Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Unfinished business: Indigenous stolen wages, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I am very pleased to present the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs entitled Unfinished business: Indigenous stolen wages. This report is the result of an inquiry lasting almost 6 months, during which the committee held hearings in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth and Canberra and received 129 submissions.

The committee was asked to examine a wide range of issues in relation to Indigenous workers whose paid labour was controlled by governments. These included: financial arrangements in relation to Indigenous wages, access by workers to their savings, evidence of fraud or negligence in relation to Indigenous monies and commitments by governments to quantify monies missing or misappropriated under official management.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the governments of mainland states and the Northern Territory introduced legislation to regulate the lives of many Indigenous people. This legislation is commonly referred to as ‘protection acts’ because its stated intention was to ‘protect’ Indigenous people. In the name of protection, Indigenous people were subject to extensive government control, including control over their employment, their wages and their property.

The committee has received compelling evidence that governments systematically withheld and mismanaged Indigenous wages and entitlements over decades. In addition, there is evidence of Indigenous people being underpaid or not paid at all for their work. The committee received evidence that the impact of government control of Indigenous employment and wages was not just financial. It included the mistreatment and abuse of Indigenous workers. A number of Indigenous people recounted personal experiences of abuse and inappropriate treatment, often when they were still children. The committee recognises that these are difficult experiences to share, and wishes to thank all of those people who told their story during the course of the inquiry. I particularly want to acknowledge Ms Yvonne Butler, who has travelled from Townsville to Canberra for the tabling of this report, and is present in the gallery this morning.

These personal stories gave the committee some insight into the betrayal, anger, hurt and frustration that Indigenous workers have felt for generations. The committee also received evidence about the reparations and repayment schemes that the Queensland and New South Wales governments have put in place in an effort to resolve the stolen wages issue in those states. However, the evidence before the committee demonstrates a deep dissatisfaction within the Indigenous community with the Queensland government reparations offer. Although only recently instigated, the committee’s view is that the New South Wales repayment scheme seems to be better designed and is also a more widely accepted model.

In other states and territories, the stolen wages issue does not have such broad exposure, even within the Indigenous communities. However, the committee notes that in most states and territories efforts are being made to further research and raise awareness about this issue. These efforts are hampered by difficulties in accessing government records of the relevant periods and by the fact that many records are lost, missing or destroyed. It is not clear in some cases.

Indigenous Australians have been seriously disadvantaged by the control of their employment and wages. Many of those affected by previous government control of their employment and wages are now elderly and in poor health. It is imperative that governments take immediate action to address these injustices. In fact, we go so far as to say it would be an abrogation of moral responsibility to delay any further, particularly with the knowledge that the age and infirmity of the Indigenous people concerned limit their capacity to pursue their own claims.

It is time to resolve this issue. Therefore, we urge governments to heed the key recommendations of the committee. As I have said, both the Queensland and New South Wales governments have already established schemes. However, the committee believes it is clear that the Queensland government should revise the terms of its reparations offer so that claimants are fully compensated for moneys withheld from them.

There is a need for further archival research and consultation with Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria to establish if similar practices operated in relation to Indigenous wages in these jurisdictions. If they did, the committee recommends that the relevant governments establish compensation schemes.

I want to thank all of my colleagues who participated so helpfully and actively in this committee inquiry, particularly Senator Bartlett, who moved the original motion for the reference, and my deputy chair, Senator Crossin. I also want to thank our secretariat members, particularly Ann Palmer, who spent so much time working on this report, and our committee secretary, Jackie Morris, who came to the committee in the second half of the year. I am not sure that she was entirely aware of what she was letting herself in for. It has been a very constructive process. This is a very important report, and I hope that its recommendations are heeded.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to second, to endorse, all the comments made by the Chair of the  Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Senator Marise Payne, in presenting the report on what has come to be known as the stolen wages inquiry. This matter was first highlighted by Senator Bartlett, and all credit goes to the work that he and his staff have done to highlight this. The reference first came to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee. When the Senate committee structure changed, it became part of the work of the legislation committee, and Senator Payne then took over the chairing of this.

I say at the outset that I cannot help but get a feeling that we are just scratching the surface in presenting this report. Sometimes the work we do in Senate committees is quite conclusive. It is very simple, as all the facts and figures are there before you, and as a Senate committee we have the ability to rearrange the arguments, put them a bit more succinctly and provide more direction. But I certainly felt on this committee that we had really only just started to get a handle on this situation.

