Dr Ros Kidd
Historian - Consultant - Writer
Australia’s Debt: Unpaid Wages
to
Indigenous Pastoral Workers
"The
money is ours but the government won’t give it back"
Mr Fred Edwards,
stockman, Normanton, November 2002, transcripts of personal interviews
May and November 2002, and September 2003, kindly provided by Christine
Howes.
Introduction
According to
Annual Reports of Queensland’s Aboriginal department, indigenous
employment in the Queensland pastoral industry varied between 3000 and
6000 men, women and children for most of the twentieth century. This
workforce was almost entirely controlled by the department until 1968.
It dictated work locations, set the contracts with employers, was
authorised to monitor treatment and conditions, and established complex
financial controls of wages and savings which intensified after 1919,
after which, according to John Bleakley who was Chief Protector of
Aboriginals between 1914 and 1942, regulations to control rural
employment operated ‘practically without a hitch’.1
His successor
Cornelius O’Leary confirmed the priorities of the employment regime,
stating in 1948 that the Aboriginal workforce ‘continue to prove a
valuable asset’ to the pastoral industry.2
Indeed records show this cheap labour pool was critical for industry
survival in remote areas and Aboriginal workers were highly prized for
their skills and stability (as will be discussed below). Yet across
generations very few gained financially from their labours unless they
were freed from State controls. For most, working and retirement lives
were characterised by hardship, subsistence diet, minimal clothing,
unsafe water and sanitation, and derelict shelter.
The Aboriginal
workforce was also forged into a valuable asset for the government.
This paper will examine the historical, legal, administrative and
financial context of Aboriginal pastoral employment with a view to
illuminating the human dimensions. Brief reminiscences of Mr Fred
Edwards will reveal ramifications which still resonate today.
The nineteenth
century
Moreton Bay operated
as a penal outpost of New South Wales from 1825. When it was declared a
free settlement in 1842 there were around 200 Aboriginal people living
near the town, several of whom worked at odd jobs. The town felt itself
besieged by surrounding tribes numbering several thousand, raids on
crops and stock were common, and there were bitter protests when the
military was withdrawn in 1848.
The rapid ‘opening
up’ of the new colony and the unauthorised occupation of land by
squatters progressed exponentially faster than the processes of law and
order. By the time Moreton Bay achieved independence as a colony in
1858 only 7000 of 25,000 settlers lived in Brisbane. Increasingly, as
occupation advanced into new areas, the Native Police force was called
in to combat Aboriginal resistance and to exact revenge for attacks on
livestock or homesteads.
Historian George
Rusden, writing in the 1880s, described the Native Police as ‘a mere
machine for murder’.3 It was common
for pastoralists to summon, and at times subsidise, patrols by the
Native Police to clear local people from properties. One Darling Downs
pastoral company offering several years’ funding in 1861 stated that
without police presence ‘we can’t get men at any price’.4
Others, however, acknowledged that it was because people had been
cleared off the cattle runs that they were forced to spear cattle to
survive.
In outlying areas,
where white labour was not available, property owners induced Aboriginal
families to work in return for sanctuary, food, tobacco or opiates.
Chronic shortages of labour during the gold rushes of the 1860s and
1870s increased dependency on Aboriginal labour. One correspondent to
the Queenslander wrote: ‘Had it not been for the Aborigines doing
nearly all my work during the late rush to the Palmer … my losses would
have been ruinous.’5 Yet hostile
attitudes in frontier areas and rogue attacks by the Native Police
jeopardised Aboriginal employment, prompting some pastoralists to seek
official assurances they would ‘not interfere with my blacks’. Farmers
from Mackay petitioned the government in 1873 demanding protection for
their workers.
By this time
Aboriginal men and women were a common sight in country towns, working
as domestics, wood choppers and water carriers, or bartering skins and
clothes props. On outback pastoral properties men, women and children
did house, yard and station work. Others took seasonal work with tin
miners, sandalwood loggers and the coastal pearling and bêche-de-mer
(or sea slug) traders of Cape York. Exploitation was common. Children
and women were bought and sold as `working companions’, promised wages
were defaulted, physical brutality was routine, and narcotic addiction
was common currency, particularly in the far west of the State.
Correspondence in the
1880s indicates some workers were aware of employment options although
at times subject to deception. ‘As soon as a boy becomes useful’,
complained Mr Aldridge of Maryborough, ‘someone induces him to leave
your service with a promise of higher wages which the boy does not
receive … Many of us that value and employ the labour would willingly
subscribe to any regulations and supervision considered necessary by the
Government.’6 The Native Laborers’
Protection Act of 1884 did include binding contracts covering wages
and conditions, and also penalties against the seizure of women, but it
targetted the notorious sea trades and applied to Aborigines only within
a ten-mile coastal strip.
Despite their
importance to the pastoral industry, Aboriginal workers were routinely
treated with contempt. In 1896 Police Commissioner W. Parry-Okeden
reported: ‘After the whites have done their meal, the black stockmen are
handed their ‘rations’ which consist of the broken viands from the
table, and such pieces of ‘junk’ as have become tainted’. These
miserable scraps, he continued, were taken away and shared with those
waiting in the camps.7 In the same
year Special Commissioner Archibald Meston maintained that in western
and northern Queensland local people had been hunted from their tribal
country like animals and remained in a state of perpetual warfare with
pioneers.8
The Aboriginals
Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of 1897 was
intended to stem lawlessness and abuses. It threw a net of tight
controls over any person of Aboriginal descent, who could now be
summarily declared a ward of State, losing all rights and
responsibilities for their own, or their families’ lives. Such wards
could be removed to a mission or settlement, or contracted out to work
for a twelve-month period – there was no due process and no right of
appeal. The 1897 Protection Act nominated a network of protectors,
usually the local police, to monitor and report on all Aborigines in
their area. For the next seventy years these powers determined the work
prospects and the financial fortunes of thousands of Aboriginal
families.
