Dr Ros Kidd      Historian - Consultant - Writer

This summary is intended only as a brief guide to the systems whereby governments around Australia controlled Aboriginal labour, wages and trust moneys during most of the twentieth century.  The most comprehensive research into government records relates to Queensland,¹and to a lesser extent to New South Wales.²  Material gathered from a few books and research projects for other states and territories reveals similar systems of control, raises similar concerns regarding flawed government management of private and trust funds, and underlines the necessity for concentrated investigation to determine the facts.³

1.       Taking control

Between 1869 and 1911 the mainland states and territories enacted laws specifically to control Aboriginal lives and labour.⁴    With minor variations, these laws applied to all people of full descent, people of part-descent living with, or as, Aboriginals, all children of part-descent under the age of 16 years, and all occupants of Aboriginal reserves.  

The Victorian government passed the Aborigines Protection Act (1869) giving an Aborigines Protection Board the power to dictate where people could live, to take custody of their children and to control employment through a system of work contracts.  Under the Aborigines Protection Act (1886) Western Australian governments set a minimum age for contracted labour at 14 years and required employment contracts to be verified by protectors or justices of the peace.  But these were optional, cash wages were not mandatory, nor were there set terms of service.  Queensland’s Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act (1897) gave the government power to banish people to a reserve or contract them out to work; cash wages were not obligatory until after 1901.  The South Australian parliament passed the Northern Territory Aborigines Act (1910) shortly before passing control of the Territory to the Commonwealth in January 1911.  This authorised that Aboriginal people could be excluded from towns or banished to a reserve, and could only work under employment licences which set no minimum wage rates.

The Aborigines Protection Act (1909) in New South Wales empowered the Aborigines Protection Board ‘to exercise general supervision and care over all Aborigines’ and indenture any Aboriginal child to work.  The Board could control tenancy on government stations and reserves, and it appears station managers at times organised external work contracts for inmates and controlled their access to savings.   Under the South Australian Aborigines Act (1911) the government empowered police to inspect workers and their conditions, but it did not introduce licenses as for the Northern Territory nor did it provide for minimum wages, leading the protector at Innamincka to comment ‘I think it is about time that slavery is put a stop to among the natives of Australia’.  

In the name of ‘protection’, for much of the twentieth century governments around Australia used their extraordinary powers to control access to schooling and medical care, to diet and shelter, to policing and justice, to domestic and employment conditions and security, to the possibilities and proceeds of labour.   Governments had a legal and moral duty to use those powers to improve the lives of Aboriginal wards of state unwillingly dependent upon them.  They had a legal and moral duty not to abuse those powers to advantage themselves or any other group.

1.1     Controlling the labour market

Aboriginal workers formed an integral part of the early development of mainland Australian colonies; they were regularly employed on farms, stations and in the towns by the mid 1800s.  From the earliest days it was common to retain women and children as servants by agreement or by force.  From the 1830s as convict labour diminished in New South Wales the Commissioner for Crown Lands said that Aboriginal stock and station workers were essential to the survival of the industry.  By the 1840s in Victoria several hundred Aboriginal men were working in rural industries as shepherds, potato harvesters, bullock drivers and at seasonal jobs; and around 500 Aboriginal people, one quarter of them women and girls, worked in the Swan River colony (Perth).  In South Australia from the mid 1840s Aboriginal gangs reaped hundreds of acres of wheat, and by the 1850s shepherded up to 200,000 sheep.⁵  In all the fledgling colonial towns Aboriginal people worked chopping wood, carting water, clearing land, trading game and skins, and as ‘house boys’ and domestics.

Most Aboriginal workers were paid in rations, tobacco or cast-off clothing, although some in New South Wales,⁶ South Australia⁷ and Victoria⁸ were paid a full wage, being regarded as equal to, and in some cases superior to, white labour.⁹   Reports stated many farms and stations in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia survived only because of their Aboriginal workers as white workers left for the gold rushes.   During much of the nineteenth century it was a common refrain that remote stations in Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia only survived because of their unpaid or underpaid Aboriginal workforce.  By the 1880s in New South Wales it was estimated over 80 per cent of Aboriginal people were self-sufficient.¹⁰

Employers could keep possession of their Aboriginal workers by invoking mainstream employment laws although it appears these options were not greatly exercised.  During drastic labour shortages in the early years in Darwin the Imperial Masters and Servants Act (1823) was applied to some Aboriginal servants; the penalty for absconding was two dozen lashes and/or imprisonment.   These laws were also invoked in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory to recapture and punish Aboriginal workers.¹¹

The pastoral industry in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and to a lesser extent in South Australia, was built on the backs of Aboriginal labour. All colonial authorities were repeatedly notified of widespread abuses and exploitation of Aboriginal workers.  By the turn of the century over 2000 Aboriginal people were in work in Queensland,¹² around 4000 in Western Australia,¹³ and an unmeasured number in the Northern Territory.

In 1869 the Victorian government introduced employment controls through a system of work certificates and contracts, and regulations in 1871 allowed for Aboriginal wages to be paid directly to the local guardian.  Neither South Australia nor New South Wales implemented employment safeguards in the early years; the latter’s Aborigines Protection Board focused on reserves to ‘provide asylum for the aged and sick’ and to ‘train and teach the young’, primarily by processing children to work through the former missions.  While the Queensland government mandated compulsory work agreements and permits in 1897 and limited minimum wages in 1901,¹⁴ Western Australia’s legislation the same year continued the optional contracts introduced in 1886 (without set wage or term of service), and excluded Aboriginal workers from Masters and Servants laws, extending its maximum penalty of three-months’ gaol for breach of contract to a five-year term and the option of a whipping for absconding boys and men.¹⁵  In the Northern Territory, despite a detailed Report to the South Australian government by the Government Resident in Darwin detailing the prevalence of kidnapping, assaults and slavery of Aboriginal women and brutal summary justice against men, the pastoral lobby successfully defeated an 1899 Bill which would have provided Aboriginal workers similar employment protections as the new Queensland law.¹⁶

In the absence of mandatory employment provisions, a 1904 Royal Commission into Aboriginal administration in Western Australia found Aboriginal groups were entirely at the mercy of station management: cruelty in the ‘unsettled districts’ was intolerable and police treatment of Aboriginal people ‘brutal and outrageous’.  Although most workers were not employed on contracts it was common practice to set the police to recapture absconders, including young child servants.  Recommendations for a minimum five shilling monthly wage were successfully opposed by pastoralists, leading one parliamentarian to describe the current system as ‘another name for slavery’.¹⁷  Under the Aborigines Act (1905) the government introduced compulsory permits, but these might cover any number of workers and made no requirement for a cash wage, a provision rejected again in 1908. 

