Wage theft from Indigenous Australians

Last updated

Wage theft from Indigenous Australians was a frequent occurrence in Australia from the late 19th century through to the late 20th century. It was particularly prevalent on pastoral leases.

Contents

Under the system of Aboriginal Protection Boards established by state and federal legislation, Indigenous Australian workers' wages were paid into government-owned trust accounts. Their access to the bank accounts was severely restricted and in some cases governments illegally expropriated the trust funds for other purposes. Additionally, employers frequently underpaid Indigenous workers or made illegal withholdings.

In the early 21st century several class action lawsuits were instituted by Indigenous workers, leading to the establishment of compensation schemes by state and territory governments.

Inquiries

In 2006 a parliamentary inquiry tried to find out how much in wages had been withheld from Indigenous workers across Australia, but found the practice was so extensive that it could not reach a figure. [1] [2] Known officially as the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee Inquiry into Stolen Wages, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission made a submission to it. [3] The Inquiry recommended that state governments must open their archives to improve access, fund awareness campaigns, and provide legal assistance to potential claimants. Stolen wages commissions were set up in Western Australia (March–November 2012 [4] ), Queensland (2015 [5] ), and New South Wales (2004–2011 [6] ). [7] [8]

Political campaigns led by trade unions and community groups have been advocating strongly for reparations, particularly in Queensland and New South Wales, and somewhat less strongly in Western Australia and Victoria, but there has been much research conducted on the topic of stolen wages in Victoria. The Wampan Wages Victorian Stolen Wages Working Group has been the peak body in that state. As of 2014, there was still no reparation scheme in Victoria. [9]

Recent estimates have suggested that up to A$500 million may have been withheld in just Queensland from 1920 to 1970. [1]

Lawsuits and compensation schemes

Northern Territory

As of September 2021 more than 770 former stockmen, farmhands, domestic workers and labourers in the Northern Territory have joined in a class action to recover stolen wages, as well as other forms of reparations, such as truth telling. [10] A date has been set for the class action trial, in March 2025. [11]

Queensland

In 2015 the Stolen Wages Reparations Task Force was established by the Queensland Government to provide advice and recommendations relating to "The Reparations Scheme –Stolen Wages and Savings", which was due to conclude in 2018. Mick Gooda was appointed as chair. [5]

In September 2016 a class action was started by eighty-year-old Hans Pearson, [12] in the Federal Court of Australia against the Queensland Government. Known as “The Stolen Wages Class Action”, the case was known as Pearson v State of Queensland . It concerns payment for work done from 1939 to 1972 by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland. [13] It represented about 10,000 Aboriginal Queenslanders, of whom about 60 percent were already deceased, [12] and was settled in July 2019 with a payout of A$190,000,000. [14] [15] This was the fifth-largest class action settlement in Australia, aside from native title claims, the biggest ever payout to Indigenous Australians. [16]

The lawsuit claimed that the legislation in force from 1939 to 1972 allowed the wages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers to be stolen. [17] The payout represented wages that had been withheld by the state government, which often deposited it into trust funds inaccessible to Indigenous people, which was enabled under the legislation described above. This settlement, based on the legal claim that the government "breached its duty as a trustee and fiduciary in not paying out wages that were held in trust", and based on archived records, was the first recognition that claims for stolen wages have some legal and ethical justification. Previous actions by claimants in Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland had not been successful. [14]

The payout was reduced by about A$53 million in the costs of litigation. Because of the lack of records, the court relied on anthropological evidence to determine the entitlements, grouping people based on age; it was not intended to be a precise calculation of what was owed because this was impossible to determine. Moneys were not paid out to grandchildren, and men received more than women as it was calculated that more was withheld from them. [16]

However, the legal justification under which this settlement was awarded does not necessarily apply across all sectors and jurisdictions; different issues arise where private employers are involved. Historically, the majority of Aboriginal workers were employed on cattle stations across northern Australia, from Queensland, across the Northern Territory to Western Australia, numbering tens of thousands between the 1880s and 1970s. Indigenous labour kept the industry afloat during the Great Depression in Australia. The law allowed wages of two-thirds that of non-Indigenous workers, but employers could get away with paying less, and unlike Queensland government archives, few records of these transactions exist. [14]

