Dr Ros Kidd
Historian - Consultant - Writer
A
Century of Protection: Kitchener Bligh's Story
For the whole of this century, through a network of officials and
intensive regulations, governments in Queensland have operated the most
intensive machinery of supervision and surveillance ever imposed on a
sector of the population. Through laws and regulations, the Aboriginal
department has controlled births, marriages, health, education, where
and how you lived, where and when you worked, even your savings and
spending. To give you some idea of what it was like to be in the
department’s ‘care’, I’ll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, around 1920, a young boy lived with his two brothers
and older sister at Halifax, near Ingham. Their parents had died and
they lived in their grandmother’s house. He was 9 years old and busy at
his lessons in school when the police picked him up, stopping in at
grandma’s to collect his two little brothers. His grandmother was
distraught and pleaded to keep the boys; but the police were unmoved.
They flourished orders from the Native Affairs department and declared
that the boys were to go to Palm Island. Grandmother pleaded that the
family be allowed to go together, but this was refused. Although he
lived to be a very old man, the boy never saw his grandmother and sister
again.
As
with all Aboriginal people moved around Queensland under departmental
orders, no overnight accommodation was provided - except to be locked in
the cells at the police station. And next morning the youngsters were
put on the boat to Palm Island. Many of their relations had already been
shifted there after a cyclone in 1918 had devastated the coastal area.
But the children were not allowed to know the comfort of their aunts and
uncles and cousins; instead, they were locked up in the dormitory with
about 100 other little boys.
Life was hard and cruel. You got flogged with a big cane if you did
anything wrong, if you didn’t obey instructions, if you didn’t go to
school, if you spoke your own language, if you wet the bed, if you tried
to talk to your friends or relations through the wire which enclosed the
dormitory. There weren’t enough beds and several children shared each
mattress, sleeping head to foot on a filthy sheet and a single blanket;
they were often very cold. You were locked in for 12 hours a night, with
only a single lantern and nothing to do, just stare out through the wire
and wait for morning.
Most days there was a few hours’ schooling in the bark hut; but there
were no trained teachers, there were no real desks or chairs, there were
only outdated textbooks and a few slates and chalks, and when it rained
the wooden shutters had to be closed and it was too dark to see by the
one lamp. Mostly you were taught the basics of sums and writing, and
practical skills fitted for a life of labour. Until the late 1950s, few
Aboriginal children on these government institutions were educated
beyond grade four.
Dormitory children were trained as workers after their morning in
school. The girls had to clean and sweep and wash clothes, and sew and
cook for both dormitories, a total of nearly 300 children. The boys had
to wipe down and weave hundreds of palm fronds for the palm thatch
houses, pull out the big clumps of bladey grass with their hands, move
rocks and stones to keep roads and pathways clear, hoe and weed the
vegetable gardens. Like all dormitory children, at 14 his childhood was
over, because he was then sent out to work.
Perhaps this boy was one of the luckier ones. He was not sent, alone,
frightened, bewildered and extremely vulnerable, to cane farms on the
mainland or to remote pastoral properties; without a youngster to talk
to or a black face to comfort them. This was the fate of many of the
dormitory boys and girls - called into the office and told they were to
be sent to strangers in places they had never heard of, yelled at when
they burst into tears, given a change of clothes and some shoes and a
few shillings, put on the boat to Townsville and then locked in the
watchhouse overnight, terrified by the drunks and foul-mouthed men, to
emerge a trembling wreck in the morning and be put on the train to -
anywhere.
It
was policy to send this forced labour contingent out repeatedly.
Youngsters were worked 16 or 20 hours a day, the girls at cleaning and
washing, cooking and child minding, and many also worked illegally at
horse work and fencing. For the boys it was early morning milking and
yard chores, farm work, fencing, droving, mustering, branding -
continual work, prevalent physical abuse, no choices and no reprieve.
Even the boys were not safe from sexual assault. Youngsters and adults
were sent out year after year, for a 12-month work term, allowed only a
week or two with their families in between contracts. These were
laughingly called "work agreements", and you had the option to sign - or
be jailed or removed to another settlement. And these work agreements
operated until the late 1960s.