Legislation in the Northern Territory in 1910 and 1911 implemented employment licences, revocable if wages or conditions were unsatisfactory, and directed wages owing to deceased workers be paid to the protector, who also had the right to demand any wage be paid direct to himself.  Since no minimum wage was mandated most employers in the pastoral industry paid no cash component.¹⁸  Although a minimum wage of twenty-five shillings weekly was set for government employees (in Darwin), ten per cent went straight into a trust account controlled by the government and the remainder could be paid in kind, rather than in cash.¹⁹  Any general wages received by protectors were also lodged in a trust account to be spent ‘solely on behalf of’ the employee, a record to be kept of receipts and payments.  From 1918 any Aboriginal female could be controlled for life and sent out to work.  Minimum wages for town workers were five shillings weekly plus clothing and food, of which two shillings was paid direct to the trust account.²⁰  The government required rural employers to buy licences, but these allowed for unlimited workers who had only to be provided with food and clothing; wages and housing were optional if workers’ dependants were also supported. 

While the South Australian government had initiated employment legislation in the Northern Territory in 1910, its own Aborigines Act (1911) made no provisions to protect workers’ rights, particularly in the remote pastoral areas, other than a prohibition against Aboriginal women wearing male clothing, a weak attempt to combat the common practice of using women for stock and station work.  The government omitted any provision to licence employers or to direct the payment of wages to protectors.²¹   

In Victoria Aboriginal people not living on government stations competed with white workers.  By simply evicting from the stations all mixed-race persons under 34 years of age (under the 1886 Protection Act), and subsequently all mixed-race males over 18 years (under the 1910 Aborigines Act), the government destroyed the almost self-supporting stations, forcing more families into the wider community.  In 1917 the government cut assistance except to station residents relocated at Lake Tyers, which was the only remaining staffed station after 1923.  The New South Wales government used the Aborigines Protection Act (1909) to similarly restrict access to protected reserves to anyone deemed to have less than ‘half’ Aboriginal blood who was not in need of rations and assistance.  In 1914 station managers were ordered to evict all mixed-race boys over 14 years and transfer all girls over 14 years to the Cootamundra Girls Home for employment training; in 1918 the law was further amended to allow the expulsion of all lighter-skinned families from the managed stations and missions.

In Queensland the transfer of Aboriginal families onto managed missions and settlements intensified after 1914, although thousands of men, women and children were subsequently contracted into the workforce, their controlled earnings building steadily in trust accounts.  From 1905 all women’s wages were paid direct to the protector, except for a small pocket money portion; this applied to male wages after 1914.  Wages owed to deceased workers, and those deemed ‘unclaimed’, were directed into the Aboriginal Protection of Property (APP) Account, set up in 1902.  Regulations in 1919 set minimum standards and conditions, and pegged pastoral wages to 66 per cent the award rate.  (Cut to only 41 per cent during the Depression, Aboriginal wages fell to a low of 31 per cent in 1949, and did not regain the 66 per cent parity until the early 1960s.)

Queensland’s comprehensive system relied on local police to oversee employment conditions and handle Aboriginal access to savings.  Inspections of stations rarely occurred unless there was specific direction to inquire or coincidental police business to cover the cost.  In 1919 the chief protector conceded that children and the elderly continued to be exploited, and ‘efficient care and protection are absolutely impossible’.²²   In 1921 he reported shelter for many workers was ‘worse than they would provide for their pet horse, motor-car or prize cattle.’ 

In 1916 the chief protector admitted the ‘grave danger’ to girls and women sent to work on remote stations and Annual Reports list pregnancies and appallingly high neonatal mortality rates, testament to the harsh conditions endured by the girls who were often forced to do men’s work.  Yet domestic employment remained a key plank in the government’s ‘protection’ strategy into the late 1960s, because of the financial benefits of high demand, accumulated controlled wages, and savings on settlement costs.  Expectant mothers were returned to the settlements to give birth and many were subsequently contracted out again, their babies retained in the dormitories or sent with them at lower wages.

By the early 1940s the Queensland government controlled almost 2500 contracted workers plus a further 2800 in the pastoral industry.  Yet workers struggled in poverty.  Despite countless warnings the government never fixed the malfunctioning pocket money system.  An investigation into the department in 1932 said it could be ‘reasonably assumed’ workers were cheated of their pocket money; in 1943 protectors described the system as a farce; in 1956 they reported it was useless, futile and out of control with workers ‘entirely at the mercy’ of employers who simply doctored the books.  The department rejected auditors recommendations to tighten the system as ‘too costly’, and admitted in the 1960s pocket money was probably not paid ‘in many instances’.  The system continued unchanged until 1968.  Effectively, during a sixty-year period, potentially half the wages of the workforce of between 3000 and 5000 was lost through entrenched official negligence.  

In the late 1950s the department’s rural officer reported most graziers were ‘more concerned with obtaining Aboriginal labour as cheaply as possible than with paying wages in terms of the real worth’; that fewer white stockmen took work in remote areas and ‘white men of markedly less ability and industry [are] receiving higher wages and better living conditions than Aboriginals who are better workmen.’  Against six decades of contrary evidence the United Graziers’ Association (UGA) alleged in 1964 ‘practically all Aboriginals’ came under the longstanding ‘slow worker’ category where people ‘agreed’ with a protector that their skills were limited and their pay discounted up to 40 per cent.  With department support the UGA defeated a proposal that an industrial magistrate assess Aboriginal ability, the director falsely claiming rates for the 5500 pastoral workers were ‘determined by the Industrial Court’ and were not ‘an arbitrary decision by a Government or a Department.’  This of course was untrue: Aboriginal pastoral wages had been excepted from the industrial courts since 1919, and were, as auditors had observed in 1943, largely ‘at the discretion of the Director.’  Not until 1968, under a federal ruling, were Aboriginal pastoral workers accorded equal wages, although the slow worker clause was maintained.²³  The contract employment regime ceased in 1972. 

In the Northern Territory lack of intervention by the Commonwealth government allowed exploitation to continue.  Stations commonly undercounted worker numbers and inflated the quantity and quality of rations supplied; in 1927 pastoralists estimated they spent half as much on an Aboriginal employee as they did on a white worker.²⁴  A 1929 Report²⁵ found the pastoral industry was ‘absolutely dependent on the blacks for the labour’ and ‘most of the holdings … would have to be abandoned’ without them. Yet the 2500 Aboriginal workers and 1500 ‘camp dependants’ on the stations were forced to suffer in shelter cobbled together from waste materials, ‘mere kennels and most unsanitary’.  The Report revealed managers withheld rations to enforce discipline and some stations refused to supply rations to non-workers, leaving families to survive on the offal of beasts killed for station supplies and forcing many women into prostitution to feed their children.  Regulations in 1930 set a minimum wage for half-caste²⁶ youths ‘apprenticed’ to pastoral work from the government’s institutions,²⁷ much of it paid direct to the department’s trust account.  Wages of up to 30 shillings ($74)²⁸ weekly were set for drovers but many pastoralists refused to pay and none were prosecuted.²⁹  The chief protector said contracted employment in central Australia was ‘analogous to slavery’ because the regulations were not enforced.  In 1933 he described many station managers in the Northern Territory as ‘unscrupulous’ in their exploitation of Aboriginal workers, and police as ‘unreliable’ in setting wages. 

