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Former stockman 'saddles up' for lousy offer

by Christine Howes

2 June 2003 - In his 64th year with a heart condition, asthma and diabetes, former Gulf Country cattleman and ranger Fred Edwards has to 'saddle up the horse again' in 2003 if he hopes to keep his car on the road to enjoy during his retirement.

He figured he had some money owing to him, in fact he's been waiting for this money for quite some time and living on its promise since he placed a claim for it in the late 1990s.

But things just haven¹t quite turned out as he'd hoped.

As an Aboriginal man he, not uncommonly, doesn't have superannuation to draw on for his retirement but he does have debts.

He's worked hard enough over the last 20-30 years to buy and almost own a house, he also borrowed for his car some three or four years ago and that's part of the bit that hurts.

A mishap has seen his car off the road for six months or more even though he¹s still paying out that loan as well.

But Mr Edwards also worked hard for the first 20-30 years of his life as well, in fact he worked almost from when he could walk, being born as he was, onto a cattle station in 1940 at a time when the lives of his family and most Aboriginal people across the state were almost wholly controlled by the government of the day and they were forced to work.

"Most people were born on the station, grew up on the station and as we were growing up we were just thrown straight into the saddle and doing stock work and all that," he said.

"The girls were around the house, all those sort of things." For all of that work Mr Edwards was never properly paid.

Nor were his peers, nor the generations before, nor even some of those who came after.

The 'stolen wages' belonging to Aboriginal people from the century or so of the Protection Act era has been a hot topic of conversation and activism within the Aboriginal community across Queensland since the early 1980s, which was around the time the former missions and reserves across the state were granted a form of self-governance.

People were aware, of course, they had no money and some were also aware that there had been payment involved for the work they had done which had been banked for them by their employers and Protectors - to be held in trust by the State Government of the day.

The most well-known of those accounts was the Aboriginal Welfare Fund but there was several different types of trust accounts this money ended up in.

Those people were certainly aware of how the State had benefited from this money but at what cost to its Aboriginal citizens who greatly contributed through their labour to the economic development of the state as a whole.

"See way back in those days we didn't see money but we had to go to a Courthouse Protector and they'd write out orders for your ration or clothes or whatever you wanted," Mr Edwards said.

"We didn't see any kind of money way back in those days, I think we were only allowed two to four pounds.

"All the stations that are in the Gulf now, the Aboriginal people put those stations there, we worked hard, we slaved back in those days and for all that I think we¹re entitled to see something back anyway.

"We were kicked around like animals, we were flogged for anything in those days and then chased off the place but if you came into town they'd lock you up and then send you straight back out.

"You couldn¹t leave the place, you had to sign an agreement to say you'd work on the place for 12 months, when the 12 months was up you asked for a change, you'd say 'oh, could I go to another station', they'd say 'no, you go back' no matter what the circumstance was you had to put up with whatever."

In May last year the Beattie Government made what it considered to be a 'generous' offer for reparations to Aboriginal people for their unpaid wages.

The offer included a one-off and indemnified payment of either $2,000 or $4,000 to living individuals, a written apology upon acceptance of this payment and a series of other largely symbolic gestures such as Parliamentary acknowledgement and the introduction of new protocols for the acknowledgement of traditional owners.

Some have argued those gestures, at the least, should occur without the impetus of the stolen wages issue.

A current 'E-Petition' on the Queensland Parliament website points out that the money amounts offered bear no relation to the amounts people were actually owed for their labour.

The records of these amounts, or what remains of them, are held by the Government although before it became clear that the wages and savings owed to Aboriginal people was going to be an issue, community members who knew they had records and historians such as Dr Ros Kidd were able to access them relatively freely from the State Archives.

These days access to these records is far more controlled through the Beattie Government's own Community and Personal Histories Section of the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy.

"They're making it very hard, hey?," Mr Edwards said.

"If Beattie himself would just sit down and see these sorts of things, you know.

"A man slaved, if he was in my shoes, I tell you what, he'd be squealing too, you know, for the money, like we are.

"They're raising millions and millions for the graziers but don't they ever think about the poor old Aboriginal people out here
that slaved all their lives?

"Blokes like me, we really need help and we can't get it so there's not much we can do, we're just the poor people out here who have just got to take what's given and it's no different to way back in the old protector days where we just had to take what's given.

"Back in the old days if we asked for ten pound they'd say "no, you get one pound", and then you have a clothes order where you ask for two or three pairs of trousers for the year, they say 'no, you just get one of each'.

"We've been knocked back by a lot of these sorts of things and it's no different from way back then to today.

"Just because we're old black people I suppose they think 'they're right'.

"We were brought out of a reserve into the town to live like whites and we tried to do that.

"They wanted us to live like them, fair enough, but we've got to have the money to live like that too and we earned that money."

Mr Edwards never took the Government to Court over the matter, instead choosing in good faith to register his claim in the 1990s with the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat (QAILSS) who were then funded in the first instance by ATSIC to litigate.

By the year 2001 the Beattie Government had offered to negotiate a settlement outside of the courts and QAILSS formed a negotiating team made up of its own representatives and representatives from the wider Aboriginal community.

In May last year Mr Beattie was forced to publicly announce a "take it or leave it" offer after angry negotiating team members leaked the contents of the proposed settlement to the Courier-Mail and across the communities.

From May to August last year a team of QAILSS 'negotiators' took the Government's offer to communities across the state despite the settlement being just a fraction of the amount that had been calculated as a result of QAILSS' own research.

Mr Edwards said at the time, despite his determination not to accept what he considered to be a 'lousy' offer, the QAILSS team "had us all bamboozled", "pulled the wool over our eyes" and convinced those present to sign what has since been revealed to be a survey of the level of acceptance for the offer.

As a result of that 'survey' in November last year the offer was both formalised and finalised without change by the Beattie
Government.

The current E-Petition, posted by Executive Member of the National Tertiary Education Union Howard Guille and sponsored by Cabinet Minister Anna Bligh, points out that people might accept this money "forced through circumstance" even though the deal itself, and the process through which it was progressed, offered "neither dignity nor closure" for the people, families and communities affected.

Mr Edwards said the $4,000 he's entitled under the offer to won't pay for his car and hence his need to once again find what work he can to cover the cost of it.

He wasn't asking for much, he said, but he was asking for more than a token amount or if it had to be a token amount he would have liked to have claimed his father's and brother's earnings as well.

He also said it was likely he would accept the money even though he would never accept it as 'reconciliation' for what he is owed.

"At my age I¹d prefer to get out of it but now I¹ve got to throw a saddle on the horse again and it¹s just one of those sorts of things," he said.

"I am angry, we should be able to try and get everything that¹s owing to
us."

The Stolen Wages E-Petition can be found at:
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Petitions/cgi-bin/Petitions.cgi?Action=1

It closes on Sunday 13 April, 2003.

© 2003 Christine Howes

Further information: stolen wages issues page - includes news index and external links

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