And these workers saw little for their labour. Since 1919 Aboriginal
pastoral wages were pegged at only two-thirds the white rate, but the
department was so lax that adjustments in line with increased white
wages were often years behind. In 1950, for instance, Aboriginal
pastoral workers were still paid relative to the 1938 rate,
effectively at 25% the white wage, yet periodical surveys of Aboriginal
employment consistently revealed acknowledgement that many pastoral
stations would not survive without this heavily discounted workforce.
Yet in 1962 the minister declared - confidentially to his colleagues -
that Aboriginal workers were as skilled as the whites and were the
mainstay of the pastoral industry.
The department’s own records show inspections were rarely made of work
and conditions. When complaints arose - about unpaid wages or physical
or sexual abuse - it was the boss’s word against the Aboriginal, and
police routinely sided with the bosses. In 1927, for instance, when
workers at Wrotham Park station refused to sign for another year because
they hadn’t been paid, the local "protector" plied them with alcohol,
threatened them, and locked them overnight in the poisons shed.
Ultimately the Aboriginal department investigated and found the
Aboriginal complaints proven; however the police department refused to
take action, and then claimed victimisation when details were leaked to
the press!
I
might add that wives of pastoral workers were compelled to provide 12
hours free labour every week, although no-one vetted these hours, and
child labour was prevalent and unpaid. Theoretically department approval
was required for employment of any child under 12 years of age; in
practice a blind eye was turned. In a 1958 conference between the
department and the United Graziers’ Association the department head
freely admitted that child labour was common, that many were brought in
for medical treatment with broken arms and legs. He suggested perhaps
"undersized and weedy" children should not be put to hard labour, and
added: "We try to look on these people as human beings"! And this is the
man charged with the welfare of these Aboriginal wards of state! I could
mention here that his predecessor was refused a salary comparable to the
head of the state children’s department, on the grounds that the state
did not think the welfare of Aboriginal children was as important as
that of white children.
We
know now that the government took direct control of all the wages of
these workers, except for a little pocket money which was supposed to be
regularly paid, but in fact was never properly checked. We know that
wages went directly to the local police protectors, who were supposed to
make sure workers were not cheated of their money. This system, in
reality, simply deprived workers of their earnings. You had to ask for
permission to spend any of your own money, and permission was frequently
denied, even for the most trivial purchase. And although this system
continued until the late 1960s, the department was well aware that
police were cheating Aborigines of their wages: in 1930 thumbprinted and
witnessed dockets were made mandatory for all transactions -
specifically to minimise police fraud. In 1933 the bulk of Aboriginal
savings was centralised in Brisbane, again to lower the incidence of
police fraud and embezzlement.
Suffice to say here Aboriginal monies were never safe from illegal
pilfering. But they were also not safe from "legal" pilfering. Because
the department took multiple levies from the monies in its control, as
well as confiscating bank interest, and none of this with the permission
of the account holders who had absolutely no knowledge of these raids on
their savings, because the department refused ever to allow workers to
see any record of what was happening with their money.
One thing was for sure, no matter how hard you worked, you were only
ever allowed to get a small amount of your money; we know now that the
government profited nicely from investing huge amounts of these bulk
savings, raising revenue to offset expenses. Not coincidentally, the
inability of Aboriginal people to access their own savings swelled the
amount in government control to unbelievable levels. In 1933 this
savings nest-egg was nearly $14million in today’s value, but over
$12million of this was withheld by the government for investment. A
further sum of more than $1million today had accumulated in the trust
funds courtesy of the multiple levies on Aboriginal savings. These trust
monies, which were levied to ensure the welfare of the rural workers and
their dependents, were instead shuffled around for expenditure on
various departmental projects. During the depression years, for
instance, more than $5million was directly diverted to consolidated
revenue. Those who were the legal beneficiaries of this amount, whose
already discounted wages had been further levied to produce this huge
sum, were meanwhile living in abject destitution.