Records shows the Commonwealth government failed to intervene despite knowledge of starvation and deaths among workers and their families.  In 1934 the government was notified that on one station ex-workers were starving to death, but it refused to supply rations arguing this was the responsibility of station management.³⁰  In 1938 anthropologist W E H Stanner again reported workers and dependants on several stations were at high risk of diseases caused by deficient diets; he said on one station only ten children survived from 51 births between 1925-1929.³¹  In 1942 a patrol officer reported at one station workers ‘finished in a state of exhaustion due to the hard labour on the diet of flour only’, there was ‘not a vestige of food’ in the camp of twelve women in ‘wretched’ emaciated condition who fell upon a piece of unleavened damper ‘like starving dogs’.  He cancelled the employer’s licence, but was overruled by his Canberra superiors who laid no charges against the owner.³²  In the mid-1940s a survey³³ reported all ration recipients were forced to labour, including the aged, women and children; and many stations in the central-west ruled their workers through violence and fear.³⁴  The survey confirmed endemic malnutrition was endemic and excessive maternal and infant deaths were ‘destroying the race’; of four births at Wave Hill during a two-month period three of the babies and two of the mothers died.³⁵

In 1947 Aboriginal workers in Darwin went on strike, demanding full wages and full access to their wages and savings.  Despite further strikes in 1948, 1950 and 1951 the minister for the Interior refused to intercede in the operations of the Aboriginals Ordinance.³⁶  Although the Welfare Ordinance (1953) exempted all half-castes from employment and financial controls the government could declare anyone a ward in need of assistance, a category automatically including around 15,700 ‘full blood’ people on the grounds they had no voting rights.  Under the Wards Employment Ordinance (1953) male wages doubled to £2 ($80.80) weekly plus rations and clothing; but as the major employers of half-caste wards, neither the missions nor the Welfare Branch were bound to comply with the new provisions.³⁷  Wages for wards rose to three pounds ten shillings in 1957, part-paid direct to the trust fund.

It was not until 1953 that minimum wages and conditions were specified for Northern Territory pastoral workers, but the wage was one-fifth the white rate, annual leave was half, and the range of rations less than 35 per cent the minimum requirements for white workers.³⁸  There were 6000 Aboriginal people reliant on pastoral work for their survival, yet between 1959-64 not one cattle station was prosecuted for failing to comply with mandatory wages, shelter, rations and work conditions.³⁹  Skilled Aboriginal stockmen of many years experience were still getting only £1 plus keep in 1961, compared with £14 for their white counterparts.⁴⁰  In 1965, when  51 per cent of general station hands were paid around one-quarter the white rate and 34 per cent around one-third, the director admitted only 20 stations had even attempted to meet their legal employment requirements.⁴¹  Aboriginal drovers were similarly underpaid.⁴²  Mass walk-offs at Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill were the culmination of protests during the previous twenty years.  When equal wages were finally implemented the ‘slow worker’ clause legitimised continuing under payment.⁴³  Minimum wages in the early 1970s, including clothing, were less than half the unemployment benefit.⁴⁴

In the absence of employment protection in South Australia the Northern Territory chief protector Herbert Basedow said in 1927 that pastoral workers ‘are kept in a servitude that is nothing short of slavery’.⁴⁵  In the 1930s Dr Charles Duguid reported that cruelty against Aboriginal workers was common practice, with many ‘breaking in’ their workers as though they were ‘taming wild animals’.[46]  The Newcastle protector stated that most stockmen’s wage did not even cover the debts charged against them in station stores.  The missionary at Oodnadatta said in 1939 workers got only ‘what their employers care to give them’ and without legal safeguards workers could only walk off unpaid or continue to endure exploitation.  From Ernabella the missionary warned some pastoralists were so abusive they should be banned from employing Aboriginal labour.⁴⁷  Yet the South Australian government introduced no employment safeguards in the Aborigines Act Amendment Act (1939), but widened government controls to include all persons of Aboriginal descent and continued management provisions over Aboriginal property and finances.  Records for the early 1940s show the Board was told several times of gross cruelties but declined to act stating it had no authority to prohibit the hiring of Aboriginal labour.⁴⁸  In urban areas equal wages theoretically applied.

In 1947 a weekly wage of £1 ($40.40) was suggested for pastoral workers, to be controlled through the Board’s special trust accounts.  Lack of official scrutiny enabled overcharging of goods against workers who were paid, many stations thus paying no wages for months at a time.  In 1950 police in the eastern border region reported many small holdings only survived because they paid little or no wage to their Aboriginal workforce.⁴⁹  This exploitation continued after the introduction of equal wages in the late 1960s.

In 1918 there was still no minimum wage for the Aboriginal workforce in the Kimberley region of Western Australia which numbered almost 2300.  In the period 1916-1928 pastoralists successfully defeated five attempts to impose minimum wages, on the grounds the department would have too much power to interfere in their affairs.⁵⁰  The chief protector described the system in the north as like ‘semi-slavery’ given the coercion, if not outright cruelty, of many employers.⁵¹  A single travelling inspector operated from 1924-1929, checking very few stations, and in 1935 the government was told the Act was impossible to police in the Kimberley north of the Ranges.  Continued failure to check work conditions made a mockery of requirements under the Native Administration Act (1936) to provide sanitation, suitable food and water, blankets and clothing.  Indeed the minister appointed to oversee this law had led the pastoral lobby since 1924 and declared its provisions would only be applied ‘if circumstances required it’.⁵²  The 1936 Act extended government controls over Aboriginals of mixed-race in the south, intensifying transfer of families to reserves where children were separated into dormitories for training and employment.  Control of private earnings and property continued. 

Although limited wages and conditions were introduced in 1944 under the State Farmworkers award, this applied only to workers in the south-west.⁵³  Despite submissions in 1944 to the Commonwealth Arbitration and Conciliation Commission detailing the many responsible positions filled by unpaid pastoral workers in the north, ‘full-blood’ station workers were again excluded from the Pastoral Industry award.⁵⁴  In May 1946 800 people walked off the stations in protest, many for over two years.⁵⁵  In 1948 the Bateman Royal Commission acknowledged the pastoral industry was ‘almost entirely dependent on native labour’ and recommended a small cash wage paid as credits through station stores.⁵⁶  Discrediting pastoralists’ claims that Aboriginal workers were too primitive to understand money the local protector in 1949 questioned how ‘a lot of unintelligent people could completely run sheep and cattle stations as they are doing throughout the Kimberleys’.⁵⁷  Despite severe shortages of white labour in 1950 Aboriginal stockmen were still paid only £2 ($61) weekly (one quarter the white rate), and most were ‘in debt’ to station stores.  Under an informal agreement with the department, pastoralists paid monthly pocket money of £1 ($30.50) to drovers and half that to women and other workers. 

