Dr Ros Kidd
Historian - Consultant - Writer
Stolen wages: truth and justice
I’ll start with a little of my own background. For my PhD topic in 1990
I decided to investigate something I knew nothing about – namely how the
Qld government controlled Aboriginal lives during the 19th
and 20th century. I made this decision because I thought the
topic was too important to be based on government assertions and media
summaries. I am still campaigning today, because I know governments are
still lying about what was done in past & what they are doing now
The starting point of my 15-year project was this: since governments in
Qld controlled every aspect of Aboriginal lives, then the mess we’re in
today can only be understood by analysing what those governments did.
History doesn’t just unfold: history is a narrative of the dynamics of
power – in this case, how the government used the power it appropriated
over Aboriginal Queenslanders.
It is my understanding that Aboriginal people weren’t born into poverty
until white settlement denied them the access they had enjoyed for
millennia to the fruits of the earth. I’m not assuming some romantic
paradise. I’m merely saying there was a choice to move with the seasons
and that choice sustained Aboriginal lives and culture for tens of
thousands of years. And when the government stepped in the
mid-nineteenth century, that choice, those lives, were brutally
diminished.
In Qld from 1865 any child of an Aboriginal mother could be put in an
institution for training and sent out to menial work. The government
admitted, in the early 1900s, that this was virtual slavery. In 1897
the government gave itself the right to take any Aboriginal person from
their family and country and either confine them on a mission or
settlement, or contract them out to work. There was no due process, no
right of appeal, in fact no explanation. By this law, the Aboriginal
Protection & Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, the government
took for itself the right to control every aspect of Aboriginal lives.
It was thereby totally responsible for their wellbeing. There is no
doubt that it failed that responsibility.
From 1901 the government took control of all maritime employment around
Cape York where it set a minimum monthly wage of about $46 today;
mainland workers got only half that. The government took the right,
through its network of police protectors, to retain or sell Aboriginal
property. Regulations in 1904 listed wage rates for children under 12
years, amounting to $5.80 a week, although most of it went direct to the
protector to be banked in the child’s name.
When John Bleakley took the position of chief protector in 1914 he
expanded the compulsorily contracted workforce, increased minimum wages,
and demanded every worker’s wage be paid direct to local protectors,
thus increasing government holdings of Aboriginal earnings from around
$875,000 to almost $4 million in that year alone. But workers could
only access their money by asking the protector, and people, even with
large savings, were routinely refused. The government knew police fraud
was rife from as early as 1904 when it introduced thumb printing to
reduce it; and it knew frauds continued. Yet it refused to allow
people to see any record of their accounts – until 1969!
In 1919 the government successfully lobbied to exclude
Aboriginal workers from the Station Hands Award. It struck a deal with
the pastoral industry – their key voter base – to freeze Aboriginal
wages at 66% the white rate. This was despite a raft of testimonials
over several years confirming many employers thought Aboriginal workers
were equally or better skilled than their white colleagues. The
government continued to sanction Aboriginal child labour, altho head
office permission was now needed to employ children under 12. The new
pay scale increased government holdings of Aboriginal savings to over
$5.6 million while families continued to struggle and die in poverty.
Workers were responsible for maintaining their families on this
fractional wage; failure to do so trigged removal to a reserve.
Also in 1919, the government imposed a tax on Aboriginal
earnings, taking 5% from single worker’s wages and 2.5% from married
worker’s, although of course it didn’t inform workers of this
confiscation. This levy went into a new trust fund, the Aboriginal
Provident Fund which was supposed to provide for sick or unemployed
workers.