I was extremely surprised and disappointed by the role that governments have played in the history of this country, particularly by the way in which Indigenous people have been treated. The penny had dropped for me when I started to put together this nation’s history in relation to stolen children. What I think is now going to be the second chapter of that history will involve the wages or due payments that either all or some of those people did not get in that saga. Of course, people who were not in fact stolen but were simply working on cattle stations have missed out on due payments. So I do actually think that this is a chapter of another saga in the history of this country’s treatment of Indigenous people.

When this inquiry was with the references committee, we considered a choice: either we could spend 18 months to two years looking at this, making a really in-depth, extensive intrinsic analysis of this situation, or we could get around the country as quickly as we could within a six-month period and table this report before Christmas. When I chaired the committee, it decided to have a very fast, quick look at this and get submissions from people. I understand that some people did not even know that this inquiry had started, and I think some people who wanted to put in a submission did not get a chance to do that. The aim of this was to just get a handle on how extensive this situation is.

As I remarked a few minutes ago, I was incredibly surprised by what we were facing. We know that since Federation, as Senator Payne said, the states were responsible for the protection or control of Indigenous people and that the Commonwealth government was responsible for that with the Northern Territory. What we found in the course of our inquiry is that we do not know if Indigenous people who worked on cattle stations, who worked in homes as governesses or who worked in other establishments in the capital cities were actually paid the right rate of pay. We certainly know, from the extensive research work that has been conducted, that Indigenous people were due to be paid some form of endowment in the form of what these days we would call a Centrelink benefit and that that never got into their hands. That was either held in trust by the government of the day or was passed on to cattle station staff, who then gave only a portion of that to Indigenous people. They might have given a portion of that back to the state and territory governments.

I want to say a couple of things about the work in this area. Some people around this country have spent an enormous amount of their time researching this, and no doubt they have been frustrated in their efforts to get this issue on a national stage or platform. I am talking about the fantastic work of Dr Ros Kidd and the book that she has now produced, the work of Dr Thalia Anthony and of the Stephen Grays of the world. Quite a lot of academics have spent many years researching this, and I think that, while we need to pay tribute to the work that they have done, we need to in fact take their work a step further.

There have been calls for us to have a royal commission. I am not convinced we need one. As Senator Payne said, we know that these people are due this money. It is really a matter of tracking back through the archives and trying to find out who these people are, where they were, what their entitlements are and giving them the money. A royal commission can take one or two years to conduct and time is not on our side. Indigenous people who are probably owed this money are elderly. The argument about whether their entitlement should pass to their children is an issue. I believe it should. Because it is an entitlement that is due to the family trust it should be passed on to them. But time is not with us here. We need to start moving this saga very quickly to the next stage so that people who are due compensation receive recognition and get paid before time passes them by. I do not think there are many Indigenous people who even believe they might be part of a group that had wages stolen from them or had moneys withheld from them.

Since I became alerted to this dilemma through the inquiry I have been making inquiries around the Northern Territory. I met a couple of the old men who worked out at Vestys meatworks station at Kalkarinji. They said to me, ‘We got £5 a month.’ Ted Eagan, the administrator, who was the protector of Indigenous people back in 1953, said to me, ‘My job was to go and make sure the cattle stations gave these people £5 a month, and they did.’ Of course, Indigenous people say to me: ‘We had no idea what to do with this money. There was no store. We didn’t even know what money was.’ That is not the point. Were they due more than £5? Were they due an entitlement from the Commonwealth government that the Vestys meatworks cattle owners may well have kept or left in a trust with the Commonwealth government? We do not know that. We suspect that is the case but we do not know.

In some of the work that has been done, Dr Ros Kidd estimated that in 1919 there were 2,500 licensed Aboriginal workers in the Territory and 1,500 dependants. Dr Thalia Anthony provided information on the number of Northern Territory people registered under the welfare ordinance and found there would be about 15,700 people registered in the Territory. There are many Indigenous people who are not even aware of this. There are many Indigenous people for whom we will now have trouble finding and matching records.

Access to records is a problem for these people. As with the stolen generation people, there was a need for somebody to make a decision that these people would be entitled to archival records at no cost and to free, open and unhindered access to records at no detriment. We are not yet at that stage in this country when trying to ascertain people’s payments and monetary entitlements. There are still very tight restrictions in Queensland and in Western Australia in particular. You might request access to the records and somebody in government says yes or no. That has to change if people are to get any fair payment under this scheme.