Tightening the net
The government lacked
the funds to marshal tens of thousands of Aborigines onto
State-subsidised reserves and the political will to antagonise voters by
removing or over-indulging the cheap Aboriginal labour its electors
depended on. Exploitation of the Act was soon apparent.
Initially wages were
left to the employer, and could be in clothing or food. In many
stations outside protectors’ range in remote north and western areas,
virtual slavery continued. In 1899 a minimum rate of five shillings
($24)* per month proposed for pastoral
workers was vehemently opposed in parliament, in part because no minimum
wage applied to white labour. It was further alleged that cheap
Aboriginal labour was already ‘bringing the black man in competition
with the white man’.
In the twelve months
to June 1900 over 1200 work agreements were processed. The minimum wage
was introduced in 1901, ranging from children under 12 years and
including domestics. Comments in the department’s 1904 Annual Report
indicate the value placed on many Aboriginal workers: ‘more reliable
than the general class of white stockmen’, ‘as good and, in a great many
instances, better’, ‘They know the country better, and are more
biddable’, ‘As stock-riders and bushmen in many cases superior to the
general station hands.’ Yet these men were paid only one-eighth the
white wage.
Employment
regulations under the 1897 Act did not initially apply to those already
with ‘trustworthy’ employers, again allowing continued abuses
particularly of girls and women. Most stations and many private
families kept Aboriginal girls, most of whom were ‘given
to their owners when about seven or eight years of age’, according to
the Normanton protector, and the girls were not allowed to mix with
other Aborigines.9
Employers now rushed
for applications to exempt these servants from the Act, claiming they
had been ‘brought up as one of the family’. Yet, as Northern Protector
of Aboriginals Dr Walter Roth reported, conditions for domestics and
nurse girls were akin to slavery with long hours, limited freedom, no
wages, and eviction if they fell pregnant. He limited exemptions to
girls who clearly understood they would lose the protections offered by
the Act.10
Widespread resistance
to the paying of wages to girls and women was seen to indicate how few
were paid previously.
In one Western town a
young girl worked for a household of three people for payment of 2/6
($11) per week. But her mistress hired her out to at least seven other
people at sixpence a time, and kept this income for herself.11
Roth reported another common ruse was to sign up men as a way of getting
to their wives who, as non-employees themselves, were outside official
oversight. An Amendment Act in 1901 made it illegal to have any
Aboriginal woman on a premises without a permit.
Workers were paid at
the end of the contract period but many were cheated of their cash
before they returned home. Another ploy, particularly in the sea
trades, was to abandon workers in remote areas toward the end of their
contracts. Employers then declared they had absconded or died, and thus
avoided payment. In 1902 Dr Roth set up the Aboriginals Protection of
Property Account (APP) to collect wages due for distribution to their
families. From 1903 protectors were instructed to take direct payment of
the wages of all female employees, and the system of thumb printing all
transactions was initiated to reduce frauds. Wages were banked in the
name of each employee, with the protector as trustee. Detailed cash
books were to be kept and audited each year. The 1904 Annual Report
gives this snapshot of workers in the Normanton area:
In Normanton there are two camps, numbering about 200 Aborigines.
Originally these camps were composed of Normanton natives, but their
strength is now kept up by station boys who have left their employers,
and who want a spell before going outside again; by others who have
married Normanton gins, and by various other causes … they have their
regular employers, and their payment is certain: if not paid, they never
return to that employer, and there is no mendicancy … They are orderly,
biddable, and very honest … They are employed as horse-boys, firewood
cutters, yard-cleaners, nurse girls, washerwomen, charwomen, &c.
From 1904 Aboriginal
savings under government control increased as male wages now also went
directly to protectors, at their discretion. For that year the
Normanton protector reported he expected to hold savings of ₤500
($46,540). Workers were allowed to withdraw only half their earnings
and only if the protector deemed it a ‘necessary’ expense. For several
years Reverend Gribble, Anglican superintendent of the Yarrabah mission,
had taken direct control of wages of inmates contracted to surrounding
stations, retaining half the income for food and clothing of the elderly
and sick. The wages of girls and women employed around the Brisbane
area, since 1898, had been deposited in personal credit accounts by
protectress Mrs Frew. She, however, was found to be swindling the
girls’ accounts, after their protests to the local member of parliament
triggered a full inquiry. She was sacked in 1905.12
By 1904 the Gulf stations were run almost exclusively by Aboriginal
labour. Roth was disgusted at the widespread exploitation of women and
children at cattle mustering, not only because of the backbreaking work,
but because the practice was ‘supplementary to concubinage’. Local
people
complained bitterly of the rampant kidnapping of their children, a
practice confirmed by the protector who said gangs of white men thought
nothing of ‘rounding
up small mobs of wild natives and despoiling their women’. ‘This
practice is more common than many people imagine’, he continued, ‘a
large number of individuals have an idea that they can trade an
aboriginal as they would a horse, or bullock – some of these people are
good church goers.’13
In 1911 the Chief Protector reported that many station managers,
particularly in the far West, still retained ‘a deep-rooted objection to
paying the Aboriginals anything for their services, unless it is coming
back again through the station store.’14
Most workers now only received a ‘pocket money’ portion during their
contract period, fixed at the protector’s discretion and varying between
30 per cent to 70 per cent. It was allotted in tobacco, matches or
small articles, and signed for by the worker in a special book tendered
at the close of the contract. Cheating was unchecked: station managers
could simply charge for goods never supplied. And doctored pocket money
books remained a scandal until the system ceased in the mid-1960s.