By 1920 the government had taken sole power over Aboriginal labour, wage
rates, savings and trust funds. How well did it exercise this power? A
public service inquiry in 1922 produced alarming evidence of negligence
and misappropriation. Head office did not supervise the 8000 rural
savings accounts and police practices were so unreliable the
commissioners insisted workers be allowed to appeal dealings on their
accounts. The government rejected this recommendation. The Provident
Fund levy had stripped nearly $150,000 from workers’ earnings in 1922
alone, although nearly half the deductions were wrong. Despite an
appalling drought less than 10% had been allocated from this Fund to
relieve distressed workers. But the government had taken large amounts
from the Provident Fund and from a second trust fund of unclaimed wages
and deceased estates held for workers’ dependents; it diverted this to
construction on the settlements, funding for missions and costs of
compulsory deportations.
Initially the government had not exploited its powers to remove
individuals and families onto missions and settlements; transportation
was costly and financial responsibility for inmates was avoided as a
burden on the state. However Bleakley had taken a different tack from
1914. His view was that it was easier to remove Aborigines from the
landscape than invoke existing laws to control physical and sexual
abuses. He was keen on the idea of separate communities which would be
self-sufficient and under full control. By 1920 around 5000 people were
confined on reserves, denied the profits of their own labour and the
capacity to feed and house their own families, educate their children,
secure their own futures. They were fed atrocious rations, lived in
derelict shelters, were frequently dependent on contaminated water, and
lacked the most basic medical attention. The government knew this, it
is recorded on their files.
To qualify for this ‘care’ by the state, every able-bodied worker was
expected to help develop and maintain the communities. Into the late
1950s only a very few were paid a token amount. For those who got
outside work from time to time, the government took 10% from the wages
of those who were married and half that from those who were single, as a
‘contribution’ towards settlement costs. Again, people had no idea this
was happening, nor if the deductions were accurate. Often both parents
were docked the 10% levy. Documents show the government knew this tax
was unauthorised.
Systemic police fraud was again exposed in 1932 when an inquiry found
that ‘the opportunity for fraud existed to a greater degree than with
any other Governmental accounts’. The chief protector again admitted
there were no real controls over official dealings on private accounts,
and again rejected the recommendation that workers be allowed to see
what was done with their money. The government was again exposed for
raiding Aboriginal money: during and after the 1929-32 depression years,
it simply transferred around $3.5 million out of the two Trust funds
‘for departmental purposes’, rendering the deceased estates’ fund
technically insolvent.
So what did the government do to fix this system? It centralised the
bulk of workers’ savings in Brisbane in 1933 to ‘minimise fraud by
members of the Police Force who are Protectors.’ And then it sidelined
over 80% of these private monies – almost $15 million – into investments
to raise revenue for Treasury. This earned interest of $320,500 in 1933
alone, money which legally belonged to account holders. The government
continued this manipulation of bulk savings until 1970.
The government ran its contract-labour system for 70 years. It gave
employers the right to pay into workers’ hands between 30-80% of wages.
Countless times the government was warned workers were not getting this
‘pocket money’, yet it never fixed the system. The 1932 inquiry stated
it could be ‘reasonably assumed’ that workers were cheated. In 1943
protectors described the system as a farce and a direct profit to
employers, in 1956 they said it was useless, futile and out of control,
with workers ‘entirely at the mercy’ of employers who simply doctored
the books. In contempt of this knowledge, the government rejected
auditors’ calls for external inspectors as ‘too costly’. In the
mid-1960s it admitted pocket money was probably not paid ‘in many
instances’. And the financial loss to workers? The pastoral workforce
numbered between 3000 and 5000 people in the 50 years to 1968.
Potentially an average of 50% of their wages may never have been paid;
that’s many millions every year that the government knew was not
paid ‘in many instances’. When an inquiry in 1941 confirmed yet again
the ongoing misuse of trust monies and illegal dealings on savings
Bleakley was declared incompetent and forced to resign. But the
malfunctioning systems remained in place.
I want to stop here for a moment for a reality check. I realise that
for most of you the 1930s & 40s seem like the dark ages. But please
keep in mind that this is the time when the parents of people like aunty
Ruth were trapped in this system. And the opportunities and finances
which they were forced to do without impacted not only on the lives of
aunty Ruth, but on what she could offer her children as well. Poverty
and hardship are generational. Please don’t assume this is ‘old
history’. Its effects are played out in the circumstances of people
today.
