For much of the last century, under the “stolen generation” policy of the Australian government, many Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, made state wards, and then sent to work between the ages of 12 and 18 as unpaid “apprentice” domestics or farm laborers.

They received only food and vouchers for clothing, and sometimes “pocket money” under a government policy justified on the basis that Aborigines were supposedly unable to handle their own money. Their wages, set at 66 percent of the pay received by workers who were white, were paid into government trust funds and never returned.

Individual accounts ranged from a shilling to more than £800 (£1=$1.81). The trust funds were operated by the Aboriginal Protection Board, then the Aboriginal Welfare Board, and more recently the Department of Community Services (DOCS). The funds also included money from pensions, compensation payments, and inheritances.

In January the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Fred Edwards, now 64, was one of those fighting for his lost wages. For 25 years he had worked as a stockman on pastoral properties in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland. “I worked for years and years on those stations…most of the time I didn’t see a cent,” he said. He estimated his lost wages at about $400,000 but the Queensland government has offered him just $4000.

Ros Kidd, a Queensland consultant who advised a 1996 Commonwealth Human Rights Commission investigation, estimated that payments owed to Aborigines could be at least $437 million in Queensland alone. “Many of the great rural industries of this country were built on the backs of free labor,” he said. “What’s being offered is clearly inadequate.”

In 1997 two Aboriginal sisters filed a claim for money held in trust by the New South Wales state government for their late mother, Alice Carney. This claim initiated a DOCS investigation in the state into how much money was held in trust accounts and how it could be repaid.

The findings of this investigation were not made public until February of this year, when a draft report to the cabinet of the state government, dated April 2001, was leaked. In this report Faye Lo Po’, then minister for Community Services, advocated that payment of up to $69 million be made to some 11,500 Aborigines whose money had been taken between 1900 and 1969.

Lo Po’ said that since 1970 the state government has deliberately resisted returning money from trust funds. The report also noted that funds may have been stolen and defrauded by public servants including “collusion between station owners and government officials to limit payments into the trust funds.”

Lo Po’ warned that if it was not acted on, “it could be construed that the current government implicitly supports past wrongs.” They could also face years of legal claims.

Robert Carr, premier of the New South Wales Labor Party government, had Lo Po’ removed as minister in July 2002. In May 2003, Michael Egan, the state government treasurer, told Les Ridgeway, a claimant and activist for other Aborigines who believe their money is still in government hands, that “searches of Treasury records have failed to reveal the existence of these funds being transferred to NSW Treasury.”

Using freedom of information laws, the Sydney-based Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) tracked the money of thousands of Aborigines paid into trust funds on their behalf in NSW.

The Carr government tried to block Lo Po’s report from being made public. But in the wake of the leaking of its content, Carr was forced to apologize in parliament to Aborigines whose money has been withheld. On March 11 he said the cabinet had in principle agreed to a scheme that would look into returning the money, in consultation with Aborigines. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Carr had promised that anyone who can prove they are owed money will have it returned. This places the burden of proof on Aborigines fighting for their stolen entitlements.

Carr’s stance in holding off payment of stolen wages back to Aboriginal people parallels the state and federal governments’ reluctance to redress the injustice to thousands of members of the stolen generations.

Marjorie Woodrow, an elder from the Central Coast, now aged 80, has been fighting for 20 years to get back earnings paid into a trust fund. She worked as a maid on a station in western New South Wales from the age of 14.

Documents that Woodrow has obtained from state archives reveal that the Office of the Protector of Aborigines specified that her wages were to be paid to her with interest. The only money she ever received was five pounds for her wedding dress. “For the first six years of my married life when I was raising children I had to live in a tent because I couldn’t get my money, even though I tried and tried,” she said.

Woodrow pointed to Carr’s hypocrisy in launching her book Long Time Coming Home about her life as one of the stolen generations, in state parliament in November 2001. This was clearly after the government had decided to ignore Lo Po’s report. “Bob Carr’s sorry means nothing to me,” Woodrow said.

Woodrow and others are preparing to take legal action through the PIAC. “We are determined to show the government we have had enough as Aboriginal people,” she said. “We want to explain to ordinary people we did not live on welfare all our lives.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home