Doom for the man who founds his palace on anything
but integrity,
his upstairs rooms on anything but honesty,
who makes his fellow man work for nothing,
without paying him his wages...
Jeremiah 22:13 The Jerusalem Bible.
By Christine Howes
From 1900 until as late as the 1980s,
governments around Australia controlled
wages, savings and benefits belonging to
Aboriginal people who were under their care and
protection.
In almost every state and territory, money
belonging to individual Aboriginal people was
improperly withheld by governments.
This money included wages, social security payments
such as child endowment and pensions, soldiers’
pay, workers compensation and inheritances.
Records show some funds from Trust accounts
were transferred to public revenue and used for
development and infrastructure. Some “disappeared”
through fraud, negligence and maintenance
of faulty banking systems.
In 2002 the Queensland Government made
a capped reparations offer of $55.6 million to
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to
whom money was owed.
The Indigenous Wages and Savings Reparations
process is a “take it or leave it” scheme which
closed at the end of January. It offered fixed payments,
according to age, of $2,000 or $4,000 to
claimants alive after 9 May 2002.
The government knows many now-elderly
claimants, forced to work for up to twenty or more
years with limited access to their own accounts, are
actually owed much larger amounts. Even if they
have records to prove it they cannot claim all their
money without taking the government to court.
Families of deceased workers cannot apply and
claimants had to sign an indemnity waiving their
right to take any further action to recover their full
entitlements. Few claimants have any idea of what
they are actually owed.
Final results of a Stolen Wages Survey distributed
throughout Queensland last year indicated a high
level of dissatisfaction with that government’s handling
of this issue. The survey was distributed in
response to the Queensland Government’s refusal
to carry out its own State Labor Party policy
which calls for re-negotiation with indigenous
communities.
Results of the survey were uniformly strong
with more than 94 per cent of indigenous and
non-indigenous respondents agreeing that the offer
was not fair, that the families of deceased workers
should be entitled to make a claim, and that there
should be an independent inquiry to audit what
might be owed.
A result showing only 75 per cent of both groups
knew about the government’s offer prompted calls
for the offer to be extended. Less than ten per cent
of those who knew about the offer found out from
government; the rest from either the stolen wages
campaign or the media — nearly all of which over
the past three years has been generated by the
campaign.
In June last year NSW claimants and campaigners
attended a Stolen Wages Working Group meeting
in Brisbane, determined to promote unity between
states and territories and a stronger showing for
stolen wages as a national issue.
It seemed the Queensland Government was
hoping this issue would go away, but a series
of meetings held with elders from Brisbane to
Normanton in January has resulted in a commitment
by campaigners to keep going.
The government needs to be aware that the
effects of inter-generational poverty caused by
these practices, and perpetuated by this offer, will
not go away for indigenous individuals, their families
and communities.
The issue of missing, unpaid and underpaid
wages belonging to Aboriginal workers over the
past century is destined to stay until governments
— both state and federal — face up to their moral
and legal responsibilities for these matters.
A National Report is currently being researched
by volunteers across the nation under the guidance
of historian Dr Ros Kidd and international human
rights lawyer Helen Burrows.
Christine Howes is a freelance journalist and media coordinator based in far north Queensland and has coordinated the Stolen Wages Campaign since June 2002. Information for this article was gathered from Dr Ros Kidd (Fact Sheets and National Report www.linksdisk.com/roskidd), Stolen Wages Survey Results and Stolen Wages Updates 1-8 (all available from ANTaR Qld at www.antarqld.org.au).