The Native Welfare Act (1954) removed many labour restrictions and freed workers from permit controls.  Only now were managers obliged to keep records of goods sold in lieu of wages, although the department’s officer reported that many large stations had cut free rations, reducing workers to the status of slaves.  In 1956 the commissioner for Native Affairs complained employers were encouraged by the ‘lack of legislative backing’ to evade instructions to improve workers’ conditions.⁵⁸  In the early 1960s, when demand for pastoral workers in the Kimberley exceeded supply, many workers moved to the towns.  Historian Mary Ann Jebb’s research shows the availability of pensions provided a significant alternative from the slavery of pastoral work.  From the 1969 season the national Pastoral Industry award applied in the Kimberley, but only for union members and ‘full-blood’ persons holding a certificate of citizenship; in 1970 only around 50 per cent of Aboriginal workers were paid equal wages, the department claiming it had no jurisdiction over the hundreds of workers paid discounted rates under the ‘slow worker’ tag.⁵⁹  Only after 1972 were all Kimberley Aboriginals free from department controls, although many stations refused to pay full wages to non-union labour.

By the 1930s the southern states of New South Wales and Victoria had curtailed occupancy on state-managed stations, leaving Aboriginal people to compete ‘equally’ in communities rife with racial discrimination.  Claims by the Victorian minister in 1937 that his state had already ‘solved the problem’ of Aboriginal disadvantagement⁶⁰ were belied by a 1955 inquiry which found that only people living on the stations at Framlingham and Lake Tyers had reasonable housing; most of the 1346 Aboriginal Victorians lived in squalid conditions, their lack of jobs and education and their poor health due largely to white prejudice.⁶¹   The Aborigines Affairs Act (1967) promoted greater assimilation.

Where Victoria controlled employment and finances only of child wards and station occupants, the New South Wales Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act (1936) allowed the Board to take direct control of the wages of any working Aboriginal; the money to be spent solely on behalf of the wage earner and accounts to be kept of all payments.  By 1948 an estimated 96 per cent of Aboriginal men were employed, and only 21 per cent of Aboriginal people lived on the government stations.⁶²  The Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act (1963) terminated official control of adult wages in New South Wales.

1.2     Child labour

Records reveal that the kidnapping of Aboriginal children for servitude was a common practice in the Australian colonies from the earliest years.⁶³  Many authorities deplored the practice, although the contemporary justification was that children were being ‘rescued’ and trained for a ‘better’ life.  Missions and schools to train children, like the Native Institution established in 1814 in New South Wales ‘to civilise, educate and foster habits of industry and decency in the Aborigines’, commenced in Victoria (1836), Queensland (1838), Western Australia (1839) and South Australia (1952); in Tasmania children were sent to Hobart’s Orphan School, started in 1817.  Most of these early attempts failed as parents reclaimed their children, realising the intent to alienate them from family and culture.  

During the nineteenth century the colonies introduced legislation to override parental discretion.  In Western Australia a law was passed in 1844 ‘to prevent the enticing away of girls of the Aboriginal race’ from school or indentured service.  The same year a law was passed in South Australia, and thereby also the Northern Territory, ‘for the Protection, Maintenance, and Upbringing of Orphans and other Destitute Children and Aborigines’.  The protector was declared legal guardian of any child of Aboriginal descent whose parents were dead or unknown and children could be sent to work until the age of 21 years.  Guardianship could extend over any Aboriginal child with consent of one parent, a very uncertain safeguard given contemporary power relations.

Aboriginal infants and children were also arrested, institutionalised and indentured to service under mainstream legislation such as the Neglected and Criminal Children’s Act (1864) in Victoria and the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act (1865) in Queensland; indeed ‘any child born of an Aboriginal or half-caste mother’ was subject to the latter Act.  Under these laws, and the subsequent Industrial Schools Act (1867) in Tasmania, the Industrial Schools Act (1874) in Western Australia, the Destitute Persons Act (1881) in South Australia and the Northern Territory, and the State Children Relief Act (1881) in New South Wales, Aboriginal children were critically vulnerable to removal under definitions of ‘neglect’ which included wandering, sleeping in the open, being without visible means of support or having no fixed abode. 

Children were taken from as young as a few months old and institutionalised in Homes (if lighter skinned) or in mission or settlement dormitories.  Here they might be taught the rudiments of reading and writing, but more crucially the habits of labour – washing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, milking, labouring and farming – before being contracted to work for European families until the legal age of maturity, generally 18 or 21 years.  During the nineteenth century many children were indentured at less than 10 years of age, some for periods of up to a decade, although the minimum age during the twentieth century was usually around 14 years.  Although indentured child workers were commonly termed apprentices, there was no requirement for formal training and records reveal lives of unremitting drudgery, exposure to sexual and physical abuse and despairing loneliness.  The government took direct control of the wages of all indentured children, whether contracted to work under Aboriginal or mainstream legislation (see Trust Funds below).

By 1911 all mainland states had enacted laws targeting Aboriginal people, giving authorities control of the care, custody, maintenance and education of Aboriginal children.⁶⁴  While children controlled under mainstream education were legally free from the age of 18 or 21 years, children controlled under Aboriginal legislation, as was predominately the case in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, were controlled for life unless, as was rarely the case, they won an exemption as adults.

Contemporary terminology reveals the states and Territory ran concerted programs to remove children and process them to work which reflected official policy rather than individual circumstances.  In Victoria the Aborigines Protection Board reported in 1875 that ‘the children are being removed one by one and sent to the stations’; regulations in 1880 allowed for the removal of any Aboriginal child ‘deemed’ to be neglected, for employment training, and after 1886 Aboriginal children could be indentured from the age of 13 years.⁶⁵  In 1909 police in Western Australia were empowered to summarily remove all mixed-descent children over eight years of age in the Kimberley, the girls to be trained as domestics and the boys as farm workers.⁶⁶  Government stations at Carrolup and Moore River operated to train and indenture children in the south.  After 1909 South Australia initiated a campaign to collect ‘all wandering half-caste children’; police listed 766 children exclusive of the Northern Territory and records show intensified removals of children between one and seven years old by 1911, particularly for girls.⁶⁷

From 1883 the Aborigines Protection Board of New South Wales followed an aggressive policy to remove children into state control, using persuasion, threats and the withholding of rations to secure parental consent.⁶⁸  By 1909, when consent was no longer required, 300 children had been processed through Warangesda alone. Regulations in 1916 directed all girls over 14 years be ‘sent to service’, although records show many were indentured at only 11 or 12 years of age.⁶⁹  Under an Amending Act in 1915 children were removed ‘for being Aboriginal’ or ‘for being 14 years’ or ‘to be sent to service’; there was no minimum age for servitude and children who refused employment could be sent to training homes and indentured from there.⁷⁰  Kinchela boys home opened in 1918 and over 400 boys had been through it to work when it closed in 1970.⁷¹  Children who rebelled or absconded were arrested and either returned to the same employment or institutionalised.  One study of child servants in New South Wales⁷² suggested around 70 per cent of girl servants suffered this fate with some sent to Parramatta Girls School, to Long Bay Gaol or to convents; around one in twenty wards were committed in mental institutions.

