New research from the Justice and Equity Centre’s Towards Truth project highlights how laws and policies were used to steal wages from Aboriginal people and force them to work. The research also shows how these laws and polices went hand-in-hand with child removals.
But Towards Truth’s findings also show how Aboriginal people and their allies challenged the theft of wages and labour, eventually securing partial back pay for hundreds of people.
Please note that we have accurately quoted source material in this article, even where the terminology is outdated and potentially offensive. We believe it is important to accurately reproduce these sources, as an element of our truth telling.
‘The reintroduction of slavery’
As late as 1969, the NSW Government’s the Aborigines Protection Board, later the Aborigines Welfare Board, had the ability to remove children and place them in apprenticeships with approved employers. The Board also had control of the labour of many Aboriginal adults, forcing them to work on reserves, often unpaid or in exchange for rations.
For both children and adults, the focus was on forcing Aboriginal people who ‘should be earning a living’ to assimilate into non-Aboriginal society.
‘The object is… and always has been that… half-castes, quadroons, or even octoroons, should merge as soon as possible into the general community,’ Edmund Fosbury MLA said during the second reading of Aborigines Protection Bill 1909.
While in 1918 George Frederick Earp MLA said: ‘the only chance of doing good for the black race, and giving them a chance to continue its existence, is to make them work.’
Despite use of paternalistic language, the exploitative nature of the system was not unknown to decision makers, as shown by the documents gathered by Towards Truth.
In 1915, the Aborigines Protection Amending Bill was debated in NSW Parliament. The Bill exempted the Board from providing protections offered by the 1901 Apprentices Act and granted it unrestrained power to remove Aboriginal children from their families. Patrick McGarry MLA dissented, describing the Bill’s principle as ‘to steal the child away from the parents!’
Robert Scobie, another Member of NSW Parliament and a member of the Aborigines Protection Board, was equally critical, stating the Bill represented ‘the reintroduction of slavery into New South Wales’. And in a 1924 Parliamentary debate about the wages paid to Aboriginal workers, Mark Anthony Davidson MLA explained ‘if the employers could not get aborigines for such a small consideration, they would employ white people. It is purely and simply a question of cheap labour’.
‘Mean people’ and ‘very hard’ conditions
In the 1915 debate, McGarry suggested: ‘Mean people will get these children – mean, cringing and crawling people who will not pay wages to the men and who will not keep the children… in proper condition.’
He was not wrong. Apprenticed Aboriginal children and adult labourers often worked in appalling conditions with little to no ability to change employer if they were being abused.
They did not receive rights under industrial awards and were paid a fraction of the minimum wage. Wages of apprentices were withheld by the Aborigines Protection Board, who could spend this money as they saw fit ‘in the interests of the child.’
While children could technically refuse an apprenticeship, this would mean they would be sent to an institution or ‘boarded out’ – where their prospects were often even worse.
One case study described how young girls were required to work from 5 in the morning until they went to bed, and frequently suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.
And in 2006, a Senate Committee heard that Aboriginal workers experienced ‘physical, sexual and employment abuses as well as the creation of a poverty cycle through the denial of wages.’
Resistance and recovery of wages
From 1938, Aboriginal people organised to call for the end of the apprenticeship system. On 26th January 1938, the Aborigines Progressive Association held the Day of Mourning and Protest in Sydney, with Bill Ferguson telling the meeting ‘our object is to abolish the Aborigines Protection Board. We are going to abolish that Board, no matter how long it takes.’ The Association’s demands included an end to the apprenticeship system.
Despite these demands, the Board remained in place until 1969 and Aboriginal workers were frequently prevented from receiving their withheld wages.
In 2004, following decades of advocacy by Aboriginal people, the NSW Government issued an apology and a year later, established the Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme to pay money withheld in the trust funds, including interest and inflation.
The Scheme continued until 2010, eventually repaying $12.9 million to Aboriginal workers and their families. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (now the Justice and Equity Centre) played an important role in communicating the scheme to people in community and assisted people and their families to lodge claims. Read more about our impact.
The total amount paid out was a fraction of the $70 million the Government had allocated for remuneration, and the Scheme was criticised for its narrow scope, poor communication, stringent criteria and ‘Western’ understanding of descendance and evidence. The Scheme initially relied heavily on documentary evidence from the Aborigines Protection Board, the accounts of which were described as being ‘in a chaotic state’ as early as 1938.
The story of Aboriginal woman Valerie Linow highlights some of the Scheme’s problems. Valerie worked on seven different stations in the Riverina from the age of 15. She was initially offered a payment of $1,300 under the Scheme based on NSW records. However, that offer was later increased to $20,000, once a witness came forward to testify she had not received any of her owed payments. Without changes to the Scheme and a key witness, Valerie would have missed out on nearly $20,000 of her withheld wages.
The Scheme helped some Aboriginal people get money that had been taken from them. But many more people could not provide the evidence required to receive their wages, and others died before seeing a cent of what they were owed. In 2016, the NSW Government rejected recommendations to reopen the Scheme, saying 80% of claims were rejected and a re-opened scheme would provide ‘relatively little benefit’.