In 1956 a department survey confirmed the pastoral industry was entirely
dependent on Aboriginal workers, particularly in remote areas where
white stockmen were rare. The inspector said the entrenched mentality
was to pay ‘as little as possible for Aboriginal workers’, while ‘white
men of markedly less ability and industry receive higher wages and
better living conditions than Aboriginals who are better workmen’.
Records show the government frequently failed to demand even the 66%
wage parity. Rates for the 4500 workers fell to only 31 per cent in
1949 and 59 per cent in 1956 – millions more dollars ‘stolen’ through
government negligence. Only after 1972 did Aboriginal pastoral workers
get equal wages and control over their own labour. For the first time
elderly family members and wives who had been compelled to work for free
on the stations could refuse to be exploited.
I want to turn attention now to the missions and settlements, and I want
you to keep in mind that ‘care and control’ of reserve inmates was a
government responsibility. These communities were built by Aboriginal
labour, largely unpaid, and remain assets for the government today. By
the 1960s there were over 8500 people confined on reserves struggling to
survive on rations. A medical survey of government settlements revealed
malnutrition was the key factor in deaths of 50 per cent of children
under three. It found 47 per cent of deaths of children under sixteen
were from gastroenteritis or pneumonia or both. To deflect national and
international condemnation, the government introduced cash economies on
its reserves in 1968. But it set the wage for its 2500 employees at
only $116 per week, less than half the minimum wage, and most of this
was withheld for ‘amenities’. Living costs were dramatically higher on
these remote communities. The government knew school absenteeism soared
because many lacked food for children’s lunches, it knew people could
not afford even the grossly discounted rent for new commonwealth houses,
it knew houses were therefore dangerously overcrowded.
In 1972, when it was paying its employees 58% the basic wage, the
government knew poverty was so dire many families survived on bread and
syrup, most
homes lacked cupboards or beds, few could afford refrigerators, and the
electricity supply was so inadequate families were routinely refused
permission to buy them. A medical survey at that time showed deaths of
children under five from gastroenteritis and pneumonia were 34 times
that of white children, due to ‘massive infection loads resulting from
substandard living conditions’. Sickness and death were quite clearly
grounded in deliberate financial deprivation by the authority charged
with their ‘care and protection’.
After passage of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975 it was
illegal to under pay workers on the basis of race. In 1978 premier Joh
Bjelke-Petersen demanded the federal government cover the costs of
bringing community wages to award levels, threatening to retrench 850
workers at the risk of
‘massive social problems’ from unemployment and ‘other factors’. When
this demand was refused the Qld government resolved to freeze wages
funding. As pay rates rose massive sackings drove workforce numbers
from around 2500 in 1976 to under 800 a decade later, frequently
jeopardising essential services. And the government sat by and watched
the ‘massive social problems’ unfold.
From at least 1979 the Qld government had legal advice that its policy
to under pay Aboriginal employees breached State industrial law and the
federal RDA. By illegally short changing the very people it was
mandated to ‘protect’ the government effectively stole almost $187
million from these workers between 1975 and 1986, in full knowledge that
this underpayment was illegal, and in full knowledge of consequential
dire poverty. Rightful payment of this money to community workers would
have dramatically altered living circumstances and prospects, then and
now. After losing a case in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission in 1996, the government in 1999 made available $7000 for each
worker underpaid in the 1975-1986 period. This deal terminated in
January 2003 after payments totalling almost $40 million, a massive
profit for the State.
Wages
missing through police fraud over the decades, savings lost through
incorrect calculations of levies, government misappropriation from trust
funds, bank and investment interest seized by the government – these are
all part of what is now broadly termed the Stolen Wages. In addition,
altho I haven’t had time to speak of it today, is workers compensation
not properly claimed or fully distributed, deceased estates not paid to
descendants, and child endowment improperly seized and illegally spent.