When John
Bleakley became Chief Protector in 1914 he formalised the compulsory
payment of all male wages directly to protectors. He exploited the
shortage of white labour during the war years, observing that Western
properties would pay double for labour to cut scrub for starving
cattle. By 1915 the department controlled 4960 accounts, about 30 per
cent of the total Aboriginal population in the State, with a credit
balance of almost ₤57,000 ($3.48 million).15
The government illegally kept the bank interest to underwrite its own
outlays on food, rations and blankets. In 1915 Bleakley lobbied for a
ten per cent levy on bank accounts to ‘increase social responsibility’
of workers for their dependents. He calculated a windfall of ₤2500
($152,900) per annum, 40 per cent greater than current government
expenditure on relief items.16 He
expressed surprise, in his 1916 Annual Report, that so many
workers believed their savings were being diverted to cover government
liabilities.
Abuse of trust
The levy on
Aboriginal earnings was introduced in 1919, set at 5 per cent from
single workers and half that from married workers. Workers were not
informed, nor gave consent, to this confiscation of earnings. Income
went into the new Aboriginal Provident Fund (APF), a Trust fund intended
to provide relief for unemployed or sick workers. The levy applied to
all those not based on missions and settlements. The latter were
already taxed at 10 per cent for married workers and half that for
single, as a contribution towards maintenance and amenities; able-bodied
inmates had to work at least 24 hours a week to qualify for rations.
The 1919 regulations
set new pay rates for the 4000 Aboriginal pastoral workers. This group
were excluded from the McCawley Station Hand Award the previous year
after strenuous lobbying from the Queensland government and contrary to
demands by the Australian Workers Union (AWU) for equal wages. The new
rates were set at 66 per cent the white wage, and although pastoralists
protested this made Aboriginal labour too expensive the hypocrisy of
their claim is evident by the massive jump in earnings, from around
₤45,300 ($2.58 million) in 1917 to ₤61,840 ($2.9 million) in 1919, from
which the government pocketed interest of ₤3327 ($156,560). This
brought private savings under government control to over ₤120,000 ($5.64
million), which the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane condemned as a
callous mechanism to reduce official expenditure.
A public service
Inquiry in 192217 reported almost half
the deductions made by rural protectors were inaccurate, and recommended
that workers by allowed to appeal dubious dealings on their savings.
This was never implemented. Meanwhile parliament was told several
police had already been sacked for swindling Aboriginal workers by
simply demanding endorsement of receipts for grossly inflated amounts.
In April 1921 thumb prints were re-introduced as ‘a further safeguard’
against police fraud,18 and these had
to be witnessed by a disinterested third party. The Inquiry observed
there had been no inspections of protectors for several years, nor of
the circumstances of the 8000 rural Aborigines and their need for
departmental relief.
The Inquiry also
found that both the APP and the APF were defrauded by the government to
cover legitimate consolidated revenue liabilities. The former account,
set up to receive and distribute unclaimed earnings, was being operated
as an expense account for outlays, refunds, transfers and advances. And
the government had taken ₤1700 ($83,670) for development of the
government’s Barambah settlement and ₤590 ($29,000) in grants to the
missions. The new Provident Fund, which had collected over ₤3000
($147,660) in the previous 12 months, had expended less than 10 per cent
in relief aid, despite a disastrous slump in the cattle industry.
Meanwhile ₤117 ($5760) had been taken to pay for compulsory deportations
to the new Cape Bedford mission.
A scandal at Wrotham
Park station in 192719 indicates how
vulnerable Aboriginal workers were physically, as well as financially,
to abuse by police protectors. Workers here refused to re-sign without
payment of ₤200 ($9624) in outstanding wages. The protector threatened
the men and women, plied them with alcohol, and locked them in a poisons
shed overnight until they capitulated. When an internal police inquiry
took no action the story was leaked to the press, prompting the police
union to claim its members were being falsely victimised.
Most workers had
nowhere to turn with such grievances, although there are rare letters
direct to the Chief Protector. Audit officers were appalled that rogue
police remained in position. They identified protectors who failed to
collect wages, held ‘witnessed’ withdrawals which had not been endorsed
by the worker, colluded with local storekeepers to overcharge for
purchases, and charged inflated amounts for clothes and goods obtained
second hand (Longreach 1927). Others commonly negotiated contracts for
illegally low rates of pay (Winton 1932), or connived with employers to
hold preferred workers idle off-season rather than secure the required
12-month contract (Herberton 1935). Bleakley admitted there had been
many instances of ‘dereliction of duty and abuses’ by police protectors,
most of whom were not qualified for their Aboriginal duties and all of
whom were caught in the conflict between policing and protecting, with
the former frequently subordinated to the latter.20
During the 1929
depression the government appropriated Aboriginal savings through a
series of extra levies and confiscations,21
including a 5 per cent tax on all balances over ₤20 ($940) and a 2.5 per
cent tax on country accounts. All APF levies and half the annual
balance in the APP was seized for consolidated revenue, as well as lump
sums from the APP, bringing the fund to the brink of insolvency.