‘Make them work’ – new research highlights injustice of forced Aboriginal labour
New research from the Justice and Equity Centre’s Towards Truth project highlights how laws and policies were used to steal wages from Aboriginal people and force them to work. The research also shows how these laws and polices went hand-in-hand with child removals.
But Towards Truth’s findings also show how Aboriginal people and their allies challenged the theft of wages and labour, eventually securing partial back pay for hundreds of people.
Please note that we have accurately quoted source material in this article, even where the terminology is outdated and potentially offensive. We believe it is important to accurately reproduce these sources, as an element of our truth telling.
‘The reintroduction of slavery’
As late as 1969, the NSW Government’s the Aborigines Protection Board, later the Aborigines Welfare Board, had the ability to remove children and place them in apprenticeships with approved employers. The Board also had control of the labour of many Aboriginal adults, forcing them to work on reserves, often unpaid or in exchange for rations.
For both children and adults, the focus was on forcing Aboriginal people who ‘should be earning a living’ to assimilate into non-Aboriginal society.
‘The object is… and always has been that… half-castes, quadroons, or even octoroons, should merge as soon as possible into the general community,’ Edmund Fosbury MLA said during the second reading of Aborigines Protection Bill 1909.
While in 1918 George Frederick Earp MLA said: ‘the only chance of doing good for the black race, and giving them a chance to continue its existence, is to make them work.’
Despite use of paternalistic language, the exploitative nature of the system was not unknown to decision makers, as shown by the documents gathered by Towards Truth.
In 1915, the Aborigines Protection Amending Bill was debated in NSW Parliament. The Bill exempted the Board from providing protections offered by the 1901 Apprentices Act and granted it unrestrained power to remove Aboriginal children from their families. Patrick McGarry MLA dissented, describing the Bill’s principle as ‘to steal the child away from the parents!’
Robert Scobie, another Member of NSW Parliament and a member of the Aborigines Protection Board, was equally critical, stating the Bill represented ‘the reintroduction of slavery into New South Wales’. And in a 1924 Parliamentary debate about the wages paid to Aboriginal workers, Mark Anthony Davidson MLA explained ‘if the employers could not get aborigines for such a small consideration, they would employ white people. It is purely and simply a question of cheap labour’.
‘Mean people’ and ‘very hard’ conditions
In the 1915 debate, McGarry suggested: ‘Mean people will get these children – mean, cringing and crawling people who will not pay wages to the men and who will not keep the children… in proper condition.’
He was not wrong. Apprenticed Aboriginal children and adult labourers often worked in appalling conditions with little to no ability to change employer if they were being abused.
They did not receive rights under industrial awards and were paid a fraction of the minimum wage. Wages of apprentices were withheld by the Aborigines Protection Board, who could spend this money as they saw fit ‘in the interests of the child.’
While children could technically refuse an apprenticeship, this would mean they would be sent to an institution or ‘boarded out’ – where their prospects were often even worse.
One case study described how young girls were required to work from 5 in the morning until they went to bed, and frequently suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.
And in 2006, a Senate Committee heard that Aboriginal workers experienced ‘physical, sexual and employment abuses as well as the creation of a poverty cycle through the denial of wages.’
Resistance and recovery of wages
From 1938, Aboriginal people organised to call for the end of the apprenticeship system. On 26th January 1938, the Aborigines Progressive Association held the Day of Mourning and Protest in Sydney, with Bill Ferguson telling the meeting ‘our object is to abolish the Aborigines Protection Board. We are going to abolish that Board, no matter how long it takes.’ The Association’s demands included an end to the apprenticeship system.
Despite these demands, the Board remained in place until 1969 and Aboriginal workers were frequently prevented from receiving their withheld wages.
In 2004, following decades of advocacy by Aboriginal people, the NSW Government issued an apology and a year later, established the Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme to pay money withheld in the trust funds, including interest and inflation.
The Scheme continued until 2010, eventually repaying $12.9 million to Aboriginal workers and their families. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (now the Justice and Equity Centre) played an important role in communicating the scheme to people in community and assisted people and their families to lodge claims. Read more about our impact.
The total amount paid out was a fraction of the $70 million the Government had allocated for remuneration, and the Scheme was criticised for its narrow scope, poor communication, stringent criteria and ‘Western’ understanding of descendance and evidence. The Scheme initially relied heavily on documentary evidence from the Aborigines Protection Board, the accounts of which were described as being ‘in a chaotic state’ as early as 1938.
The story of Aboriginal woman Valerie Linow highlights some of the Scheme’s problems. Valerie worked on seven different stations in the Riverina from the age of 15. She was initially offered a payment of $1,300 under the Scheme based on NSW records. However, that offer was later increased to $20,000, once a witness came forward to testify she had not received any of her owed payments. Without changes to the Scheme and a key witness, Valerie would have missed out on nearly $20,000 of her withheld wages.
The Scheme helped some Aboriginal people get money that had been taken from them. But many more people could not provide the evidence required to receive their wages, and others died before seeing a cent of what they were owed. In 2016, the NSW Government rejected recommendations to reopen the Scheme, saying 80% of claims were rejected and a re-opened scheme would provide ‘relatively little benefit’.
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