A separate matter, although equally blighted by negligence and
misappropriation, is the Aboriginal Welfare Fund, which currently holds
around $9 million and which the Beattie government is desperate to
distribute before too many questions are asked.
So that gives you a very sketchy picture of government assumption of
power over Aboriginal lives during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and how those powers translated into policies and practices.
After the break, I want to talk about the current political and legal
campaign to retrieve these Stolen Wages.
* * * *
In the
first section I gave you a very brief outline of the history of
government management of Aboriginal lives here in Queensland. This
showed how easily – and how comprehensively – the government took
control, including over labour and finances. It was quite clear that
Aboriginal people had no say in the imposition of these controls which
continued until 1970. Of course a range of controls continue today over
those who live on the communities, for the simple reason that the
government holds title to the land and dictates the terms of local
government funding.
I want
now to suggest to you that history is a continuing story; it continues
in the present, and because of this each one of us has the opportunity
to be part of how it unfolds. I think we are at a critical stage for
our state and nationally: if enough of us work together to force the
government to pay its financial and humanitarian debts, then perhaps we
can heal the ragged sore that currently blights our history. So I ask
you to keep that in mind, as I talk about our ongoing campaign for
justice.
In May
2002 premier Peter Beattie announced an offer of $55.6 million to bring
closure to the fight for Stolen Wages. People older than 56 years would
get $4000 and those between 50 – 56 would get half that, as full and
final payment. Beattie admitted there were 4000 potential litigants
waiting in the wings and that the government had already spent over $1.5
million preparing its defence against legal challenges. He said many
people expected far more and quoted my estimate of at least $500 million
in question, and he admitted it was impossible to know how much people
were owed. Yet he claimed his offer of $2000/$4000 would right past
wrongs in a fair and balanced way, and was made ‘in the spirit of
reconciliation’. He urged people to accept it before more elders died.
This offer was conditional on claimants surrendering their right to sue
the government, but he promised people would receive a parliamentary
apology. He said it was a win for the taxpayers and for indigenous
people. He was half right.
Some people felt the payment was better than nothing, perhaps enough to
put a headstone on a loved parent’s grave. Others were disgusted,
judging it an insult for decades of unremunerated labour. A meeting of
elders at Yarrabah rejected the offer outright, declaring that, dying or
not, they would not be bought off with such a pittance.
(To keep this ‘generous gesture of reconciliation’ in perspective,
you’ll be interested to know the government had just offered over $6500
in addition to two weeks’ pay for every year’s service to persuade up to
3000 public servants to take voluntary retirement. This followed
payments of $50,000 each to retrain 200 underperforming teachers.)
The government paid consultation teams to fan out across Qld to gauge
community response to its offer. These teams distributed information
endorsed by the government warning people thinking of rejecting the
offer that the government had the funds to oppose them and legal advice
it would win any actions. The information said litigation could take
twelve years like the Mabo case and that losers could be
personally liable for ‘extremely expensive’ lawsuits. The
parliamentary apology was now downgraded to an individual apology and an
assurance that traditional owners would henceforth be acknowledged at
the beginning of all government business. People were urged to sign a
form accepting the offer and many were told if they held back the
government might withdraw it altogether.
On the communities the offer was attacked as a ‘lousy pittance’ for a
lifetime’s financial deprivation, especially in comparison with the
$7000 compensation for short-paid wages, due to those with as little as
one week’s work history. In every location, people vented their anger,
describing the amount variously as blackmail, sickening, discriminating,
a rip off, and equivalent to what some politicians pocketed in a week.
People protested they had worked all their lives for a pittance while
the government took their money, including child endowment, pensions and
inheritances. Others described the shame of accepting something they
could not afford to refuse. Effectively, they protested, they were
forced to take it. And it was money they were owed, not reconciliation
at all. As one Doomadgee resident said, they were being robbed again.
