Abstract
This article draws on examples from Western Australian oral history projects to explore the historical construction of ethical practice in oral history. It argues that a moral imperative to collect and archive old people's recollections, and to record the memories of groups previously 'hidden from history' have remained constants, while understandings of what constitutes ethical practice as well as its regulatory frameworks (advisory and/or mandatory) have shifted significantly. The focus of ethical concern has moved from the oral historian's responsibility to historical truth to a duty to the individual interviewee; and from the oral historian's overriding authority to the primacy of the interviewee's rights and needs. Confidence in an identity of interest between interviewer and interviewee has waned as has the belief in oral history's capacity to unearth truth in history. While the development of a professional code and associational guidelines has standardised basic practices, curly ethical questions confronting the oral historian remain to be answered individually because they lie beyond the limits of codes and guidelines in a wider moral order. Several of these questions - in situational and interpretive ethics - are raised here. Portelli's argument for amplification and restitution represents a final step in ethical oral history practice.