Western Australia

In October 2020 a class action was started against the Western Australian Government, with more than a thousand people registered for the claim. [1] [18] [19] In November 2023 the WA Government agreed a settlement with Shine Lawyers, acting for the claimants. According to an announcement on the government website: "The WA Government will pay into an administered fund a sum of $16,500 in respect of each eligible claimant, up to a total of $165 million". The maximum total will only be paid if the number of eligible claimants reaches 10,000. The Federal Court will determine how much each claimant will receive. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stolen Generations</span> Indigenous Australian children forcibly acculturated into White Australian society

The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals of those referred to as "half-caste" children were conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1967, although in some places mixed-race children were still being taken into the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial Discrimination Act 1975</span>

The Racial Discrimination Act 1975(Cth) is an Act of the Australian Parliament, which was enacted on 11 June 1975 and passed by the Whitlam government. The Act makes racial discrimination in certain contexts unlawful in Australia, and also overrides state and territory legislation to the extent of any inconsistency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palm Island, Queensland</span> Locality consisting of a group of islands in Queensland, Australia

Palm Island is a locality consisting of an island group of 16 islands, split between the Shire of Hinchinbrook and the Aboriginal Shire of Palm Island, in Queensland, Australia. The locality coincides with the geographical entity known as the Palm Island group, also known as the Greater Palm group, originally named the Palm Isles.

The Wave Hill walk-off, also known as the Gurindji strike, was a walk-off and strike by 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families, starting on 23 August 1966 and lasting for seven years. It took place at Wave Hill, a cattle station in Kalkarindji, Northern Territory, Australia, and was led by Gurindji man Vincent Lingiari.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Sorry Day</span> Annual Australian event on 26 May

National Sorry Day, officially the National Day of Healing, is an event held annually in Australia on 26 May commemorating the Stolen Generations. It is part of the ongoing efforts towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Reconciliation Australia is a non-government, not-for-profit foundation established in January 2001 to promote a continuing national focus for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It was established by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, which was established to create a framework for furthering a government policy of reconciliation in Australia.

Doomadgee is a town and a locality in the Aboriginal Shire of Doomadgee, Queensland, Australia. It is a mostly Indigenous community, situated about 140 kilometres (87 mi) from the Northern Territory border, and 93 kilometres (58 mi) west of Burketown.

Ruth Hegarty is an Aboriginal Elder and author.

<i>Bringing Them Home</i> 1997 Australian government report on the forced separation of indigenous families

Bringing Them Home is the 1997 Australian Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The report marked a pivotal moment in the controversy that has come to be known as the Stolen Generations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Indigenous Australians</span>

The history of Indigenous Australians began 50,000 to 65,000 years ago when humans first populated the Australian continental landmasses. This article covers the history of Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, two broadly defined groups which each include other sub-groups defined by language and culture. Human habitation of the Australian continent began with the migration of the ancestors of today's Aboriginal Australians by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. The Aboriginal people spread throughout the continent, adapting to diverse environments and climate change to develop one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth.

Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and/or recognised membership of, the various ethnic groups living within the territory of present day Australia prior to British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups, which includes many ethnic groups: the Aboriginal Australians of the mainland and many islands, including Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islanders of the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea, located in Melanesia.

<i>Half-Caste Act</i> 1890s Australian laws removing mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families

Half-Caste Act was the common name given to Acts of Parliament passed in Victoria and Western Australia in 1886. They became the model for legislation to control Aboriginal people throughout Australia - Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, NSW/ACT's Aboriginal Protection Act 1909, the Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910, South Australia's Aborigines Act 1911, and Tasmania's Cape Barren Island Reserve Act 1912.

This is a timeline of Aboriginal history of Western Australia.

Adrian Burragubba is an Aboriginal Australian musician skilled in didgeridoo particularly known for his 30 years busking in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall and the past 17 years in the Gold Coast's Cavil Mall. He is also known for having stood for Queensland parliament in 2004 seeking full reimbursement of past Aboriginal wages 'stolen' by the Queensland Government. He also made the news when he was the victim of an apparently racially motivated attack while performing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Palm Island</span> Island off the North-Eastern Australian coast

Great Palm Island, usually known as Palm Island, is the largest island in the Palm Islands group off Northern Queensland, Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal community, the legacy of an Aboriginal reserve, the Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement. The original inhabitants of the island were the Manbarra people, also known as the Wulgurukaba, who were removed to the mainland by the Queensland Government in the 1890s. The island is also sometimes referred to as Bwgcolman, which is the name given to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from disparate groups who were deported from many areas of Queensland to the reserve in 1918, and their descendants.

The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.