I’ll leave to your imagination the difference it would have made to
Aboriginal lives in the 1930s, or indeed throughout the whole of this
grubby financial deprivation which continued to the late 1960s, had
these workers been allowed to use their own earnings - which would have
totalled then the equivalent of around $20million - for their own
benefit, like all other Australians. There are hundreds of stories which
could be told today by impoverished Aboriginal men and women who have
worked 30, 40 and 50 years, and found to their horror, when they finally
gained control in the late 1960s, that little or no money remained in
their accounts.
Fewer young lads were sent from the settlements to pastoral work,
because they were essential to the building and development of these
institutions. Aboriginal groups did not sit about under the trees with
their hands out for rations while white work gangs built and maintained
the communities for them. All the missions and settlements were
established and run by Aboriginal labour; without this input over all
the decades of this century there would be no communities on Aboriginal
reserves today. In fact during the 1920s the head of the department
boasted that all work on the communities was carried out by "native
labour". This included house building, water supply, crop production,
road building, airstrips, clearing and ringbarking land for cultivation,
farming livestock for milk and beef, operating power houses, sawmills
and machinery sheds, boat building, operating and maintenance, as well
as teaching, nursing, clothes making, baking, and domestic service to
white staff, to name just a few work areas. But there was no pay for the
hundreds of men and women who worked the settlements and for whom, by
regulation, a minimum of 32 hours labour was required: to refuse was to
be jailed or penalised with reduced rations.
The lad in this story was not sent to the mainland. He worked for 18
months as a mill hand, clearing sawdust from the pit and cleaning the
yard. He got no pay, just a bit of tea, flour, and tobacco. He then
worked full-time as a deckhand on the steamers which were essential to
island life. He was on call 24 hours a day for two years, making 2 trips
a week in a circuit from the mainland to the islands, bringing supplies
and transporting staff. In searing heat and driving rain the boats kept
operating, and it was hard work. But again, as an Aboriginal employee of
the Queensland government he got no wages; only the white workers got
paid.
After a severe bout of pneumonia he was sent out with one of three youth
gangs working 8 hours a day felling trees, clearing the bush, and
clearing and constructing the airstrip and the hillside road back to the
settlement. Again there was no pay - just the lousy rations and a bit of
tobacco. As a lad of 19 he fell foul of the dozens of petty rules on the
island, and was given two weeks’ jail for walking down Mango Avenue, a
road reserved for white staff. In his old age he still remembered the
humiliation of the regime, stating that "It hurts all the people on the
island."
Like the dozen or so missions and the two other settlements, Palm Island
was established on land considered useless for farm development; all
these institutions were drastically - and arguably criminally -
underfunded; all were places of starvation, preventable sickness,
inadequate amenities, and grossly overcrowded housing. Records for Palm
Island in the 1930s reveal a death rate of over 6%, mainly from
malnutrition and chest infections. Sacks of meat transported from
Townsville on open boat decks were rancid by the time they were
off-loaded. Medical reports stated that most of the ill and aged were
slowly starving to death, that children suffered from chronic skin
diseases, that nearly every baby died who was not breast fed, because
the only available food was a mixture of arrowroot and water. In his
monthly report the doctor pondered: "Should they be properly fed on
peptonised milk...Is it worth while trying to save them?" And this was a
government institution.
In
1940, at 27, the man in our story got married. Now there were token
wages, and as a ganger he got 5/- a fortnight, the equivalent today of
$12.60. Like thousands of other Aboriginal men from missions and
settlements he spent most of the war years working on the mainland in
positions vacated by enlisted soldiers. Because this was a federal
scheme he was paid award wages for his labour as a cane cutter. But he
never saw his money: it went directly to the superintendent on the
island, and from it was taken income tax and a levy of 20% towards
running costs of the settlement. Even what remained was not his to
spend: because the money was kept in a settlement trust fund from which
bulk sums were committed to revenue-raising investments. The small
portion he could access was through vouchers for the island store, where
fresh food and milk was rarely available, where groceries were routinely
past their used-by date, which ran, by department decree, on a profit
margin of 40%. For 4 years he cut cane from May to December for a good
wage on the mainland; in the off-season he worked on Palm Island as a
painter for a pittance. Yet often he was told there was no money left
for his family.