Financial records reveal raids on Trust funds since at least 1925, the
Trusts losing a total of ₤72,000 ($3.5 million) ‘for departmental
purposes’ in the decade to 1935 and a further ₤19,000 ($933,000) taken
from Aboriginal earnings. This was never repaid. Subsequently, in
contempt of annual protests by auditors, Trust monies continued to be
raided for mission and settlement development, wages, forced
relocations, and grants to missions.
By the end of 1931
the government was holding more than ₤290,000 (almost $16 million) of
private savings in 5600 accounts, although, as Bleakley admitted, after
30 years there was still no effective control over the activities of the
95 country protectors. Indeed a new Inquiry in 193222
found pilfering from private accounts over long periods was common and
declared Aboriginal savings more vulnerable to fraud than any other
government accounts. It strongly recommended that workers at least be
able to see some record of transactions. This was never implemented.
Instead, in a move said to ‘go a long way to minimise fraud’ by police
protectors,23 ₤250,000 ($14.45 million)
of private savings was transferred to head office leaving only a working
residue in police hands.
This tactic had
little impact on the daily dealings of protectors. But it was a boon
for the government which immediately seized ₤200,000 ($11.57 million)
for investment. This duplicated a long-standing practice of diverting
bulk amounts from the APP, the APF and settlement Trust funds
(comprising the accumulated savings of inmates) for the purpose of
interest revenue. These monies were desperately needed by the
impoverished account holders, and the procedure of confiscating the
interest bonus, amounting to ₤5316 ($320,500) in 1933, was known to be
unauthorised. The retention of majority savings for investment purposes
continued into the 1970s.
During the late 1930s
Aboriginal employment in the pastoral industry averaged around 5500
workers. Yet the department failed to secure even the discounted wage
of 66 per cent, the official scale dropping from 53% (1934, 1935) to
only 41% (1938, 1939). Writing in 1934, the United Graziers’
Association (UGA) disclosed that in the peninsula and the Gulf ‘it is
not possible to obtain suitable white men [who] would not take the jobs
they were offered.’ Reports24 showed
90 per cent of stations in the Cloncurry area were worked by Aboriginal
stockmen in 1936, with most station owners preferring them to white
labour, being better stockmen and more reliable.
It is a well known fact that Aboriginals employed on agreement, work
long hours, and with a lot of employers there are no Sundays … whilst
mustering is on, they are out on the runs day and night, and very often
their day’s work is nearer 16 than 8 hours. The white man would not
endure such hardships and long hours … The wages, more especially to a
married Aboriginal, is just a bare existence.
Protectors at
Mitchell, Windorah and Turn Off Lagoons endorsed the preference for
Aboriginal over white labour. The Normanton protector described the
gruelling regime on ‘most of the stations around here’:
It is freely admitted
that the native stockman is last to retire at night and first up in the
morning. After his stock duties for the day are finished he makes the
fire, carries water, and is at the beck and call of the white men in the
camp. In the morning he has the fire going and the horses rounded up
before the white stockmen are awake. In addition, it is a general rule
for the native to ride the highest spirited horses before the white
stockman condescends to ride them.
At that time an
Aboriginal stockman got less than half the white wage and much of that
was in doubt with several protectors adamant that pocket money was never
properly paid in their areas.25 To
withdraw money from their own savings workers had to endure the
humiliating ritual of going cap in hand to protectors whose arbitrary
refusal was common. Head office endorsed rejections even where
substantial balances obtained, claiming that a person may have purchased
trousers several months previously, might be ‘too extravagant’ in their
request, or was not careful in looking after other possessions.26
Many pastoralists and
some protectors regarded Aboriginal children as a commodity. In 1938
the Burketown protector was ordered to relocate 26 destitute people from
the north-west stations of Lawn Hill and Westmoreland to the Doomadgee
mission. He protested that two boys aged 10 and 11 should remain
because, once on the mission, they could refuse station work.27
The mission superintendent pointed out that this protector prohibited
‘any native, young or old, from visiting [the mission], even for a few
days’ during the contract period’, and few workers accepted the extended
isolation from family and friends. Subsequently the pastoralist
condemned the ‘clean muster’ of the group, protesting ‘much work’ had
already gone into training the boys and their 8-year-old brother.
Poor food and
accommodation for Aboriginal, as opposed to white, workers was a further
avenue of profit for pastoralists, especially in remote areas where
inspections were rare. In some areas, however, mission contact
confirmed workers’ awareness of their rights:28
M., like many other employers in this part of the State, have not got
out of the way of thinking that ‘anything is good enough for a nigger’,
they do not realise that the natives are gradually becoming more
educated … probably due to the Missions, … they are obtaining much
better treatment, but with the stations which are at a distance from the
protectorate office, and whose natives rarely come to town, they receive
a bad deal.
Inferior conditions
were condoned because, as the UGA astutely observed, ‘by employing
Aboriginals, the stations concerned are relieving the State of a
liability’.