From Darwin the Government Resident recommended in 1907 that all mixed-descent children be institutionalised for indenture to white families, and the Kahlin compound was started in 1912 to supply servants to Darwin families.  The Bungalow began in 1914 in Alice Springs with the aim of taking children from the camps and training them for work.  From 1931 it was government policy to institutionalise all ‘illegitimate’⁷³ mixed-descent children under 16 years, as well as unmarried women, increasing removals 70 per cent during that decade⁷⁴.  Girls were frequently contracted from the Bungalow to work around Adelaide.  After the Second World War patrol officers were told to remove all mixed-descent children to institutions and by the early 1950s almost all had been sent to missions or government institutions.⁷⁵ 

In Queensland children were indentured to work from government settlements from 1897 to around 1970, although few missions put the children at such risk.  Boys were sent to farm work and pastoral stations, and girls to fill the insatiable demand for domestic servants, often in remote areas.  As in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, however, the government frequently left ‘full-blood’ boys on the stations, many less than ten years of age, reasoning that they were already instructed in labouring and the stations would suffer without their input.  Child labour was a standard component of the pastoral industry, particularly in remote areas where pastoralists regarded children as a valuable resource.  The Western Australian commissioner of Native Affairs stated in 1939 he had no idea how many part-descent children were worked on Kimberley stations because pastoralists refused to bring them to government attention.⁷⁶  In Queensland it was legal to contract children under 12 years work with the chief protector/director’s approval; in 1957 the director admitted there was still ‘a fair amount’ of child labour in the pastoral industry with many suffering injuries and broken limbs.  Rather than banning the practice he reminded the pastoral lobby: ‘We try to look on these people as human beings … Nobody is going to put his own child out too young and we have to think of that with these people.’⁷⁷

It is clear child removals reflected labour market demands.  In the twenty years from 1932 60 per cent of children institutionalised in Alice Springs were boys trained for pastoral work, whereas 70 per cent of children institutionalised in Darwin were girls trained for domestic service.  Girls from both Darwin and Alice Springs were sent interstate, particularly to meet demand in Adelaide.  Between 1943-1972 350 girls were processed through Colebrook Home in South Australia to domestic service.  In New South Wales over 80 per cent of children removed before 1921 were girls, 70 per cent of the 1600 children taken from their parents between 1912-1938 were girls, some as young as seven years, who were trained for the domestic service market.⁷⁸  Under Board directives children from New South Wales were sent to the ACT and the Northern Territory and children from both areas apprenticed or fostered in New South Wales.

One New South Wales register of wards dated 1916-28 contains 800 removal forms, 570 for girls working for over 1200 employers in city and country areas.⁷⁹  The Board failed to supervise their conditions or treatment despite frequent reports of physical and sexual abuse; pregnancies were common, the babies routinely adopted to white families.⁸⁰  As a witness to a 1937 Select Committee Inquiry attested, the girls were ‘easy marks’, including those who entered sexual relationships in good faith.  The Queensland government also exploited the high demand for domestic servants, departmental Annual Reports frequently noting it could not keep up supply.  As in other states and the Territory, inspections of work conditions were too infrequent to provide protection.  Reports from rural protectors warned girls were put to men’s work and many children suffered physical and sexual abuse, the chief protector stating in 1916 this was a ‘grave danger’ of current employment practices.  In 1934 the chief protector deemed the value of the ‘moral welfare’ of domestics contracted out from the Cherbourg settlement was less important than the £1460 in lost wages and £1938 in extra costs to keep them at the settlement.⁸¹  So the practice continued.

In Western Australia young girls contracted to work were also exposed to sexual assault; in 1921 30 girls returned pregnant to Moore River.  Mothers were sent back into the workforce after two years, their children taken from them,⁸² the lighter-skinned babies processed through Sister Kate’s Quarter Caste Children’s Home which opened in 1933.  In the three years to 1935 there were 12 pregnancies and eight cases of gonorrhoea among girls contracted to work from Alice Springs.⁸³  The policy of sending girls to Adelaide as servants was discontinued in the late 1930s, although there were abortive attempts to send girls to Canberra in 1937.⁸⁴

Many child wards were retained in contracted work without legal authority.  It was only after concerted political pressure from Aboriginal activist groups in New South Wales that the Board allowed child apprentices to return to their communities after their term of indenture after 1921, although many had no idea of their right to do so and continued their servitude for many years.⁸⁵  Research into domestic employment in South Australia suggests missions exploited girls to gain access to their earnings, at times controlling them through contracts which they knew had no legal status and occasionally invoking departmental pressure to force their compliance.  The chief protector knew women were being contracted from Koonibba mission in the 1940s long after they were 18 years old.  After one woman demanded release of her 30-year-old sister from Koonibba the chief protector conceded only that she could have a one month holiday.  Controlling women after they turned 18 was known at Koonibba as the ‘21 rule’.⁸⁶ 

In the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland there was no age limit to the enforced contracting regime.

2.       Trust funds

In controlling Aboriginal employment and earnings governments amassed trust funds from private income, including deceased estates due to family members.  Over time these funds were used also to benefit consolidated revenue.  This was particularly the case for entitlements such as endowment and pensions (see 3 below).

2.1       Queensland

There are three main components of trust fund management in Queensland:⁸⁷ handling of private accounts by protectors; diversion of bulk private savings to investment; government operations of three trust funds accumulated partly or wholly from private earnings – the Aboriginal Protection of Property (APP) Account, the Aboriginal Provident Fund (APF) and the Aborigines Welfare Fund (AWF).

2.1.1     Protectors

Except for a small amount of pocket money all women’s wages were paid direct to protectors from 1905 and all men’s wages from 1914.  Withdrawals could only be made with the protector’s permission.  Thumb-printing of withdrawals was suggested in 1904 to lessen frauds by protectors and employers.  In 1919 police fraud was debated in parliament and in 1921 and thumb-printing was made mandatory ‘as a further safeguard’ to minimise police fraud and all dockets had to be witnessed by a disinterested third party.  Although a Public Service report on the department in 1923 found that almost half the deductions by protectors were inaccurate, but the department disregarded the recommendation that Aboriginal people be given the right to appeal against dubious handling of their accounts.⁸⁸

Head office did not verify wages earned or deductions made and an investigation in 1932⁸⁹ said that ‘supervision exercised by the chief protector over the natives’ banking transactions is totally inadequate’.  Theft was described as common, the receipts doctored in small amounts ‘spread less noticeably over numerous withdrawals’.  The investigators warned: ‘As the native could not, in many instances, check his own earnings and spendings, the opportunity for fraud existed to a greater extent than with any other governmental accounts’.  The chief protector conceded that many police ‘are not trained in clerical work’ and resented the unpaid duties.  He said his department had no system to ‘ensure the necessary control’ over police protectors (then in control of almost $240,000 – $13.9 million).  He admitted the frequent pilfering from Aboriginal accounts by altering receipts over long periods was in part due to ‘the long times between inspections’, and he agreed that ‘the inability of the native to check his own earnings and spendings leaves the way too open to dishonesty.’⁹⁰  But he still denied account holders the right to check their accounts and he did not implement additional audit inspections to supervise police dealings.