In conclusion, we are at the first chapter of the next stage in the history of what has happened to Indigenous people in this country. We have to take this forward. If we do not have a national forum I urge HREOC to gather together Indigenous people and to talk about this and make them aware that this is an issue. I thank Senator Bartlett and particularly the committee staff—Ann, Jackie and all the other research assistants who helped us. It is not easy when you get an exercise of this magnitude and you pull it all together in six months. Tribute is due to them. (Time expired)

Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have only seven minutes in which to speak and it is not enough time to do due justice to this very important and most fundamental of issues. However, I will do what I can. I will continue to draw attention to the issues contained in the report entitled Unfinished business: Indigenous stolen wages presented by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. I acknowledge the presence in the gallery of Yvonne Butler and Russell Butler Sr. They have come down from Townsville. It is the commitment and determination of such people, combined with determined research by a number of committed historians, that has enabled some of the facts to come to light and such action as has happened to date in Queensland to occur. I also acknowledge Charmaine Smith, who also put in a submission to the inquiry on behalf of her community in South Australia.

One of my aims in establishing this inquiry was not just to have another vehicle to draw attention to the failure of the Queensland government to respond adequately to this issue—although I will certainly continue to voice my views on that, as I have done in my additional comments in the report and elsewhere—but to draw attention to the fact that I suspected this issue went beyond Queensland and New South Wales and that it was an issue that needed national attention. As was said I think by Senator Crossin, this inquiry just scratched the surface, but it scratched enough to establish a prima facie case that similar issues have occurred in almost all other states, as well as the Northern Territory. We need to learn from the mistakes that have been made in Queensland and we need to act much more quickly to bring justice and full truth to light.

There is a continual push in this country for more attention to be paid to history. I have consistently supported the Prime Minister in his call for a greater focus on Australian history. There is a lot about our history that we do not know about or we just will not acknowledge. Some of the issues that became apparent during this inquiry and from the information that is now on the record through the submissions and the public hearings go to that history. When people talk about looking more at history it is often presented as part of the so-called history wars, where spin doctors will spin their preferred version of history. The reason I support more attention being paid to history is that the history of what we have done to Indigenous Australians is not something that can be spun. It is there on the records, it is there in the archives, and it is there in the memories and the hearts of Indigenous Australians. So many of us do not know about it. If we put it on the record, as has been done slowly over the years, we cannot spin it; it is there. It is not pleasant, but it is a reality that we have to acknowledge.

Some of the work that has been done, particularly the work by Dr Ros Kidd—not just her recent book Trustees on Trial but also her book from a number of years ago The Way We Civilise—predominantly focused on Queensland. We simply have to confront that reality and that history. History is not all pleasant but it is a key part of the reality of modern Australia. It has also been a key platform for part of the prosperity of modern Australia. The exploitation of Indigenous people around Australia goes far beyond just the misappropriation of their earnings and their funds. It is the foundation for the poverty and lack of opportunity that many Indigenous Australians face today. The concept of consequential poverty is a very real one. It is no great surprise that if you take away people’s earnings they stay in poverty.

There is a direct link between the practices that this inquiry went into and the reality of life for Indigenous Australians, even today in places like Palm Island, Woorabinda and Cherbourg—just to focus on places in my own state of Queensland. It is wider than just wages and earnings but it is part of that story. We heard some very powerful evidence from the people from Cherbourg, for example. The situation there was not just about misappropriating wages; it enabled governments to get away with not spending money that should have been spent on the welfare of those people. That situation led directly to not just poverty but also sickness, death and of course great sadness. This is not just history; this is here and now. That was quite clear from the evidence given to the inquiry, and it is what I am continually told by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around Queensland and more widely.

I would like to reinforce Senator Payne’s comments as well: it would be an abrogation of moral responsibility for state governments and the federal government not to act. The federal government of course had administrative responsibility for the Northern Territory during the periods that we are talking about. I agree that we actually do not need a royal commission if state governments and the federal government were to act—that is what is needed. We do not want something that will take many more years and cost a lot more money. We simply want people to be able to get access to the records now. With a relatively small amount of funding, with leadership from the federal government to encourage the states to kick in as well—as the first three recommendations of this report suggest—the facts could be brought to light much more quickly and much more promptly. As an example, and also by way of tribute, I note the evidence from one of the people from Cherbourg, Pastor Collins, who gave evidence to the inquiry just at the end of October in Brisbane. He passed away between then and now. He told us at that inquiry—it is no secret that he was over 70 years old at the time—that people are ageing and the need for action is now. I pay tribute to him and the legacy of his life. I think his evidence to that hearing just a few weeks ago showed his commitment to and passion for justice for his people.