And of course the
government directly profited from Aboriginal employment. Despite
frequent warnings from auditors that such practices were ‘wrong in
principle’ and ‘without the authority of parliament,29
it continued to pool levies from Aboriginal income through the
department’s operational account to mask payments for items which
strictly were charges on consolidated revenue. This saved around
₤19,000 ($805,600) each year, funding which the government simply
refused to provide. It also ignored warnings that every levy and
transfer of Aboriginal monies was unlawful after 1939, when all
regulations had been temporarily terminated by the Aboriginals
Preservation and Protection Act and not reinstated. Indeed
settlement maintenance levies were judged illegal even under the
repealed Acts. (New regulations were not gazetted until 1945.)
Systemic
impoverishment
A new Investigation
in 194130 was so critical of Bleakley’s
dereliction of duty he was forced to resign. Records were hopelessly
muddled, accounts improperly kept and there were still no internal
checks to detect fraud and error in the 40-year system. Further, there
was a failure ‘to make proper inquiries’ to identify relatives entitled
to deceased estates. Indeed government raids had reduced the APP to
only ₤1110 in cash plus ₤2765 in loans to meet a contingent liability of
over ₤74,000 ($3.6 million) representing thousands of ‘unclaimed’
workers’ balances.31
In 1943 the
government created the Aboriginal Welfare Fund (AWF) ‘for the benefit of
Aborigines generally’, parameters wide enough to legitimise the
diversion of trust monies to cover development costs of missions and
settlements. The AWF absorbed all interest from invested funds, the APF
levy, the settlement maintenance levy (on savings of those based on
settlements), and proceeds from settlement stores (with profit margins
up to 40 per cent) and ventures such as sale of cattle and produce. At
times, lump sums from ‘unclaimed’ deceased estates, and later child
endowment and federal housing funds, were all streamed through the AWF.
(Pastoral workers have a vested interest in the AWF, which the
government continued to exploit until 1993, and for which the government
recently proposed a contentious settlement.)
In the 1943/44 year
only 17 per cent of private savings was available for private needs,
while over ₤248,00 ($10.5 million) was committed for investment. At
that time pastoral workers got only 39 per cent the white wage, around
$64 per week (today), a loss of about $44 per week relative to the 66
per cent parity, with a further pocket money loss of up to 75% of wages,
or $48. As a measure to reduce cheating on goods supplied the
department suggested setting a cash component. The Coen protector, one
of the biggest labour contractors, described the pocket money system as
‘just a farce, and is playing into the hands of the white people in
general … the employers have not any interest in the natives whatever,
and consequently the cash would not get to the natives, their finger
prints would be taken in a cash book and the amount credited against the
native, which they would not get.’ The Burketown protector agreed: ‘if
greater amount was given to the Aboriginal concerned, I am of the
opinion that 75 per cent of the stations would keep the extra pocket
money for themselves.’
Government files
confirm continuing exploitation of this labour force: ‘An Aboriginal can
be equally as good, in fact better, than the majority of European
stockmen … The average cattle man has a tendency to employ cheap labour,
and the Aboriginal is his cheap labour, and practically the same amount
of work is being done by Aboriginal labour as would be done if Europeans
were employed in their place … the average Aboriginal is a better man
for station work’ (Georgetown). In Charters Towers graziers preferred
Aboriginal labour because they knew the country, adapted better to
working conditions and were cheaper. Indeed the AWU confirmed that on
many properties ‘practically the whole of the labour employed is
Aboriginal’. Pastoralists exploited workers’ ‘ignorance of hours and
conditions generally’ (Theodore), working them ‘time and a half’ while
on the road with the stock (Burketown), and ‘sweating’ wives who were
required to provide two hours free work but in fact were hostage to
their situation: ‘Although it is almost impossible to prove it, many of
the employers work these gins far in excess of the two hours, and thus
do away with the necessity of employing a further hand’ (Gregory Downs).32
This essential
workforce of 4500 in 1949 was contracted by the department at only 31
per cent the white wage in that year, a deficit of over $340,000 (today)
per week compared to the stated ratio, and almost double that
compared to the station hands Award. Massive losses through rorted
pocket money continued unchecked despite regulations in 1945 to tighten
procedures, as this 1956 report from Camooweal shows:33
Most employers do not keep pocket money books, as they are not
practical, and those that do give the books to the natives on
termination of employment. The natives invariably state that they
thumbprint the books without receiving the money. The employers in such
cases state that the natives’ account was overdrawn, and this cannot be
disputed, as the employer (if he is dishonest) protects himself with
false entries in his store account … My personal views are that pocket
money issues to natives are absolutely beyond control, and the native is
entirely at the mercy of his employer…
Similar responses
around the State led director Cornelius O’Leary to concede ‘that in many
instances pocket money is not paid and the Aboriginal thereby deprived
of portion of his earnings’. Calculating the loss at 50 per cent across
the workforce34 gives a total in
today’s value of almost $17 million stripped from the 4500 workers for
the 1956 year alone, with a further deficit of $6.24 million to the
stated wage parity and another $1.25 million by the APF levy.
In 1956 the
department was so eager to profit from almost ₤532,000 ($10 million) of
private savings diverted to investment that it amended regulations to
offer this money for the expansion projects of regional hospitals,35
from which Aboriginal people were routinely excluded. At the same time,
rural families, barred by regulation from rental or hotel accommodation,
struggled in appalling conditions in pastoral camps or on rural reserves
controlled by the department. Almost without exception these were
overcrowded, decrepit and unsanitary. Frequently the department
refused to upgrade them despite knowledge that children were thereby
denied schooling, as was the case at Ravenshoe in 1953:36
Their present hovels are dank, musky and unhealthy and their living
conditions unsanitary in every way … all water has to be carried up a
steep grade by men, women and children. The children are denied the
right to education, being debarred from the local state school because
of the disgraceful and unsavoury homes from which they come.