In Australia, Indigenous land rights or Aboriginal land rights are the rights and interests in land of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people; the term may also include the struggle for those rights. Connection to the land and waters is vital in Australian Aboriginal culture and to that of Torres Strait Islander people, and there has been a long battle to gain legal and moral recognition of ownership of the lands and waters occupied by the many peoples prior to colonisation of Australia starting in 1788, and the annexation of the Torres Strait Islands by the colony of Queensland in the 1870s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mick Gooda</span> Indigenous Australian public servant

Mick Gooda is an Aboriginal Australian public servant. He has particularly served as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016 and as Co-Commissioner of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory from 2016 to 2017. He is a descendant of the Gangulu people of Central Queensland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in Australia</span>

Slavery in Australia has existed in various forms from colonisation in 1788 to the present day. European settlement relied heavily on convicts, sent to Australia as punishment for crimes and forced into labour and often leased to private individuals. Many Aboriginal and African Australians were also forced into various forms of slavery and unfree labour from colonisation. Some Indigenous Australians performed unpaid labour until the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement</span> Australian Aboriginal reserve (1914–1975) in Queensland

Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement, later officially known as Director of Native Affairs Office, Palm Island and also known as Palm Island Aboriginal Reserve, Palm Island mission and Palm Island Dormitory, was an Aboriginal reserve and penal settlement on Great Palm Island, the main island in the Palm Island group in North Queensland, Australia. It was the largest and most punitive reserve in Queensland.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Collard, Sarah (18 October 2020). "Class action launched against West Australian Government over Indigenous stolen wages". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020. Up until the late 1970s, all Indigenous Australians were governed under various protection acts which controlled every aspect of their lives — from whether they could buy a new pair of shoes to whether they could marry. It was these acts that allowed Aboriginal people's wages to be held in trust by state and territory governments.
  2. ↑ "Inquiry into Stolen Wages (2006)". Find & Connect. Archived from the original on 24 June 2022. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  3. ↑ "Inquiry into Stolen Wages". Australian Human Rights Commission. Archived from the original on 2 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  4. ↑ "Stolen Wages Reparation Scheme WA (2012 - 2012)". Find & Connect. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Queensland Stolen Wages Reparations Taskforce Report: Reconciling Past Injustice" (PDF). March 2016. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  6. ↑ "Returning Stolen Wages". Public Interest Advocacy Centre. 24 August 2016. Archived from the original on 30 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Cutcher, Leanne; Tyler, Melissa (14 May 2018). "Australia's stolen wages: one woman's quest for compensation". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 18 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  8. ↑ Unfinished business: Indigenous stolen wages. Commonwealth of Australia 2006. 7 December 2006. ISBN   0-642-71737-0. Archived from the original on 3 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  9. ↑ Gunstone, Andrew (May–June 2014). "Indigenous Stolen Wages and Campaigns for Reparations in Victoria" (PDF). Indigenous Law Bulletin . 8 (12). Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  10. ↑ Rowley, Max (1 September 2021). "It's 55 years since the Wave Hill walk-off, and Aboriginal workers are still fighting for their stolen wages". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  11. ↑ "Class action listed for trial; Northern Territory Stolen Wages members urged to come forward" (audio (10 mins) + text). CAAMA . 26 September 2023. Archived from the original on 12 October 2023. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  12. 1 2 Australian Associated Press (10 July 2019). "Tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians may be eligible for stolen wages class action". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  13. ↑ "The Class Action". Stolen Wages Settlement. Grant Thornton Australia Limited. 17 January 2020. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  14. 1 2 3 Anthony, Thalia (10 July 2019). "The new Mabo? $190 million stolen wages settlement is unprecedented, but still limited". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  15. ↑ "Indigenous workers receive $190m stolen wages settlement from Queensland government". The Guardian. 9 July 2019. Archived from the original on 7 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  16. 1 2 Gordon, Krystal; Stephen, Adam (19 November 2020). "North Queensland elders say stolen wages entitlements unfair, much lower than expected". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Archived from the original on 1 December 2020. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  17. ↑ Wellington, Shahni (11 June 2020). "'Ignorant and ill-informed': Prime Minister's slavery comments condemned". NITV. Archived from the original on 12 June 2020. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  18. ↑ Jenkins, Keira; Collard, Sarah (19 October 2020). "Class action launched against WA government to recover stolen wages". NITV . Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  19. ↑ Weber, David (10 July 2019). "Indigenous stolen wages at centre of WA class action as dust settles on Queensland case". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 2 November 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2020.
  20. ↑ "Aboriginal Stolen Wages Class Action". Western Australian Government. 15 November 2023. Archived from the original on 14 November 2023. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.