The simple fact is that the time to act is now. We need to do more than scratch the surface. We have to dive in to get to the facts, and that requires resourcing. If state governments and the federal government enabled that to happen and provided the opportunity for the archival work to be done—so we do not just have to rely on the next Ros Kidd in each state to do that work—then we could advance it much more quickly. I believe that, combined with the oral history research, is important. As Senator Payne said, it would be an abrogation of moral responsibility not to act and to let this drag on. By way of example, the response from the federal department currently responsible for Indigenous affairs to some of these questions about what happened in the past and what is in this report was: ‘It’s not our responsibility.’ Whose responsibility is it? That is the key issue here and now. It is time for governments to take responsibility for past actions, to act on the recommendations and to work together with Indigenous Australians, not just to allow full access to the truth so the full reality of our history is exposed but to work together with Indigenous Australians to address the consequential and intergenerational poverty that is a direct result of decades of calculated, systemic practices that occurred over large parts of our nation. I very much hope this report will play a part in making that happen and that we act on these recommendations as promptly as possible. I am certainly committed to continuing to follow this up to make that happen.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate committee’s report addresses a scandalous injustice. It appears that for several decades, until as late, in some cases, as the early 1970s, wages payable to Aboriginal workers were withheld from them by the government departments administering Aboriginal affairs and paid into various trust funds. Those monies have never been paid to those entitled to them or to their lawful successors. The situation varies from state to state. One of the serious problems encountered by the inquiry was that of missing records, so that it is very difficult to establish just who is entitled and the quantum of their entitlements. But the members of the committee were left in no doubt that the failure by successive state governments, and perhaps territory governments, to honour the lawful entitlements of Aboriginal people was widespread, indeed customary.

Let me illustrate the question by reference to my own state of Queensland, where the position has been clarified by the pioneering work of Dr Rosalind Kidd, who exposed the issue in her important book Trustees on Trial: Recovering the Stolen Wages, which was published earlier this year. Dr Kidd appeared at the Brisbane hearings of the committee on 25 October, as did, among others, Mr Patrick Hay of the Queensland Bar, who provided the committee with a detailed submission written by himself and Ms Jean Dalton SC which traced the legislative history of the matter in Queensland since the Aboriginals Protection Act of 1897. There is no time this morning to examine the legal complexities of this matter. Suffice it to say that Dr Kidd, Ms Dalton SC and Mr Hay presented a cogent argument that there has been a breach of trust and/or a breach of fiduciary duty by the state of Queensland to potentially thousands of Aboriginal families over many decades.

According to Dr Kidd, in 1996 Ms Debra Mullins SC, now Justice Mullins of the Supreme Court, and Mr John McGill, now Judge McGill, gave legal advice to the Queensland government in similar terms. On the basis of the work of those whom I have mentioned, there seems to be at least a prima facie case of serial withholding from Aboriginal people of moneys held on their behalf by the state of Queensland, for which the state has to this day failed to account to them.

This has been described by some speakers as a moral issue. Yet it seems to me that the claims of the Aboriginal people concerned and their descendants do not rest on the uncertain and contestable ground of moral right; they rest on the much firmer footing of legal right. To me, this is not a question of Aboriginal welfare or of Aboriginal people asking for a fair go. It is a question of property rights. At its simplest, these people are saying to the government: ‘You held our money in trust funds. You have never paid it to us, the beneficiaries. Hand it over.’

The Queensland government has met this response with an insultingly low offer capped at $5,000 per claimant. As the Assistant Director-General of the Department of Communities, Mr Michael Hogan, was honest enough to concede, this was not regarded by the government as compensation but as reparations. How unjust is that! The Queensland government has withheld money to which thousands of people appear to be lawfully entitled and, aware that people in their position are unlikely to be able to litigate their claims, has refused to make restitution to them, renounced any obligation to compensate them and sought to buy them off with a token payment—a gesture which bears no economic relationship to the quantum of the entitlement. A great injustice has been exposed in this report. It is high time that the governments responsible met fully their obligations to these people.