A coalition of indigenous organisations formed to fight the rushed
process, the lack of proper consultation and the paltry amount. There
was a street march in Brisbane and a petition to parliament urging the
government rethink the amount and the process. We circulated two stolen
wages fact sheets to potential claimants and the general public, setting
out the historical and financial background of government mismanagement
during the twentieth century. Despite constant pressure that the offer
should be accepted by early August, Beattie and minister Judy Spence
were forced to admit, in the last week, that the acceptance form was not
a government document, had no legal value, did not guarantee reparations
– in fact was just a survey.
Against all the evidence, the consultation teams reported almost 96% in
favour of the government’s offer – a figure enthusiastically parroted by
Beattie and Spence over succeeding months. But this was a lie. The
report clearly shows less than 21% of potential claimants accepted the
offer. The mythical 96% was the quantum relative to the less than 22%
who bothered to fill in the form.
With the government refusing to budge on the amount or the process,
campaigners widened their focus to the demand for indemnity: most people
had never seen their wages and savings records; how could anyone
possible give informed consent in such a compromised climate of
inducement and misinformation. Most people thought they were signing
off only on Stolen Wages; they had no idea the wording of the indemnity
– designed to cover every aspect of all legislation – would also
preclude actions for physical and sexual assaults, and for negligent
duty of care.
In January 2003 the government put out a tender for legal practitioners
to act as independent legal advisers to oversee the signing of
indemnities. But it limited applications to those lawyers who had
‘demonstrated willingness to work cooperatively with departmental
staff’. And it still refused to supply all potential claimants with
their personal documentation. The promised parliamentary apology was
further downgraded: the Deed of Agreement itself now constituted the
written apology by the state. More bizarrely: the claimant’s signature
was now said to confirm their agreement that the government had made the
apology and payment ‘in the spirit of reconciliation’. How could a
claimant possibly vouch for the government’s intent?
Eminent justice, Marcus Einfeld QC, former federal court judge and
foundation president of HREOC in Australia, said the process effectively
blackmailed people to accept the offer or most likely die before seeing
the money owed to them. He said lawyers could not provide competent
legal advice to clients who lacked financial records. Terry O’Gorman,
vice-president of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, also
attacked the process, querying the ‘independence’ of advice provided
only by government-approved lawyers. He raised the further point that
lawyers who followed instructions only to discuss the government offer
might themselves be sued if they failed to inform claimants that it was
common knowledge, publicly admitted even by Beattie and Spence, that the
payout was much lower than likely entitlements. He said the
government-appointed lawyers should tell their clients to seek
independent legal advice as to whether the advice they were given was in
their best interests.
In mid-2003 the coalition launched a postcard campaign which
personalised the fight for justice through references to two underpaid
workers. Funded through a range of unions and ANTaR, tens of thousands
of the postcards have been distributed nationally and internationally, a
campaign Beattie later admitted had been politically damaging. A Stolen
Wages Working Group was convened of union and coalition members, to
devise further campaign strategy. If you want to download the postcard
and/or be part of this fight, you can talk to Victor, or contact ANTaR
on
www.antar.org.au.
In the face of this campaign, the government stuck to its mantra of
generosity and reconciliation, insisting it was not under legal pressure
to settle the stolen wages, had never been challenged in court, and had
top level legal advice it would win. In fact none of these claims are
true. Beattie himself told parliament the offer was in part intended to
pre-empt the 4000 potential litigants ‘waiting in the wings’, and he had
also referred to a previous out of court settlement, which, ironically
Spence herself had taken media credit for exactly three years earlier.
And records show the government had known since at least 1996 that it
might be found legally accountable for all income and expenditure in the
Aboriginal savings accounts, which a court might well characterise as a
‘true trust’. As such, the government as trustee would be liable to
fully account to all beneficiaries by providing full records of all
transactions.
The government now changed tack, with Spence claiming all the savings
accounts had been paid out in the early 1970s, and this could be clearly
traced because accounts were audited every year. Yet she knew full well
the Stolen Wages fight has never been about the residue remaining in
accounts in the 1970s. It is about the dimensions of loss preceding
that date. Not surprisingly Spence did not mention the decades of
constant and trenchant criticisms by auditors which I spoke of earlier.