In 1933 the government centralised control of all Aboriginal savings in Brisbane, an amount then totalling £258,596 (almost $15 million), leaving only a working residue under supervision of local protectors.  The undersecretary stated: ‘This will go a long way to minimise fraud by members of the Police Force who are Protectors.’⁹¹  But no measures were implemented to check the daily dealings of protectors, and frauds continued.

Successive audit reports during the 1940s detailed continuing negligence relating to the protectors’ handling of savings accounts.  In 1940 it was reported ‘there has been no system of internal check operating in respect of the collections and bankings.’  Protectors ‘obviously do not exercise any check over the legibility’ either from storekeepers or employers’ and local stores were so careless in obtaining thumb print endorsement for purchases that these could not be verified.  Auditors stressed that these endorsements were ‘the only valuable evidence that expenditure is correctly chargeable against individual accounts’, yet head office policy was to check only one in every three months’ expenditure against identification cards; auditors said even this limited procedure was well in arrears.

Auditors reported that dockets were presented by protectors that bore witnessing to thumb prints where no thumbprints appeared; they reported receipts that bore signatures of witness to both the delivery of goods and the endorsement by the recipient although no worker’s imprint was present.  Storekeepers ‘consistently’ acted as the independent witnesses to workers’ endorsement on goods purchased in their own stores; protectors likewise wrongly witnessed endorsements of transactions organised by themselves.

In 1944 auditors noted that the director of Native Affairs ‘relies upon the integrity of the Protectors’, although it was ‘obvious that some protectors are not carrying out their duties as instructed’.  They cited practices such as getting thumbprints from account holders ‘before he is either paid or receives the goods that he has to pay for’.

In 1965 another public service inspection⁹² outlined the same failures to protect Aboriginal accounts from fraud.  Although thumbprints were now checked by the Criminal Investigations Branch in Brisbane, no specimen signatures were registered  against which to check the veracity of the many ‘signed’ receipts.  And the audit inspector concluded there was still no way to be certain ‘that witnesses do, in fact, witness all payments’.  Weighing the expense of a centralised signature register against ‘potential loss by fraud’, the department introduced only sample checking.  The inspector said the issuing of passbooks to account holders, planned for early 1966, would not safeguard all accounts.

In their report for 1967 the inspectors anticipated the pass-books ‘should improve security to some extent’, although they conceded ‘It will probably be some years before pass-books in the hands of semi-literate offer sufficient protection.’  Meanwhile, it was stated, ‘all accounting systems’ operated as before.⁹³  Auditors again referred to the lack of security for signatures, noting ‘withdrawals are purportedly witnessed’ at the time of payment; again they urged specimen signatures be collated for all account holders.

In 1967 auditors criticised the ‘unsatisfactory’ operation on Aboriginal wages cards at head office.  Forged withdrawals over a two-year period in one district amounted to $4000, facilitated by the ‘breakdown in internal control procedures’ where withdrawals were witnessed in bulk at a later date instead of at the time of payment.  No proper check were made of withdrawals, acquittances and allocation of interest, for all of which it was stated: ‘There is room for fraud’.⁹⁴  Auditors in 1970 stated that few signatures had been checked in the previous six months, and ‘other necessary reviews are being deferred’.  The auditor called for ‘urgent action…to ensure the vital checks are carried out’ shortly after transactions took place, ‘so that the chance of forgery, etc, as has happened in the past, can be avoided, or deterred.’  Among other procedural failures, he stated that ‘the witnessing procedure is weak’.⁹⁵

Only after 1971 could individuals formally request the government stop management of their account.  Auditors in 1974 complained that ‘established checking procedures have been allowed to lapse’ although the department still managed hundreds of accounts.

2.1.2     Bulk savings

It is beyond dispute that the majority of departmental wards lived in abject poverty and destitution, subject to such sickness and hardship that children were routinely refused entry to white schools. Yet many workers had considerable bank balances of which they were unaware because of the policy of departmental secrecy, and the files amply demonstrate that withdrawals from personal savings were strictly policed and often denied.  The denial of knowledge, and denial of access, to their savings cost workers dearly.

In 1933 Aboriginal savings totalled £269,000 ($16.22 million) when the Queensland Aboriginals Account (QAA) was set up at Treasury as a ‘common fund’ in the name of the chief protector; £200,000, or 78 per cent of private savings, was promptly invested in inscribed stock, adding to £12,000 already diverted to investments from savings of settlement residents.  In theory interest at bank rates was returned to the savings accounts, and publicly the government denied it would use the interest surplus for ‘administration or maintenance’ liabilities’.  But in 1934 the chief protector admitted ‘it is impossible to state for what particular purpose the interest has been allocated’.⁹⁶  In 1935 he admitted that Aboriginal account holders ‘have not either individually or collectively consented’ to the interest seizure.⁹⁷

By 1936/37 the government increased the amount of private savings transferred to investments, leaving only £20,000 ‘to meet all possible contingencies’, effectively less than $200 (today) for each of the 5785 account holders. In October 1938 the minister told parliament the government had gained almost £50,000 ($2.67 million) in interest between 1932 and 1938, returning interest at bank rates to account holders in the first year.  In 1938 it was decided £17,000 ($155 per account holder) would constitute a ‘satisfactory working balance’ in QAA to enable a loan of £5500 to shore up Aboriginal Industries after the collapse of the marine produce market in the Torres Strait. The 88 per cent of savings frozen in investments and loans⁹⁸ gives the lie to Bleakley’s assertion in 1939 that ‘every worker’s savings are definitely his own property . . . always available even to the last penny at the demand of the owner’.

In the early 1940s the government was still taking bank interest of £6882 ($303,000) annually from the 90 per cent of accounts with monthly balances over £50 ($2200).  The 1941 inquiry had condemned this practice but it was not until 1943 that the government credited all savings accounts with the annual 2 per cent bank interest, transferring the investment bonus into the Welfare Fund. To maximise investment revenue, the government again reduced funds available to country workers to £20,000, or only 7 per cent of their total savings.  On occasions the department retained control of the savings of exempted persons or simply failed to locate relevant files, particularly where the bank balance was large. Auditors in 1943 condemned the practice as having ‘no authority under the Act’ where exemptions were unconditional.

In late 1954, asserting rural savings balances were again ‘far in excess of normal requirements’, the government transferred an additional £40,000 ($831,200) for investment in something ‘more lucrative’. This brought investments of these savings alone to £463,000 ($9.4 million) paying a bonus of £9260 ($188,000) to the Welfare Fund. And left available to rural account holders less than 9 per cent of their savings

In 1956 the government amended the 1945 regulations so that bulk private savings could be offered to a wider market, principally for expansion projects of rural hospitals, the interest bonus paid into the Aboriginal Welfare Fund.  By 1958 only 13 per cent of total rural savings totalling £663,218 ($12.2 million) was available to account holders, the remainder invested to earn £8800 ($161,744) for the Welfare Fund. Hospital investments comprised £320,000 ($5.9 million).