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Siewert, you are seeking the call, but I should tell you that you have just under three minutes. You might seek leave to continue your remarks.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that the government is granting me an extra two minutes. I seek leave to extend my time to five minutes.

Leave granted.

Thank you. This is an extremely important issue and I thank the Senate for granting me leave to make a statement. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that we are on Ngunnawal people’s lands. They are the traditional owners of the land on which we stand. I also want to acknowledge all of the Aboriginal people who worked hard to build this country but did not receive the benefits of that wealth creation. I particularly want to acknowledge the witnesses who came forward to give their evidence to the committee. I understand that it caused them, in some cases, deep distress. I extend my thanks and deep respect to those witnesses.

In speaking today on the tabling of this report, I want to focus particularly on the issues relating to my home state of Western Australia. I am doing so because the preliminary evidence that has been brought to light during the inquiry indicates that the issue and the scale of injustice is every bit as serious in the west as it was in Queensland and New South Wales. In particular, the small amount of historical research done so far in the west indicates that there was a systematic alienation of pension and maternity allowances in the state and that this was huge.

More importantly, I would like to focus on WA because of the lack of any acknowledgment or any effort to make amends on the part of the state government. Whilst in Queensland there has been substantial progress in uncovering the evidence and there have been efforts made by the state governments, however flawed and inadequate this is—and we have heard reference to that this morning—at least it is a step in the right direction. In WA it is not simply a case of inaction as much as it is a failure of the state government to actually allow people access to their records, which therefore restricted them and did not enable them to give evidence at the inquiry. There has been deliberate delay of release of evidence from the archives, which meant, as I said, that people have not been able to get evidence to present to the inquiry. From other documentary evidence we know that these files exist. We know that some of the records are still around.

In focusing efforts on alienation of wages, unpaid and underpaid labour, systematic diversion of pensions and other social security payments, and the mismanagement and abuse of trust funds in WA, I would like to acknowledge the efforts that have been made in the west to try to uncover this so far—particularly the work done by the WA Aboriginal Legal Service, which is gathering evidence, trying to get access to files and surveying a number of Aboriginal people to gain evidence.

From preliminary evidence so far in WA, it appears that, unlike Queensland, the state government of the time did not necessarily take the wages, although there are some questions around trust funds. However, it is clear from the evidence that the state knew full well about the abuses that were taking place. It knew about widespread wage discrimination, and that it was complicit in keeping wages down and forcing Aboriginal people to work. It knew that it was complicit in ensuring that Aboriginal people did not receive most of the pension and child endowment moneys paid by the Commonwealth. It knew that the moneys paid to pastoral stations and missions were not being used to improve the living conditions of Aboriginal people. But it was unwilling to act.

The core injustice here, of course, is that this was Aboriginal money that they were denied access to. There has been no acknowledgment or recognition of how incredibly hard Aboriginal people worked to build this country. They cleared the land, they ran the cattle stations and they served people who grew wealthy from the resources of the land, but they never got to see the benefits of their hard labour or share in the wealth that they created. They were systematically and deliberately condemned to intergenerational poverty. The words of Professor Ann McGrath point to this very clearly. In the hearing she said to us:

I think that Aboriginal people have worked very hard and they have been taught that working hard does not get you anywhere financially. They usually have not been able to buy their own houses because they have so often had to live on government owned reserves. They have not even owned their own furniture. I think it would be very good to understand this economic history of Aborigines better because the average working-class person like my grandfather, for example, was able to buy a house on a government subsidised scheme. Consequently his family get to inherit real estate which often goes up in value, and Aboriginals have been denied both that and savings opportunities by schemes all around Australia.

Evidence that has been uncovered by ALS clearly indicates that the Commonwealth also knew what was going on in many circumstances. It is also clear that there are some records held by the Commonwealth that people have not yet had access to. I believe that needs to be made a priority.

We support the report from the committee. However, we did add two additional recommendations—that is, that the social justice commissioner monitor the implementation of the recommendations in the report; and that, if they are not implemented within 12 months, the Commonwealth should call a royal commission. I agree that we need to move forward. We need to get on with dealing with this sorry part of our history. I seek leave to continue my remarks. (Time expired)

Leave granted; debate adjourned.