Hard Labour, Stolen Wages National Report on Stolen Wages
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Dr Rosalind Kidd HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES NATIONAL REPORT ON STOLEN WAGES HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES 1 First published in Australia by Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) Copyright Ros Kidd, 2007 The ideas, stories and knowledge that come from Indigenous people are considered by them to be their intellectual property. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, community development, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever (including any translation) without the written permission of the author. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are respectfully advised that this book contains references to deceased persons and culturally sensitive material. ISBN 978-0-9756003-3-7 Enquiries: ANTaR Telephone: 02 9555 6138 Email: [email protected] 2 HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES CONTENTS Author’s Note 5 Foreword 6 Introduction 8 1. Queensland 12 1.1 Controlling work and wages 12 1.2 Trust funds 21 1.3 Controlling Commonwealth benefits 42 2. New South Wales & Australian Capital Territory 48 2.1 Controlling work and wages 48 2.2 Trust funds 58 2.3 Controlling Commonwealth benefits 62 3. Northern Territory 68 3.1 Controlling work and wages 68 3.2 Trust funds 78 3.3 Controlling of Commonwealth benefits 81 4. South Australia 84 4.1 Controlling work and wages 84 4.2 Trust funds 92 4.3 Controlling Commonwealth benefits 93 5. Western Australia 96 5.1 Controlling work and wages 96 5.2 Trust Funds 108 5.3 Management of Commonwealth benefits 111 6. Victoria 116 6.1 Controlling work and wages 116 6.2 Trust Funds 122 6.3 Commonwealth benefits 122 7. Tasmania 124 7.1 Controlling work and wages 125 7.2 Trust Funds 127 7.3 Commonwealth benefits 127 HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES 3 4 HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES Author’s Note Apart from the chapter on Queensland, this work is entirely reliant on the careful research of a range of people around Australia. I urge readers to consult these and other primary texts, and also the submissions to the Senate Committee of Inquiry into Stolen Wages nationally, especially those from Aboriginal people who endured labour and financial controls. Due to time and energy constraints, this Report is necessarily only a snapshot of a nation-wide, century-long system. My heartfelt thanks to all who contributed; I have greatly valued your expertise and your enthusiasm. Thankyou also to National ANTaR for their moral support and for transforming the work into a publicly accessible document. Conversions in the text give an equivalence in today’s value calculated against annual changes in the retail price index. The terms ‘half-caste’ and ‘full blood’ are today regarded as insulting references used in official records for people of mixed race or of full descent. For accuracy, they appear in this Report where they were the terminology of the times. HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES 5 FOREWORD I feel we have got to try and bring the problems to light. Because of all the things that are happening now; who is right and who is wrong? It’s a worrying time. It’s all owing to you and you fight hard for it. I fight for money that’s mine, and my brothers and sisters. All of it. I’m fighting for my mother’s money as well. What she was left by my uncle; because I’m the stepdaughter, I’ve never ever got any, not me or my brother. The gave my uncle electric shock when he was a young man. He used to sing; but after that, he couldn’t speak. You’d think they would just write a cheque and be done with it. My documents – when you see them – half the page is blacked out, gone. The full stories are not available; you just don’t know. It’s worth millions. The government is scared stiff; money talks big lingo. Just the wages is not enough; it’s the Panel that they’ve got, it takes nothing into account. It should be before the judge. But the judge asks all those questions for a purpose though you see; to take you by surprise, you know. That fellow from South Australia; it took him ten years. He is encouraging others now, to take it to court. We could have had our own homes from the wages we are owed, and had the ability to set things up for our children. It breaks your heart to see our children still struggling. They could have sent us home to our families. We could have showed them. We could have worked it out together. But they kept us apart. What was the reason for that? That’s how they keep us down, see. If we were all educated, look out! It’s just really tiring. We shouldn’t have these things on our minds now; we should all be having a bit of relaxation now at this time in our lives. They just don’t realise. The pressure that goes through your soul. I can’t cry no more. The counselling took it out of me. After looking after my mother; after my brother passed away. I can’t cry. It’s just dry. You feel half cold, like you’re not human. I hate going to funerals because of it. 6 HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES Why couldn’t they just pay us outright; not like that foundation in Queensland that you have to ask for money, filling out paperwork. It’s unsatisfactory. It’s like we still have to beg. The churches know enough about what’s happened. They threw us into these places, like Parramatta. It was the doctor there that molested us. That doctor! That had the hide to say that I had syphilis! But there’s no record of when I nearly bled to death from a broken nose. We used to hide in the cupboard at night; so that it wouldn’t be our turn. The white girls and the black ones. They knew we were being molested, but they’d threaten to cut our throats if we said anything. We were scared stiff. People need to know that this is what happened to us. They’ve got to fetch those files out and put them on the table. The money cannot replace what has been lost. The government needs to know, to understand how much pain we suffered. My pain finding my mum had been left in her house with that breast cancer for all those years, with no one to look after her. The smell. The skin and bone poking through. I came home to that, as an adult. Not as a child. And they had told me she was dead! We’ve been through so much. We’re still going through so much. They don’t know how important our relations are to us, that we can have some sort of comfort. I think it would be far better for the lot to be dealt with. They should work out some sort of way to come to an agreement, a sum of money to pay to us all. Marjorie Woodrow HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES 7 INTRODUCTION slave: 2. one who works for and is the prisoner of another; one who works under duress and without payment. slavery: 1. the condition of a slave; bondage. 2. the keeping of slaves as a practice or institution. 3. a state of subjection like that of a slave. 4. severe toil; drudgery. Source: The Macquarie Concise Dictionary, 1988. To most Australians, the word “slavery” conjures up images of Africans in chains, being taken across the Atlantic to work the cotton fields of the American deep south. We struggle to comprehend that slavery is also part of our own nation’s history. Many of us are unaware that the practice here took place in far more recent times. Governments around Australia controlled wages, savings and benefits belonging to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for most of the 20th century. Payments withheld included child endowment, pensions and even soldiers’ pay. Much of the money held in trust was never paid to its owners. Trust account funds were transferred to public revenue, or disappeared through fraud or negligence along with many of the records. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of Indigenous people had their labour controlled by State and Territory Governments during this time. Among those people was the great Aboriginal leader, Lowitja O’Donoghue, who as a young woman had her wages placed in trust while she worked as a domestic in South Australia. Years later, when Lowitja began her nursing career she sought to have this money paid to her so she could buy uniforms. However, the authorities turned down the request and she never received her money. In Queensland, Jubilee Jackson worked as a stockman near Mt Garnet for 60 years from the age of ten. His pay was a small amount of pocket money at rodeo time. The rest was held in a trust account. When he died in 1967 there was only $99 in his government controlled account. The local police sergeant was later charged with multiple counts of fraud relating to several savings accounts. Jubilee Jackson’s 8 HARD LABOUR, STOLEN WAGES daughter, Yvonne Butler also had her labour and wages controlled. She is still seeking the money owed to her family. In New South Wales, my friend Rob Welsh’s father, Ray was one of 400 young Aboriginal boys between five and fifteen who were taken from their families and sent to the Kinchela Boys Home, near Kempsey between 1924 and 1971.