Early in 1961 even the ‘cash balance’ of savings and trust funds was invested on the short-term money market to attract interest while still being available on daily call.⁹⁹ A maturing £100,000 ($1.7 million) of private savings went on the short-term market.  By 1962 the government’s investment portfolio of private savings stood at over £670,000 ($11.4 million), the £560,227 ($9.5 million) invested in regional hospital expansion projects, presenting a stark contrast to the £157,000 committed annually to run the sub-standard hospitals on the settlements and Thursday Island. In 1962 news leaked of a £100,000 loan to the Redcliffe Hospital Board prompting MLA Colin Bennett to say it was ‘hard to conceive’ that such an amount would be diverted to investment given entrenched Aboriginal poverty.¹⁰⁰  In fact the 1962 Annual Report shows over £685,000 was invested from the savings of rural account holders alone, leaving them over £34,000 in debit  which surely affected the possibility of personal withdrawals.

The Aborigines Affairs Act (1965) omitted the provision for the director to invest trust moneys in loans on the Treasurer’s behalf but retained the government’s controls over wages and savings. At that time investments stood at $1.53 million ($12.2 million) bringing ‘surplus’ interest of $38,200 ($305,000) to the Welfare Fund.  No further investments were made after 1967 although funds were still committed to term deposits with various banks.

In 1970 the government still controlled 10,450 account holders including 2160 child endowment and 567 pensioner accounts. Over $1.45 million ($9.9 million) – or more than 80 per cent – of their $1.8 million ($12.3 million) savings was ‘invested to produce higher interest rate’, generating $20,986 ($143,544) for the Welfare Fund. The minister opposed suggestions the government relinquish its control over the accounts arguing it might face costs of around $4 million if people were allowed to spend their money as they chose.¹⁰¹

Interest profit to the government between 1966 and 1983 via the Welfare Fund totalled $486,162 ($2.3 million), rising to $719,331 ($1.14 million) in the five years to 1988, and a further $29,404 ($35,848) in 1989 and 1990. If, as seems likely, the five-year spurt to 1988 also included matured principle, the source of the original investment would need to be identified.

2.1.3     Trust funds

The Aboriginal Protection of Property (APP) account was set up in 1902 to collect any wages owing or savings of workers who were said to have died or absconded and had previously remained unpaid.  Formalised under the 1904 regulations, the APP soon operated for all missing or deceased workers to receive moneys for distribution to relatives.  Unclaimed funds could be used ‘in such manner as the Minister may direct, for the benefit of Aboriginals generally.’

The Aboriginal Provident Fund (APF) was set up under the 1919 regulations and comprised levies on annual wages at a rate of 5% for single workers and 2.5% for those with dependents.  It applied to all workers not living on missions or settlements (who were already taxed around 10 per cent for ‘maintenance’) and was intended to provide ‘relief’ to workers and their families ‘when in want, out of employment, sack etc’, according to the 1921 Annual Report.  A Public Service report on the department in 1923 found that almost half the deductions by protectors were inaccurate.¹⁰²  It criticised the government for allocating only £253 ($12,450) for relief despite acute suffering during a severe drought and levies of £3000 ($147,660) into the APF; while using £117 to deport 70 people to the Cape Bedford mission.

The Report also found the APP was wrongly used as a suspense account for departmental refunds, transfers and advances.  In addition, almost £1700 ($83,670) had been used for improvements at the Barambah settlement, as well as grants of £590 ($29,000) for mission maintenance which the commissioner described as ‘unsound’.  A further £1120 ($55,125) from the APP was spent on wages and sawmill expenses on government settlements.

From 1926 bulk sums from the APP and the APF were transferred to investment.  During the 1925/35 period, covering the Depression years, Aboriginal funds were used to cover consolidated revenue shortfalls through a range of tactics.  Fifty percent of the APP was diverted to the department’s Standing account which financed general operations, a confiscation which only ceased in July 1941.¹⁰³  This amounted to a total of £14,986 (almost $868,000), with a further £4726 ($277,227) taken for ‘industrial development’ in 1934.  For several years an additional £500 from the APP went to the Yarrabah mission as part of the state’s ‘grant’, increased to £1000 ($49,22) in 1930 for development of the sawmill. 

In 1931 an additional 191 ‘inoperative’ private accounts with £4409 (over $242,000) were transferred into the APP ‘to be held until the missing owners or their next of kin are traced’.  This amount does not appear either as received or distributed under the APP.  Nearly £11,000 ($541,420) in 1930 and over £10,000 ($549,000) in 1931 was transferred from savings accounts to the APP, compared with preceding years where totals were between £1300 ($62,550) and £2300 ($110,670), and subsequent years which dropped from £4147 ($240,000) in 1932 to only £644 ($31,000) in 1935. 

A Report on the Aboriginal Settlements commissioned early in 1932¹⁰⁴ found a total of £9756 ($564,480) had ‘been expended from the APP on matters of a purely maintenance nature as a general reduction of the Revenue Vote’, including a motor launch for the Torres Straits, part-cost of a bridge at Monamona mission and timber for a Torres Strait hospital, and stated: ‘It is admitted that for the last two years, owing to the financial position of the State, the Trust Funds of the Aboriginal Department have had to be called upon to meet expenditure of a purely legitimate maintenance nature.’  While these funds could conceivably have been used to supplement the Vote ‘in a general way’, the Report said they should not have paid for ‘particular items of maintenance’.  In fact the two funds had ‘met £7530 ($362,340) of the £9280 ($446,550) required for general relief, blankets transport etc.’, and were ‘preparing to bear at least £5630 ($270,900) of the requirements for the 1931/32 year’.  The APF had also ‘financed’ the Aboriginal Industries Trading Station with a loan of £12,000 ($577,440).

A separate Report on the department in 1932¹⁰⁵ noted that although the APF was authorised to provide for the relief of indigent Aboriginal people, it had in fact ‘been the means of relieving the revenue of the state of considerable sums yearly for the maintenance of Aboriginals’ by subsidising the Vote.  A £7000 ($384,300) investment was simply transferred to supplement the reduced Vote and the Fund was ‘almost depleted’; money from settlement trust funds was transferred to keep it solvent.  In the decade from 1925 around £18,960 ($933,200) was taken from private savings, and an additional £72,032 ($3.5 million) from the two Trust funds ‘for departmental purposes’. 

In 1936 £6347 ($362,414) was ‘contributed’ from the two Trust funds to the ‘department of Health and Home Affairs’ through its Standing account along with £7500 ($428,250) interest from invested savings, and a further £980 ($56,000) interest on the savings account operating balance and settlement trust funds.  These appropriations were described by the auditor as ‘not strictly in conformity with the meaning of the Standing Account’ as defined in The Audit Act Amendment Act (1890).  An investigation in 1941¹⁰⁶ declared ‘contributions’ to the APF were unjustifiable since relief and maintenance were clearly a legitimate charge against consolidated revenue.  They recommended the APF be closed off.