Despite constant attempts to bring the government into new negotiations
on the amount and process, it remains unmoved, although we do continue
to apply pressure behind the scenes and publicly. The SWWG has been
working closely with the unions and last year we succeeded in having a
resolution passed at the state Labor party conference. This commits
Labor to see the current offer as a first step to full reparations, to
consult fully with the community to find a better resolution, to look at
including families of deceased workers in reparations, and to rethink
the legal rights of workers who accept the $2000/$4000.
To date the Beattie government has simply ignored this party resolution.
The $55.4 million offer for stolen wages ends in December this year. So
far less than half the number of possible claimants has applied. Of
those almost 30% are rejected because the government has no paperwork to
confirm their work history. The government now suggests it will divert
any residue into the Welfare Fund, arrogantly ignoring the community’s
wishes that the total be used as wages compensation, inclusive of
descendants of deceased workers. I think you all have a survey form on
which you can register your opinions on this.
Our public political campaign continues in the media with radio
interviews and articles where we can interest the press in this cause.
Unfortunately, most of the press see this as either an ‘Aboriginal’
issue – and they assure me they do many ‘Aboriginal’ stories, or they
see it as history, an old story lacking current impact. How they judge
the commitment of $100 million of taxpayers money to shut down legal
actions as unremarkable and ‘lacking current impact’ I cannot
understand.
Over the last 15 years I’ve read thousands of government documents
impacting on policy and politics at the highest level. And that has
confirmed for me that political integrity is an oxymoron, except as far
as it relates to holding the party together and in power. And
unfortunately, given the general ‘dumbing down’ of the average member of
public, I think Beattie is probably on the right political path playing
a dead bat and relying on ultimate disinterest.
So this is why my focus over the last few years has moved into the legal
sphere. Here governments don’t control – and will be held to – terms of
debate from a higher realm, namely the courts of law. But can we get
the government into court? Can we make it accountable under legal
definitions of equity, liability, responsibility, duty of care? This
has never been done in Australia. The under award case was brought in
the HREOC as a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. Mabo
of course tested native title, and cases in the Northern Territory and
NSW tested, and failed to prove legal grounds, for breaches of
governments duty of care to the stolen generation. As I see it, these
big ticket issues are very much concerned with ethics and intent and
thereby difficult to slot into cold hard legal categorisations.
Now I should say at this point, that I am not trained in law. But I am
certainly a very committed scholar. A key aspect of both these
Australian cases, and one which interests me greatly, is the notion of
fiduciary duty. This is a duty which arises because a person or entity
holds power over another sufficient to affect the interests of the
second party. It is because of that power differential that the
fiduciary, and in this instance I’m thinking the government, has a legal
duty of trust. And a legal duty of trust carries with it several
requirements: always to act in the interests of the beneficiary, never
to profit from the trust relationship, never to hold a conflict of
interest, to keep full and accurate records, and to provide on request a
full account for all trust property. Many relationships import a
fiduciary duty, but it seems that the courts mainly become interested
when that duty relates to finances and property.
In the first part of this lecture I sketched out how the government had
taken control of Aboriginal lives from the turn of last century,
whittling away people’s rights over their own labour, wages, savings,
family and circumstances of living. So I don’t think there’s any doubt
that the government stood as a fiduciary to those people it took into
control ‘under the Acts’. While I think governments should be held to
account for failing their duty of care on the reserves – substandard
schooling, rations, health care, shelter etc – I am leaving this to one
side for the moment to concentrate on finances and property, because
these are areas which legal opinion suggests will present much higher
chances of conviction.
There is certainly evidence that the government failed to act in the
best interests of the beneficiaries: it knowingly maintained a system
under which people’s wages were defrauded not only be their employers
but by the government’s own agents, the police protectors. It took
levies from wages and
arguably did not use that money entirely for the beneficiaries
interests. It contracted people out at much less than their skilled
entitlement. It intercepted and misused child endowment and pensions.
