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 Aboriginal people was improperly withheld by governments. This money included wages, social security payments like 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, and some disappeared through fraud, negligence and maintenance of banking systems known to be faulty.
The NSW government recently admitted it lied to people seeking money still held in their accounts. In Queensland, people only got control of their savings accounts in the 1970s, and only if they asked. Many balances reflected little return for decades of work.
Generations of Aboriginal families have been economically disadvantaged as a result of this flawed financial management, yet government rhetoric continues to blame Aboriginal people for their own poverty!
In 2002, Peter Beattie's government made a capped reparations offer of $55.6 million to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to whom money is owed. The Indigenous Wages and Savings Reparations process is a take-it-or-leave-it scheme that closes at the end of 2005. It offers fixed payments of $2000 or $4000, according to age, to claimants alive after May 9, 2002. A lot of older Indigenous people are only taking the offer because they may have to wait years and may not be around.
Large amounts still owing
The government knows that many now elderly claimants forced to work for up to 20 years, sometimes more, with limited access to their own accounts are 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 must also sign an indemnity waiving their right to take any further action to recover their full entitlements. Yet few claimants have any idea of what they are legally owed.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers and families, who had their personal accounts withheld, want their money back. In Queensland, they have been campaigning for three years to convince the government to make a better offer.
The results of a stolen wages survey distributed throughout Queensland strongly indicate a high level of dissatisfaction with the government's response. The survey was distributed after the state government refused to carry out its own party policy, which calls for re-negotiation with Indigenous communities. Members of the Stolen Wages Working Group agree that the results discredit the Beattie government's stance and therefore the original process through which it was devised.
I attended the Toowoomba meeting a few years ago, and it was offensive to see that older people who didn't accept the offer were told that the legal process could take up to 10 years and that many may not live that long.
The survey showed that more than 94% of Indigenous and non-Indigenous respondents said 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% of both groups knew about the government's offer has prompted calls for it to be extended. Less than 10% of those who knew about the offer found out from the government; the rest from either the stolen wages campaign or the media.
NSW scheme
In March 2004, the then NSW Premier Bob Carr apologised for the practices of previous governments and promised that his government would search surviving records and reimburse people shown to be owed money. An Aboriginal Trust Funds Repayment Scheme was announced in December 2004. There is no "cap" on total repayments, claimants will be paid what they are owed to today's value and they will not have to sign a legal indemnity. Oral evidence will be given due weight where written records are missing or suspect.
The NSW scheme is much fairer than Queensland's, but there are still many questions of detail, and progress so far is very slow. Repayment in both states depends primarily on surviving evidence in state files, and both governments have admitted their records are grossly incomplete.
Other states and the Commonwealth have yet to recognise the discrimination, although the Victorian government has promised some research funding.
In June, NSW claimants and campaigners attended a Stolen Wages Working Group meeting in Brisbane with others from Cairns, Townsville and Mackay, in an effort to promote unity between states and territories for a stronger push to make the stolen wages campaign a national issue.
The meeting agreed that national leadership — Indigenous and non-Indigenous — was not focusing enough on reparations and that stolen wages, in particular, did not have the profile it should have.
The meeting decided to print 10,000 "Stolen Wages Built this State" stickers for Queensland, proposed a day of action (to be announced) at Parliament House in Brisbane and called for two national days of action, one to be held on Human Rights Day in December and the other to coincide with the launch of a national report in May 2006.
Testimonies
The national report is being researched by volunteers under the guidance of historian Dr Ros Kidd and international human rights lawyer Helen Burrows. It will summarise laws and regulations in each state relating to work and finances, indicate relevant holdings in state archives and where possible include evidence from the files themselves.
Most importantly, it will include testimony about how the financial controls impacted on people's lives. The report aims to give a full picture of government controls of Aboriginal labour and finances in every state, including entitlements such as endowment, workers' compensation, pensions and inheritances. It will look at wages, access to personal money, and management of savings accounts.
Dr Kidd says the greatest evidence of official negligence and malpractice has been collected in Queensland and to a lesser extent NSW. "We know all states had similar opportunities to misuse Aboriginal monies and we want to find out if there was similar negligence", said Dr Kidd.
The final report will provide the basis to demand a national inquiry to reveal the full extent of Aboriginal labour in the development of modern Australia, and to clarify the extent to which other states are also guilty of financial mismanagement. Legal organisations in several states have already said they are willing to provide pro bono advice for people who want to discuss the possibility of legal action to recover monies owing.
In Queensland, legal actions are already pending but the elderly status of many claimants and the length of time and commitment required to reach an outcome has dissuaded many from taking this course.
In the meantime, the only options left in the remaining six months of the Queensland offer are for campaigners to continue to try and persuade the Beattie government to act on the community's, trade unions' and its own party's concerns.
The Queensland government is hoping the issue will go away at the end of the year. But many Queenslanders consider what the government has or hasn't done to be unconscionable. The fact is 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.
Missing, unpaid and underpaid wages belonging to Aboriginal workers over the past century is destined to haunt governments — both state and federal — until they face up to their moral and legal responsibilities.
Volunteer researchers are needed in each state to summarise laws and regulations and provide a list of general files held in government archives. Where possible, it is hoped to include evidence from these files.
Information sessions are planned for each state to tell people what is already known about these financial controls, and people will be asked if they'd like to make some of their own experiences available for inclusion into the report. A questionnaire will help collect these stories, and state offices of ANTaR will help organise the sessions.
Those willing to share written or oral information, including anonymously, would be of great help. The aim is to have the information collected by the end of November and the report completed by May 2006. This report depends entirely upon volunteers; if you can help, contact Christine Howes <chowes@hotkey.net.au> or the ANTaR office in your state <http://www.antar.org.au>.
[Christine Howes is based in Cairns, far north Queensland, and has coordinated the Stolen Wages Campaign in that state since June 2002. Information for this article was gathered from Dr Ros Kidd, see <http://www.linksdisk.com/roskidd> and Stolen Wages Survey Results and Stolen Wages Updates 1-7, available from ANTaR Queensland at <http://www.antarqld.org.au>. This article was first published in the Indigenous Law Bulletin, July 2005, Volume 6, Issue 12.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
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