The 1941 Investigation also criticised the department’s failure ‘to make proper inquiries’ for distributing estates and accounts to the relatives of dead or mission persons.  It said the ‘collection’ of funds from the APP and the APF – £91 ($4580) from the former and £2318 ($116,780) from the latter in the 1940/41 year alone – were ‘unauthorised’.  It found the APP was so depleted it was in danger of insolvency if claims were made on it by relatives.  Auditors confirmed the APP’s precarious position: it had a contingent liability of over £74,000 ($3.6 million)¹⁰⁷ representing thousands of unclaimed balances, but held only £1110 in cash plus £2765 in loans to meet it.  The auditor said many claimants listed as ‘missing’ or with inoperative accounts probably had no knowledge of their funds; and many deceased persons’ estates had not been distributed despite records of entitled relatives.

In fact successive auditors had warned the government there was no legal basis for all contemporary dealings on wages and trust founds since the passing of the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act (1939) which cancelled previous regulations (new regulations were not gazetted until 1945):

‘Consequently, no authority exists for, among other things, the percentage deductions from wages for the Aboriginal Provident Fund, transfers of moneys of deceased natives, where there are no beneficiaries, to the Aboriginal Protection of Property Account, transfers from Trust Funds to Standing Account, and for the order in which the estates of deceased natives should be distributed … the scale of wages and the settlement maintenance charges were not even covered by the regulations under the repealed Acts.’¹⁰⁸

Ignoring annual protestations from auditors, the government appropriated around £20,000 ($1 million) annually from Aboriginal earnings in the years to 1943 and to cover government expenses such as relief and rations to indigent Aboriginal people, costs of compulsory relocations of families (removal expenses), maintenance, and wages of Aboriginal settlement workers.  Auditors warned as early as 1939 that despite ‘the cognizance and approval’ of Treasury such outlays were ‘wrong in principle’ being ‘without the authority of Parliament’.¹⁰⁹  The director protested that ‘much of this taxation is an injustice’ because ‘relief on the one hand and maintenance on the other are definitely charges against the Consolidated Revenue.’¹¹⁰  Cabinet decided in May 1941 to continue the procedure.

In 1942 the director again objected that using Aboriginal trust monies for rations, clothing, blankets, removal costs and maintenance of children in State homes which were clearly ‘charges against the revenue of the State … cannot be regarded as ever having been justified’.  Again the auditor described these practices as ‘improper’; again Cabinet decided to ‘adhere to the present procedure.’  In July 1943 the annual budget shortfall was calculated at £19,000 ($805,600), and again the director endorsed a formal complaint from the auditor.  In August 1943 Cabinet set up the Aborigines Welfare Fund (AWF) under a wide remit which allowed APP and APF funds to be used towards ‘for the benefit of Aborigines generally’, and thus for items previously paid from consolidated revenue.

Aboriginal Welfare Fund operations are complex, poorly defined and carelessly recorded.  It operated as a Treasury Trust fund from 1941 until 1993 when it was frozen after indigenous protest.  Income derived from sale of produce from reserves, enterprises on reserves, ‘contributions’ from Aboriginal workers (ie APF and settlement maintenance deductions), unclaimed moneys (ie the APP), and ‘such other monies as may from time to time be prescribed.’  Profits from ‘surplus interest’ flowed into the Welfare Fund, thereby reducing financial input from consolidated revenue for Aboriginal administration.  While the department was legally empowered to make investments, the parlous state of the Welfare Fund, which was frequently run into debt, raises disturbing questions as to who ‘benefited’ from the sidelining of vast amounts of private money.  No regulatory provisions were ever formulated to define its proper operations.

Mission workers were denied benefit from their APF levies into the AWF, the government insisting the Fund was only intended for ‘the payment of wages and material, plant etc involved in the industrial undertakings on government settlements.’  In 1955 when four missions lobbied to retain their APF deductions, the amount at stake was almost £3000 ($60,900) but the government again refused to allow missions ‘the benefit of monies contributed by their employed Aboriginals’ through APF payments.  The following year mission authorities wanting to improve derelict housing again pleaded for relief through the Welfare Fund ‘to which so much money is paid from the working effort of our people’ but the department argued that the generality of the Welfare Fund precluded calculation of specific input from particular institutions.¹¹¹  Yet housing, building and development projects funded on settlements through the Welfare Fund surely contradicted this contention.

Forced relocations of individuals and families to controlled reserves were a charge on consolidated revenue yet ‘removals’ were consistently debited against the Welfare Fund as ‘recoverable expenses’.  In the 1950/51 year the Welfare Fund carried removal costs of £5034 ($129,072) while only 55% was repaid from the Vote; in 1968/69 the outlay was £4179 ($29,630) of which only £264 was repaid; in 1971/72 outlays were £7000 ($45,150) none of which was repaid.  In 1974/75 the amount charged to the Welfare Fund was £3750 ($15,750) and again none was repaid.  These sums were costs on the Vote; they should never have been carried by the Welfare Fund.  In the 1972/73 year $59,300 ($360,544) was transferred to Welfare Fund from the Assisted Persons Estates account (previously the APP).

In January 1945 the government bought a property near Murgon through a ‘loan’ from QAA, without the knowledge or consent of account holders.  Costs of developing the Aboriginal Training Farm (ATF) were charged against the Welfare Fund although the director protested it was ‘neither competent nor eligible’ to meet these costs.¹¹²  In the year to June 1946 the ATF ran a £1676 ($70,358) loss, carried by the Welfare Fund.  In 1946 the government bought another property, renamed Foleyvale, Cabinet again approving a loan of £10,000 ($419,800) from ‘surplus funds in Aboriginals savings accounts.’  The director again objected that the Welfare Fund was used for items outside its responsibility, particularly Aboriginal wages which he insisted were ‘outside the responsibility’ of the Fund and should be charged against the Vote because they were ‘administrative work’.¹¹³  Wages, including for white staff and overseers, continued to be charged against the Welfare Fund.

In 1948 the director again complained the Fund was ‘bearing a considerable amount of expenditure which truly could be regarded as legitimate Vote expenditure’, including ‘the cost of removal of Aboriginals, indigent, sick and refractory.’¹¹⁴  Indeed expenditure loaded against the Welfare Fund was so heavy it was in debt six of its first ten years of operation.  By late 1952 the Welfare Fund had covered Foleyvale’s losses for six of its seven years, and for every year that the ATF had operated.  Again the government charged wages of settlement workers against the Welfare Fund and again the director protested ‘as the natives concerned are Departmental employees, the cost should obviously be transferred to Vote.’¹¹⁵

In 1959, when settlement wages were again charged against the Welfare Fund during budget cuts in 1959, the director protested that ‘the Welfare Fund is, as applied many years ago, carrying a major portion of this expenditure’ which was not a legitimate charge against it.  The chief accountant stated that the dramatic drop of over £35,000 ($611,800) in Welfare Fund holdings was caused through the diversion of the Fund’s holdings to cover what was otherwise Vote expenditure.¹¹⁶  Welfare Fund estimates for 1958/59 for Palm Island listed a new launch, new tractor, new truck and land rover totalling £6700 ($1