One of the principles fundamental to society working in harmony and growing in prosperity is a solid system for the upholding of property rights. As a small ‘l’ liberal this is something that should not be compromised upon.  And one the keys to making the system work is that people are entitled to the property they earn – ie a worker is entitled to their wages.  Liberal or not I don’t see how any society can function well without this principle.

From time to time, our society has given workers something of a raw deal.  In Victorian England, for example, even though slavery had been abolished, most of the working poor were little better than slaves.  They were essentially owned by their bosses who were responsible for them and their behaviour as well as feeding and clothing them.  Very few were paid much of a wage and had to engage in backbreaking labour for the term of their contract with their master.  It was still a step up from the poor house as often workers were taught skills in trades, but not always as was the case with factory workers who also worked in circumstances that were dangerous to their safety.

It would be nice to think that we moved on from this and that sort of thing hasn’t happened in Australia.  Sadly it’s not true.

In the Australian series of “Who do you think you are?” I saw a fascinating episode where Cathy Freeman traced her ancestry – it was varied and intriguing.  One of the sad things I learned was that one of her grandfathers or great grandfathers was fighting in one of the wars.  His wage was being used by his wife to support the family back in Australia.  However the government actually stopped most of the payment, as they were allowed to back then, if they thought an Aboriginal was at risk of squandering their money.  There were records of the wife writing to the government pleading for the pay not to be withheld so that the family could be supported.  It was quite angering as really, people can do what they like with the money that they earn.  Taking payment off people just because they’re from a particular ethnic or racial background is nothing short of racist and completely immoral.

The sad thing is, the more I look at it, it’s not just enlisted personnel that were affected.

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/economy/stolen-wages-timeline.html

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/economy/stolen-wages.html

Underpaying or not paying Indigenous workers was actually widespread in a number of states, largely in pastoral settings by private organizations and the government and it occurred as late as the 1960’s.  It gets worse as well.  Like Victorian era apprentices and factory hands, the right to leave for not being paid was also taken away from Indigenous workers, as they were rounded up and returned to their bosses if they decided to leave.  It was nothing short of slavery.  No wonder there is so much resentment and mistrust between black and white Australians.  I’d be surprised if any Aboriginal Australian was ever willing to work for a white Australian again!

This week Aunty Jean from my church was pictured in The Courier Mail as part of a protest.  The Queensland government, instead of paying the people or the ancestors who did unpaid work for them that they owe money to, initiated and now went back on setting up an Indigenous Education Fund.  The fund was apparently aimed at improving the numbers of Aboriginal young people finishing schools.  Again this is just as racist and just as wrong as not paying workers.  First of all it denies workers their property rights.  The people that did the work are owed their wages.  It doesn’t matter who they were they are owed that money and if they have passed away their families could quite reasonably be said to be entitled to their wages.  Not paying people now because they were Aboriginal is just as racist as not paying them in the first place.  Also using the millions that are owed to individuals for an Indigenous Education fund is also addressing the issue of the poor education retention rates of Aboriginal students.  If more money need to be put towards the issue, then that money should come from the money set aside for Education by the state government.  It should not be used as a premise to redistribute wealth.  Being in the same ethnic group as someone does not entitle them to any of the property earned by another member of the same ethnic group.

All in all it shows that people in authority not only are not sorry for what has happened in the past but are willing to commit the same mistakes again and again, approaching Indigenous Australians with mistrust and suspicion.

It also brings me back to one issue in our society that has really bugged me lately and that is that there seems to be recurring themes in the media that people’s entitlement to their money and their property seem to be dependent on their morality.  It is not.  If someone works or invests they are entitled to their money and their return on their investment.

It really does make my blood boil and it really does give me complete sympathy to the arguments that Aboriginal Australians have been robbed of their wages twice – once when they earned it and then again when the government finally set the money aside and was set to give it to those who are entitled to it.

Some links and extracts…

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24706984-3102,00.html

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/completed_inquiries/2004-07/stolen_wages/submissions/sub23.pdf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/13/2333462.htm

A north Queensland Indigenous rights campaigner has welcomed the State Government's decision to reopen the stolen wages fund, but says the payments are still too small.

Aborigines and Torres Straight Islanders whose wages and savings were controlled under previous government schemes, and who have not already made claims, can now do so.

Those eligible will get payments of either $3,500 or $7,000, depending on when they were born.

Townsville stolen wages campaigner Florence Onus says the compensation on offer is nowhere near enough.

"No, according to all the records and family records of what was owed to them, the $7,000 is just a drop in the ocean compared to what should have been paid back to them," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/01/2232193.htm

During the 20th century, workers won continued improvements to their wages and conditions, including in the pastoral industry. Yet one group of pastoral workers, despite being continuously described as essential to the survival of the industry in rural Australia, were kept in conditions of virtual servitude and abject poverty. These were the Aboriginal men and women who, in their thousands, provided the unpaid and underpaid labour upon which pastoral profits depended.

Their conditions, again to quote officials in various states and the Northern Territory, were analogous to slavery. Physical abuse, starvation, sickness, injury and overwork were constantly charted on official files. In the 1920s Queensland officials said many pastoralists provided better amenities for pet horses than for Aboriginal workers. In the 1930s South Australian officials wrote of the practice of 'breaking in' Aboriginal workers like 'taming wild animals'. In 1940 Western Australian officials conceded the shortage of Aboriginal labour was due to widespread injuring and maiming of workers.

In the NT and WA women, children and the elderly were all forced to work for their rations which were commonly so meagre malnutrition was said to by 'destroying the race'. In these two jurisdictions many workers received no cash wage at all until the 1960s. In Queensland, WA and the NT workers who deserted this regime during the 20th century were hunted by police and brought back in chains.

In Queensland, where Aboriginal workers were often described as more skilled than their white counterparts, the duplicity of a two-thirds wage parity struck in 1919 deteriorated to outright robbery as the government indentured Aboriginal men and women at rates as low as 30 per cent of the white rate. Mandated minimal conditions counted for nothing because no systematic inspections were ever made to enforce them. Exploitation of this captive labour force fractured families as men and women were contracted to remote stations for 51 weeks a year. This system continued in Queensland into the late 1960s.

The pastoralists profited from cut-price labour and the Queensland government profited by taking direct control of up to 80 per cent of the wage through their agents, the police protectors. Large amounts of these private earnings were lost or stolen under the government's watch, despite countless warnings from auditors and public service inspectors. For more than 40 years after 1933, to increase government profit, most of these private earnings were sidelined in investments. Meanwhile workers and their families struggled, and died, in poverty.

Governments around Australia gave themselves power to seize Aboriginal earnings and control Aboriginal spending. They also intercepted child endowment, inheritances, workers' compensation and pensions.