The department said
it had ‘neither the funds nor the resources’ to provide standard
amenities, instead opting to remove the families to a government
settlement. These compulsory removals were, in all likelihood, financed
improperly from the Welfare Fund, a practice continued into the 1970s.37
In 1958 O’Leary admitted that ‘industrious and hardworking men of good
standing with families and money’ had no option but to remain on the
Birdsville reserve, where squalor was so bad the children suffered
continual gastroenteritis and skin infections and were banned from
school.38
To allay public
condemnation the department at times raided the wages of local workers
to finance shelter, fencing and amenities on rural reserves. ‘Consent’
was purportedly obtained although people were pursued for years to pay
their share; yet workers rarely stayed on the reserves which
overwhelmingly were home to the unemployed and the elderly. In the late
1940s money was taken for sheds and toilets at Charters Towers and £258
($8633) for huts to replace those destroyed by cyclone at Cooktown. In
the early 1950s £3000 ($62,340) was taken for huts and amenities at
Normanton through a 5 per cent levy on savings accounts. People on the
Cloncurry reserve also ‘made available’ considerable amounts from their
accounts for amenities, and in 1947 every worker ‘was compelled to
contribute’ to a house costing £450 ($18,000) for Aboriginal
accommodation in the town; it was riddled with termites and cost a
further £50 to demolish two years later.39
When the department
announced an increase in the minimum wage in 1957, the UGA challenged
the department’s authority to do so, threatened a mass retrenchment of
stockmen, and claimed deceitfully that black stockmen ‘do not compare
with experienced white stockmen’. The department’s inspector disputed
the claims, noting a ‘marked and growing reluctance’ of white stockmen
to work in remote areas:40
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the continuance of pastoral
pursuits depends on Aboriginal stockmen … most graziers appear more
concerned with obtaining Aboriginal labour as cheaply as possible than
with paying wages in terms of the real worth … white men of markedly
less ability and industry [are] receiving higher wages and better living
conditions than Aboriginals who are better workmen.
Employees’ wives,
whose unpaid labour was now capped at 12 hours per week, continued to be
exploited, as were children whose labour was entrenched in the industry,
despite an official minimum age of 14 years. In 1957 O’Leary conceded
many were injured, needing medical attention for broken limbs, and
counselled graziers against using ‘undersized and weedy’ children for
hard labour, observing ‘We try to look on these people as human beings’.41
The UGA wanted children from at least 12 years, when they were ‘more
interested’ and might grow up in ‘the right surroundings’ rather than be
‘ruined’ by mission life.
The files abound with
reports of appalling abuses including sexual assaults, wet living
quarters, rough handling, brutality with chains, poor rations, lack of
clean water and cooking sheds, and widespread hookworm and ill health,
especially among children. Workers who walked off bad jobs were pursued
by police and forcibly returned. Many protectors ignored Aboriginal
complaints, labelling them as untrue, unsubstantiated or merely
vindictive. Such blatant contraventions of regulated conditions were
rarely challenged; few police protectors had the time or the inclination
to check outlying cattle stations. In 1956 the department arranged that
industrial inspectors of white accommodation could also check that ‘fair
treatment’ obtained for Aboriginal workers. But little changed.
The proposed wage
rise was not introduced until 1961, by which time the UGA had engineered
a reduction in hourly rates, and re-assigned the workforce on lower pay,
generating a £2 million ($34 million) profit, according to TLC
calculations.42 Another tactic to
minimise wages included the ‘active/non-active’ category whereby wages
of men over forty-five could be reduced by almost half. The TLC
denounced these wage discounts as ‘scandalous’ and ‘inconsistent with
public utterances’ about fostering assimilation, but director Patrick
Killoran feigned impotence, alleging that rates were ‘determined by the
Industrial Court’ and were not ‘an arbitrary decision by a Government or
a Department.’43
A further scam was
use of the tag of ‘slow worker’; indeed in 1964 the UGA alleged that
‘practically all aboriginals’ came under this category. Activated with
AWU consent, this only required a protector to prevail upon a worker to
‘agree’ that his capacity was diminished and endorse his contract
accordingly. The UGA blocked TLC proposals that an industrial magistrate
be empowered to judge Aboriginal ability, protesting that streaming
Aboriginal station hands onto normal pay would cause ‘major
complications’ logging overtime, sick leave, etc.; not to mention
difficulties under the Workers’ Accommodation Act which
stipulated that ‘white workers should not have to live in the same
sleeping accommodation or eat in the same dining room as coloured
workers’.44
By 1964 Queensland
considered it was not politically prudent to oppose the push for equal
wages, but Killoran calculated his department could retain control of
most employment. A TLC submission45
catalogues the gross disadvantage: the ration scale for whites listed 52
items, compared to 17 for Aboriginal workers; holidays were 3 weeks
compared to one; Aboriginal workers had no provision for sick or long
service leave; overtime was far lower; wives were still required to work
12 hours a week for rations; Aboriginal workers received no permanent
record of wages earned and paid nor any record of deductions made,
amounts remitted to the protector or indeed any record of accrued
earnings. And after more than 60 years in operation, the wages system
was still judged ‘too open to abuse’ because, as a Public Service
Inspection admonished, employers paid only on demand from the protector.
