accustom them to white man's ways and thus enable further settlement". Despite this, no other missions were established in the north during Neville's time in office. Some Aboriginal Australians were forcibly forced onto missions, with at least 500 Aboriginal people (around a quarter of the native population in southern Western Australia) being removed to missions from 1915 to 1920. At age 14, children of mixed descent were sent out from missions to work. A high proportion of the girls returned pregnant. Neville was annoyed at the burden this placed on the government to support their babies, but did not feel that this was an important issue. by having those children brought up as though they were white. The idea was that over successive generations, they would marry people of increasingly European descent, until there would be no Aboriginal people in Australia at all. At the time, many whites believed that "full-blooded" Aboriginal people were dying out. Non-Indigenous people in Western Australia expressed mixed feelings towards Neville's policies of
miscegenation. Neville was one of the most influential delegates at the conference, and declared: Are we going to have one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were any Aborigines in Australia?Neville believed that biological absorption was the key to 'uplifting the Native race.' Speaking at the Moseley Royal Commission, he defended the policies of forced settlement, removing children from parents, surveillance, discipline and punishment, arguing that: "[T]hey have to be protected against themselves whether they like it or not. They cannot remain as they are. The sore spot requires the application of the surgeon's knife for the good of the patient, and probably against the patient's will." In 1947, following his retirement, he was invited to represent the State of Western Australia on discussions regarding Aboriginal Welfare in connection with the
Woomera Test Range, prior to its establishment. == Personal life ==