After the war the white foreman suggested he train as a painter and he
grabbed the chance, beating three whites for the position as apprentice.
As a family man in his 30s he was determined to better himself. For
seven years he set aside £2 a fortnight - nearly a quarter of his pay,
to have lessons sent over from Townsville. But on finishing the course
he had to leave his family to earn decent wages on the mainland. Here,
in the mid-1950s, he joined a painting firm and got his ticket after
only two weeks’ trial, and joined the union. Now he was paid £19 a
fortnight (around $363 today), a huge sum compared to the pittance on
the island. But he was allowed only enough for board and food; most of
this money went directly to the superintendent on the island, and
partially dispensed to his wife as vouchers on the department’s
profitable store.
Records of the time reveal critical food shortages, chronic malnutrition
and endemic skin diseases and hookworm infestation, water supplies
routinely testing unsafe for human consumption, derelict and grossly
overcrowded huts; the dormitories and hospital reported dangerous for
human occupation. This was the reality of life under the government’s
"care and protection". In the 1960s, as old age, invalid and widows’
pensions were made available to Aboriginal people, the government
encouraged missions and settlements to withhold this money, mainly
because the pensions were significantly greater than the pitiful
community wage. This confiscation merely followed the trend which had
operated since before the 1920s with regard to maternity allowances, and
which had brought a wealth bonanza to the department after child
endowment - intended to improve infant and maternity health - was
introduced in 1942. Deciding it was publicly unacceptable to seize child
endowment from the missions, the department followed the simple tactic
of reducing mission grants by an equivalent amount.
In
the 1960s the man in our story was pressured by the superintendent to
stay and work. Although he desperately wanted to remain with his family
there was no margin for skill - all the jobs paid around 30/- a week
($27.60 today), less than 8% of the award rate for this experienced
tradesman. He argued for the legal wage, presenting his hard-won
qualifications as a painter and decorator, but the superintendent
pointed to the waste-paper basket and told him they were worthless on
the island. Once again he had to leave his family in order to earn a
living wage, and for two years he was overseer to three other men. But
in 1968 when his wife became ill, he finally took permanent work on Palm
Island.
This was the same year that the government finally introduced wages for
this compulsory labour force, allowing community residents cash to spend
on their needs. Managers on some reserve communities urged payment
should equal the basic wage. In fact the Palm Island manager stated
several of his workers were eligible for award rates. But as head of the
department, Patrick Killoran gave the orders. Wages were set at only 30%
the basic rate, less than 10% of the award for qualified tradesmen and
women. Families were thrown further into crisis; store prices were often
double those on the mainland; merely to survive was a struggle.
Records show the deadly levels of malnutrition and sickness on the
island at this time, where fresh bread, milk and vegetables arrived only
twice weekly and sold out within hours, where 75% of child outpatients
at the island clinic registered as severely underweight, where children
evacuated to Townsville hospital during a deadly gastroenteritis
epidemic in the 1970s were described as looking like "starving
Biafrans". And don’t forget, this is a government-run institution for
compulsory wards of state. Records for this period show the government
was sitting on the equivalent of nearly $17million of Aboriginal money,
while those whose earnings and labour had generated this bonanza were
living, and dying, in poverty.
By
the mid-1970s internal reports acknowledge the impossibility of managing
a family on only 57% of the basic wage, which, after all, was calculated
as the minimum for survival for all Australian families. But while
Aboriginal families were struggling with hunger and sickness, the
government was profiting nicely: it was saving $15 million each year in
today’s terms relative to the basic wage for these employees, and $29
million each year if award wages had been paid where due. Just commit
your imaginations to those figures for a moment, and picture what
difference that would have made each year if these government
workers had been paid the wages which were well known to be their legal
due.