The 1965
Aboriginal Affairs Act defined every Aboriginal a ‘free citizen’
unless deemed in need of ‘assistance’ (that is, everyone not yet
‘exempted’ from department controls). Aboriginal property and accounts
could still be taken possession of, retained or sold at the director’s
discretion. Workers could now see their passbooks showing transactions
on their accounts, although financial control was retained by the
State. Investment holdings at this time totalled $1.56 million ($12.46
million), with the government pocketing $38,218 ($305,360) in ‘surplus
interest’.
Award rates now
became mandatory except where Aboriginal workers were specifically
excluded – effectively almost the whole workforce. New regulations in
1966 continued to defer to the UGA in the underpayment of Aboriginal
station hands. Indeed, prime minister Robert Menzies had confidentially
assured Queensland’s premier Frank Nicklin that equal wages would only
apply to former wards. All those still under State control could be
covered by the ‘slow worker’ clause, and full wages for these ‘trainees’
could be phased in ‘over time’.46
Meanwhile the 5000 pastoral workers struggled on 72 per cent of the
award wage, losing an estimated $67,500 ($523,800) per week to pocket
money fraud which auditors stated was still unchecked. A further $5000
($38,800) weekly was stripped out of their earnings into the Welfare
Fund. Full wages did not become mandatory until 1968.
It was not until 1972
that workers could request permission to control their own accounts,
unless a magistrate upheld an objection from the Director as to their
capacity to do so. Audits show the government still had $952,370 ($6.14
million) of savings invested. Only now were Aboriginal workers finally
safe from compulsory relocations, contracted employment and government
levies. ‘For the first time’, reported the department’s Coen manager,
‘men did not have to go to a station if they did not want to … if they
feel they have not been fairly treated, or have not been paid’. Workers
were no longer ‘owned’ by particular stations which frequently put them
off in slack times in breach of long term contracts, ‘to leave their men
simply sit in the reserve until they needed them’. Elderly family
members and wives who had been compelled to work for free on the
stations could now also refuse exploitation: ‘Pensioners are coming in
to sit down, this is hitting the stations, and most of the women will
not now go out as they never got pay only food.’ Pastoralists were
angry: ‘there was a lot of local tension to put it very mildly.’47
The early 1970s was a period of upheaval for Aboriginal pastoral
workers. Many were laid off when award wages became mandatory, others
were displaced because of increasing mechanisation in the industry, and
the severe downturn due to international competition. For many
Aboriginal people in the north, this is remembered as the most
destructive in living memory.48
Freedom of movement and declining employment led to a concentration of
families in towns and fringe settlements.
By the late 1970s
most stations around Coen employed only stockworkers and often for just
a three-month period, although several pensioners took low-paid yard
work as a way of keeping contact with their country. During 1979 and
1980, however, all local men were again in full employment, and
youngsters were out on the stations training.
Settling the
accounts
Fred Edwards is a
respected elder from Normanton, and he is a frustrated man. He has
worked for 50 years on stations around the Gulf, yet he doesn’t have
enough money to repair his car. He officially started work at twelve,
but as he said: ‘Most people were born on the station, grew up on the
station and as we were growing up we were just thrown straight into the
saddle and doing stock work and all that.’ There were no holidays other
than a weekends at Christmas and the August races.
He had no control
over his employment. ‘We were kicked around like animals’, he says, ‘no
matter what the circumstance was you had to put up with whatever.’
Physical abuse was common, ‘we were flogged for anything and then chased
off the place’, but if they went into town they’d get locked up by
police and sent straight out again.
He never got his
wages, and remembers the humiliation of going to the courthouse where
they’d write orders for rations or clothes. ‘What do you want this
for’, they demanded, ‘You take what we’re going to give you’. At times
he would ask if he could get perhaps ten pounds of his savings, to be
told that one pound was enough; or ask for a clothes order for two or
three items, to be told, ‘No, you just get one of each.’ The
courthouse would ring the stores saying: ‘we’re sending so and so down
there and if he doesn’t turn up let us know’.
They were continually
told they hadn’t earned their keep. Yet, as Fred rightly insists, it
was ‘the blackfellas who put the stations there’, labouring in groups of
20 or 30 in the stock camps, just for bread and beef, doing the hardest
work: ‘A lot of the white stockmen would never ever do what we did.’
Fred remembers paying
his share for four huge buildings on the Normanton reserve which were
later sold to the Council when the department forced everyone off the
site. It was our money, he said, ‘I’d like to get my share of that
money back.’
Fred is now in his
early 60s, and his wife Gladys nearly ten years older. Gladys spent
most of her childhood ‘on her hands and knees scrubbing, in and out of
stations’, backbreaking work for all young girls. Like his family and
friends, they are in desperate straits, despite the fact that Fred
slaved all his life. They are paying off their house, furniture and a
replacement engine for the car. He’s in desperate need of cash but the
bank just knocked him back because he doesn’t have a job in the slack
season. He suffers from arthritis, asthma and diabetes, and rightly
says he should be retired with his feet up. As it is, he’ll have to
‘throw a saddle on the horse again’ when the season picks up. He has to
‘go on slaving … until I can’t stand up to it anymore I suppose’.
