Dr Ros Kidd
Historian - Consultant - Writer
The fight for the ‘stolen wages’
In 1897 the Queensland government passed a law to take control of all
Aboriginal people. Around the state, local police sergeants were named
as ‘protectors’. Aboriginal people had to have a written contract to
work which the protector organised with the employer. Men, women and
children were sent out for twelve months at a time, away from their
families. The protectors were supposed to check that people were
properly treated and not overworked, and most of people’s wages were
paid to the protector to look after for them. This work system
continued until around 1970.
During most of that time the government was controlling over 17,000
Aboriginal people, around half of whom were sent to missions and
settlements where there was not enough food or housing or medical care.
These places were run by white superintendents and people were punished
if they challenged the bad conditions; if they escaped they were caught
by police and brought back and put in jail.
I wanted to understand what it was like to be controlled by the
government, and I wanted to know exactly what the government had been
doing, so in 1990 I started reading the thousands of letters written by
the men at the Brisbane head office, by the protectors in the country
and by the superintendents. I also read reports from auditors who
checked what the government was doing with Aboriginal wages. I found
out the system of controls was so bad that most people were worse off
than if they had been free to live their own lives. I found out that
government officials knew the system of controls was not working well
but they did not fix the problems. This was particularly true when it
came to all the Aboriginal money which was controlled by the
government. The money that has gone missing is called the stolen wages,
although, as you’ll see, it was not just the wages which were lost.
When we get a job we know just how much we should be paid, and when we
have a bank account we get a regular bank statement showing exactly how
much goes into our account and how much is taken out of it. But when
the government sent Aboriginal people to work it did not tell them how
much their wages should be, it did not tell them how much ‘pocket money’
the boss should pay them while they worked, and it never showed them any
list of money going in and out of their accounts. It was not until 1969
that people got a bank book, but it showed only what was left in that
year.
I discovered that the government was told year after year that the
bosses were not paying the pocket money and that many police protectors
were cheating people by taking money out of their accounts. I
discovered that the government was also taking money from people’s
accounts and from the big Aboriginal trust funds and using this money to
pay for things which it was supposed to pay for itself, including
buildings on the settlements and paying the wages of settlement
workers. Mothers were also supposed to get child endowment (like the
family allowance) but I discovered the government was keeping a lot of
this money even when it knew the children were sick from malnutrition.
The government even kept most of the pension which was supposed to be
paid to the older people. And many people today say they never got
their inheritances, the money which should have passed on to them when
their parents died.
All of these things are part of the stolen wages which Aboriginal people
are now fighting to get back. They want the government to admit it lost
so much of their money, and they want the government to pay proper
compensation, just like a bank would have to do if it lost or misused
the money of people who trust the bank to look after their savings.
In 2002 the Queensland government admitted it didn’t know how much money
might be owing to people whose money was controlled until the late
1960s. The government mentioned that I thought there might be $500
million missing, but it said it would pay only $55 million, which worked
out at $4000 for people older than 50 years in 2002, and $2000 for
people who were younger than 50 years. Many people have lost more than
twenty years of money; they are upset the government thinks their
working life is only worth $4000. They are upset that the government
refuses to pay any money for their parents and grandparents who may have
already died, but who also worked for many many years. And the
government says it will only pay people if they promise not to go to
court to try and get all their money back. The government refuses to
talk about changing the terms of payment.
I knew that if a bank ran such a faulty system and lost and misused the
trust funds then people would take the bank to court and the court would
say the missing money had to be paid back. It seemed to me that the
government had been a banker for Aboriginal money and should be treated
the same way. In my new book Trustees on Trial I speak about
governments in Canada and the United States that also controlled
people’s money and the courts said those governments would be judged by
the same rules as a bank. Indian tribes in both those countries have
taken their government to court for losing or misusing their money and
the government has had to make a payment which the tribes think is
fair. In my book I argue that this might happen for the stolen wages in
Australia too.
Queensland is not the only state that controlled Aboriginal work and
wages for most of the twentieth century. This happened right around
Australia, and I have written a National Report to show that the
other states also knew workers were being cheated of their money by
bosses and by the officials who were supposed to be looking after it.
Governments in other states also used the trust funds for their own
benefit, and in some cases these governments knew child endowment and
pensions were not given to the Aboriginal people.
Now the Senate, which is the highest level of government in Australia,
is looking into the matter of stolen wages in every state and the
Northern Territory. The Senate Inquiry has received over 100 letters
and reports about stolen wages, and last week it held public meetings in
Brisbane and Sydney. The Senators were amazed to learn just how bad the
system was, how hard life was for people who worked for years but did
not get their money, and how hurt people are in Queensland that the
government should say their working life is worth only $4000. The
Senate Inquiry will write a Report by the 7th December 2006.
Meanwhile the stolen wages fight will continue and people are already
talking with lawyers to bring a court case against the government.
Another very important part of our fight is to speak on radio and
television about the stolen wages to explain that Aboriginal people were
most important workers, particularly in the cattle industry, and that
the reason so many people are poor today is because someone else took
their money and didn’t give it back.
In fighting for their stolen wages, Aboriginal people are only fighting
for the money which is theirs, just like any person would do.
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