Christine Howes
Calls for a national levy from former governor-generals and prime ministers, headlines in two states' Sunday papers, supportive candidates in the Queensland state election, renewed grassroots support in Townsville and a furore over missing, unpaid and underpaid wages in New South Wales have all given a boost to the "stolen wages" campaign in the last month.
Since 1897, various state governments attempted to control every aspect of Indigenous Australians' lives — including their wages. State governments, it is unclear how many, took wages from Aboriginal people and held them in "trust" accounts. Little of it was ever seen again by the workers.
For decades, Aboriginal workers have been fighting to be paid what they earned, and in the last few years, the campaign has won wide support. In Normanton, in the Gulf country of north Queensland, Fred Edwards comments on the Stolen Wages postcards he is featured on: "They're going pretty fast, [I'm] flat out keeping up with them."
Edwards worked for 25 years for wages which were withheld by governments in Queensland. His money and the hard-earned wages and savings of thousands of other pastoral and domestic workers in Queensland were never returned in full.
In 2002, after a 20-year grassroots campaign, the Queensland ALP government led by Premier Peter Beattie made a "take it or leave it" offer of either $4000 or $2000 to individual workers still alive after May 9, 2002, claiming it was in the "spirit of reconciliation".
The one-off payment was indemnified against any further legal action and the families of deceased workers are unable to make their claims outside the courts.
"If they're going to make it a token offer, the least they could do is let me claim my father's and brother's earnings", Edwards said.
"[Beattie] would be the first to complain if his boss wasn't paying him."
The offer was — and still is — considered an insult by community groups and unions, although some Queensland workers have accepted the offer out of necessity.
More than 50,000 postcards demanding the return of these monies in full have now been distributed through community and union networks nationally and internationally. The campaign is not just important for Queensland workers, however, a strong campaign against Beattie's offer could ensure that other ALP state governments would not use the Queensland offer as a benchmark.
Speaking at a public meeting in Adelaide late last year, former Cherbourg resident Jo Willmot said she has spoken to people across South Australia who also knew they hadn't been properly paid. It is become clear, she said, that the wages of Aboriginal workers were stolen across Australia.
"It's an issue with them too, but the problem is getting research done which validates what Aboriginal people have been saying around Australia", she said.
"They know it happened to them, they're not asking for handouts, they know they worked and they need that support to back them.
"If other Aboriginal people — via this campaign — realise they have also been victim to this garnisheeing of wages and other welfare benefits everyone else got, then we change the precedent Peter Beattie tried to set, which was to get Aboriginal people — our old people who did all that work and suffered as they did — to accept this and shut up."
With the level of awareness raised by the Queensland campaign, it now seems unlikely the NSW ALP government, led by Premier Bob Carr, will attempt to make a similar paltry offer for up to 11,000 NSW workers.
Between 1900 and 1970, trust funds established by the NSW government accumulated funds from a variety of sources, including pension payments, child endowment, apprentice wages, inheritances and compensation payouts. The money was never paid.
Three years ago, a report commissioned by then NSW family services minister Faye Lo Po suggested that some of the money in the trust funds had been appropriated by public servants, or never paid by employers. The government may have deliberately withheld much of the rest. From what is known, it would now amount to up to $70 million.
The report was not made public until it was leaked to the National Indigenous Times on February 2.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation are calling for a full inquiry to take place before any offer of compensation is finalised, unless the offer is considered to be a down payment.
Calls for an Ansett-type tax or levy to pay back the stolen wages of Aboriginal workers have also strengthened, following the release of an open letter to Beattie in early January from the national Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation Commission.
The letter compared the federal government's special Ansett tax ensuring adequate funds were available to pay retrenched workers their leave and superannuation requirements, and the "economic injustice" meted out to Aboriginal workers.
Back in Normanton, Edwards said that was what he liked about the campaign. "People are starting to wake up to themselves now and they're on side", he said.
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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