In May 2002 the
Beattie Labor government acknowledged ‘the lasting pain’ caused by
decades of financial controls. The premier said he was ‘generous’ in
offering a payment of $4000 to workers over 50 years, and half that to
those less than 50 who worked ‘under the Acts’. Claimants have to sign
an indemnity to shield the government against further legal actions, but
the government refuses to supply all their financial records, and none
would have any idea if the wealth of incriminating evidence detailing
government negligence and malpractice. To validate the indemnity the
government is paying allegedly ‘independent’ legal advisers, but these
operatives have been instructed to discuss only the government offer.
Most workers thereby remain ignorant of their real entitlement and their
best interests.
‘It reminds me of the
olden days’, Fred says, ‘we’ve just got to take what’s given’. He knows
he has been ‘ripped off’, and he wants to get all his money back, but
thinks that $10,000 or $12,000 might be fair compensation for decades of
work under government control. He wants to claim for his deceased
parents and elder brother whose lifetime earnings also disappeared into
the system, but this is expressly proscribed under the terms of the
offer.
Fred says his life
would have ‘balanced’ if he had been paid his wages during his working
life, and his initial response was to reject the paltry payment. He
knows that several lawyers have volunteered to work pro bono for people
wanting to pursue full compensation through the courts. But he says he
has ‘no option’ but to take what’s offered – ‘at least I get something
‘while I’m alive’. He says the $4000 is nothing really, and he’d like
it to be a downpayment. ‘Very sad, you know, people like me who have
got to accept that sort of money when you’ve been a slave all your
life.’
Conclusion
Successive Queensland
governments have profited extensively through their handling of the
wages and savings of generations of indentured pastoral labourers during
the twentieth century. Autocratic controls introduced in 1897 and
refusal to allow either personal or external scrutiny facilitated
frauds, incompetence, negligence and illegal dealings which deprived
workers of millions of dollars. File evidence confirms that
administrations knew of malpractices for decades but refused to
implement safeguards to protect the finances of these wards of State.
It is clear the government itself has diverted private savings and Trust
funds to cover State obligations and to generate profit for the State.
Plundering of
pastoral earnings and entitlements was multi-faceted: setting the 66 per
cent parity in 1919; failure to enforce that parity in every year
between 1931-1961; failure to demand wage for known worth; failure to
implement pocket money safeguards; failure to prevent endemic police
fraud; imposing levies which were then corrupted to profit the State;
failure to allow workers free use of their savings; seizure of bulk
savings for State enrichment; failure to distribute deceased estates;
failure to pass on full child endowment and pensions; failure to enforce
workplace terms and conditions; banning workers from standard rural
accommodation and refusal to provide alternative standard amenities on
reserves, to name the most obvious.
Thousands of
Aboriginal men and women worked for decades, many on country they have
always claimed as their own. Evidence shows many were highly skilled
long term employees. There is little doubt that many would have
successfully bid for management or ownership of rural properties if the
State had not purloined their earnings on a massive scale.
What is needed now –
and in every State – is an independent Inquiry to reveal the full
histories of labour and financial controls of Aboriginal wards and to
assess equitable compensation. As Fred Edwards says, the Queensland
premier must feel guilty now he knows the facts. It is time for him –
and every other premier – to come clean.
1
Bleakley, J W, The Aborigines of Australia, Jacaranda
Press, Brisbane, 1961:172.
2
Annual Report, Department of Native Affairs. 1948:2
3
Rusden, G W, History of Australia, Vol 3, Chapman & Hall,
London, 1883:231.
4
Queensland State Archives (QSA) COL/A22, 22.12.1861.
5
Quoted in Bennett, M, Christison of Lammermoor, Alston
Rivers Ltd, London, 1928:95.
6
QSA COL/A409, 6.12.1884.
7
Parry-Okeden, W E, Report of the Police Commissioner to the
Home Secretary, 19.2.1897.
8
Meston, A, Report on the Aboriginals of Queensland, Qld
Votes & Proceedings, Vol IV, 1896:723.
9
Annual Report of the Northern Protector of Aboriginals,
1903:17.
12
Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 1906:1165.
14
Annual Report, 1911:11.
15
Annual Report, 1915:16.
16
Annual Report, 1915:5.
17
QSA A/69452, 15.3.23. Report on The Office of the Chief
Protector of Aboriginals.
18
QSA. Police Circular 21:3.
19
Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 1927:308.
21
Undated memorandum attached to QSA A/58856, 9.11.32.
22
QSA A/58856, 9.11.32, Report on the Inspection of the Office
of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals.
23
Ibid, 15.3.33, Under Secretary William Gall.
24
QSA 1A/29 for these reports.
26
QSA POL 9H/1 Correspondence Winton Police Station 1930s &
1940s.
28
DAIA TR1227:209 2.6.41.
30
QSA A/4291 Investigation into the Sub-department of Native
Affairs
31
QSA TR254 1B/23 7.5.42.
32
All quotes from QSA 1A/29.
33
QSA TR254 1D/106, 1956.
34
Pocket money ranged between 33%-75%, making 54% the half-way
mark. Wages were only 55% the white rate.
35
QSA TR254 1A/188 14.9.56.
37
For details of entrenched misuse of the Aboriginal Welfare Fund
see articles on www.linksdisk.com/roskidd.
39
QSA TR254 7C/8 (i) 10.2.47.
40
QSA TR254 1A/29 22.10.56.
41
QSA TR1227:258 23.1.57.
42
QSA TR254 1A/29 15.11.61.
47
QSA TR254 9L/57 1.5.74.
48
Sutton, P, ‘The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Policy in
Australia since the Seventies’, proposed paper for
Anthropological Forum, 11:2, November 2001.
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