It failed to properly distribute deceased estates. In fact, at almost
every point where the government exercised its financial prerogatives,
it failed to secure the best interests of the Aboriginal people it had
forced into dependency upon it. The government has also failed to keep
proper records of its transactions on Aboriginal monies: it is this
primary breach of a trustee’s duties which prevents many people from
claiming the reparations. And perversely, it is this very fragmentation
of records which governments – in both Qld and NSW – invoke to suggest
we can never really establish what went on.
I would argue also that the government has profited from its management
of Aboriginal monies, by investing private savings and keeping the
interest bonus, by using endowment and pensions to offset state funding
obligations. I would argue that the government has been negligent in
its duty to maintain trust assets – and here I’m particularly interested
in the Welfare Fund which we have not really touched on today. Indeed
an inquiry in 1991 found that the government could be found guilty of
misappropriation and negligence on this Fund which was established ‘for
the benefit of Aborigines generally’ and so remains an asset of the
Aboriginal community. The government must not dispose of what remains
in this fund before there is an independent assessment of its true
value, and until there is restitution of lost monies.
So what are our chances in the courts? As I said, no case such as this
has ever been brought in Australia. But of course that needn’t stop
us. Indeed this is precisely the focus of a book I’m working on,
courtesy of a research fellowship from Griffith University. And we do
have international precedents. Very briefly, I have been watching with
fascination a case in the US brought by 500,000 plaintiffs against the
federal government for misappropriation and negligent dealing on their
private earnings. This class action includes past and present
accountholders. It commenced in 1996 and has been through several
stages in the court process and the plaintiffs have won every stage
against an amazing background of government obstruction and contempt of
court process. In September 2003 the judge demanded the government
account for every cent it had controlled back to 1887 when the trust
commenced. And where proper distribution cannot be documented, that
amount will not be deemed to have been paid; the fragmentation of
records will not diminish this accountability. The US government’s own
assessment of its liability is an astounding $AU50 billion.
So this is what I’d like to see for Queensland. No, not the $50 billion
– I’m afraid that derives from over a century of oil, gas, forestry &
farming income, whereas what we’re after is partly lost wages, savings,
entitlements. But that, even Beattie concedes, could well be at least
$500 million. This is money earned or inherited by Aboriginal
families, it should have been in their pockets during many decades.
Instead it has enriched government coffers while people struggled to
survive.
So I am working towards several goals. I want to see a comprehensive
court dissection of just how governments handled the powers they assumed
and the finances they seized from the very beginning. I’d like to see
that played out, over several weeks, in the TV and print media. I’d
hope these revelations will re-educate the average member of the public
to understand just how Aboriginal poverty and despair was inflicted
through deliberate practices of governments which even today refuse to
admit their callous abuses of powers and responsibilities. I’d like see
courts orders for an independent assessment of all trust fund management
back to the turn of last century to chronicle all the sins of omission
and commission. I’d like an actuary to determine – just as would happen
for any other institution – the levels of loss and the amounts of
restitution.
So yes, I’m ambitious. But all my research encourages me to believe it
is within the realms of possibility. There are cases already in the
pipeline. For many months a range of lawyers have been working pro bono
with clients who reject the Beattie offer and want to fight for their
full entitlements. The lawyers’ association QPILCH is handling queries
on this, and you can contact them directly on 3012 9773 or through
ANTaR. If you want to make contact but lose the numbers, you can google
my name & send me an email – I’ll pass it on. I guess also, although I
haven’t run this by them, that people willing to work or research
unpaid, would also be welcome.
So you can see that for me SW is about much more than money; its about
truth and justice
-
the truth about how governments controlled the lives, labour &
finances of Aboriginal families
-
how
knowing that truth gives us a different understanding of Aboriginal
experiences and a new understanding of ourselves as the ‘dominant’
culture
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using that truth to get justice for what was done wrong in the past,
so we can heal as a nation in the present
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