Our man was one of thousands of employees who was cheated of his legal
wage. When he retired in 1979 at the age of 65 he was supervising three
gangs of four men each, yet his gross pay was equal to his award wage on
the mainland 20 years earlier. From this he paid tax, rent, electricity
and kept his family. Other white painters, often without qualifications,
got far more than him. He couldn’t afford to buy a car until he got the
aged pension, despite 30 years as a qualified painter and 15 as an
overseer.
By
the mid-1980s community wages were still only 72% the basic wage. It was
then, with 6 other workers, that he started an action against the
Queensland government in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities
Commission in 1985, charging that the department’s refusal to pay award
wages was racial discrimination. He knew, as surely as other Aboriginal
workers knew, that it was only because of his race that he had been paid
so little; that as a skilled overseer he got less because he wasn’t
white.
At
the 1996 hearing on Palm Island, evidence was presented which showed the
government had known its policy was illegal since it settled the first
challenge out of court on the matter nearly 20 years earlier. Evidence
was also presented showing that since at least 1982, and on several
occasions since then, the Bjelke-Petersen government had discussed the
fact that such underpayment was in breach of its own industrial laws and
contravened federal racial discrimination legislation. And in 1983, in a
failed attempt to force the federal government to cover the increase to
legal wage rates, the premier threatened mass sackings which would, he
acknowledged, cause "massive social problems". When prime minister
Malcolm Fraser declined involvement on the grounds that state wage rates
to state employees were a state responsibility, the Bjelke-Petersen
government held to its hard line funding freeze - and Aboriginal
communities paid the price.
This, to my mind, is the worst aspect of government management in the
1970s and 1980s - the deliberate, calculated, and probably irreparable
damage done to the communities as more than 1500 workers were thrown on
the scrap heap, in a cold-blooded process of funding attrition which all
but destroyed the social fabric. There were not enough workers to repair
rental properties, building programs stalled to conserve funds, many
hungry and impoverished families were forced into fewer overcrowded and
increasingly derelict buildings. Several managers warned that essential
services - water, power, sanitation - were frequently in crisis.
The HREOC found that the government had deliberately, intentionally and
knowingly discriminated against these workers because of their race. The
1996 hearing was, in fact, probably the seventh or eighth time the
government had opposed, and then capitulated, on underpaid Aboriginal
wages. Although the Borbidge coalition government scorned the finding,
it soon caved in after threats of renewed action in the federal court.
In April 1997 it made a public apology and paid compensation of $7000 to
each complainant, having spent in the vicinity of $1 million on a
deceitful defence.
This story is a true story. This is the story of Mr Kitchener Bligh. The
oldest and most respected man on Palm Island, Kitchener was an active
and important member of the community, serving on the council from 1966
to 1972, on the board of the state school, and a key figure in assisting
in correctional work with young hotheads in the community. Kitchener was
85 when he passed away in February this year.
But the battle started by Kitchener and his colleagues continues. Last
week a further 14 Palm Island workers received similar compensation for
wages owing from more than a decade ago, and more than 100 more
Aboriginal former government employees, are making their painful,
stressed and uncertain way through legal minefields in an effort to
obtain what the rest of us take for granted - legal wages for work done.
Minister Judy Spence has said from the outset that this abhorrent
process, whereby impoverished individuals have to battle for what is
known to be their legal due, should be terminated. Just settlement
should be acknowledged and accorded at government level for all these
former employees, many of whom are in their twilight years.
When we hear talk of "extra" money going to Aboriginal communities, of
positive "discrimination" in funding to address appalling health and
housing and living conditions endured in so many Aboriginal communities,
be well aware that this money is not "for Aborigines". It is to redress
deficiencies in government management. It is to redress money withheld -
both through intention and through negligence - during a century of
government control. As we approach the new millennium, could it be that
the Beattie Labor government will gain a place in history by redressing
a century of shameful and dishonourable abuses of the government’s duty
of care to thousands of unwilling wards of state?
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