Queensland’s Stolen Wages

August 21, 2009 in Campaigns, Rants & Raves, Thoughts
Tags: #stolenwages, accountability, ALP, Anna Bligh, Australia, democracy, government, human rights, Indigenous Australians, politics, QCU, Queensland, Queensland Council of Unions, Ron Monaghan, social justice, state government, Stolen Wages, transparency, Twitter, workers rights

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about stolen wages, and you can rest assured knowing it won’t be the last time either. On this particular occasion it’s the issue of Queensland’s stolen wages. Just to fill you in; in 2002, former Premier Peter Beattie estimated that up to $500 million in wages could have been stolen from Aboriginal workers over the years and offered just $55 million in reparations.

Even though the government re-opened the Stolen Wages Reparations Scheme last year, they still siphened off over $20 million into an education fund for Indigenous children; which is directly from Howard’s wedge politics play book. Who’s going to talk down such a fund? And not that there’s anything wrong with establishing such a fund, it should be applauded. But it shouldn’t have to come at the expense of workers’ wages, which is being, as described by some, stolen again. And when you think about it, it really does amount to stealing the wages again.

The Bligh Labor government can’t even honour its promise to repay this amount to the workers.

It’s been some time since there was anything done about Queensland’s stolen wages but at the start of the week there were some rumblings about the Queensland Council of Union and a public campaign on stolen wages. And come Wednesday, like a bolt of lightning, it was on with QCU’s Ron Monaghan launching a broadside assault on the Queensland government.

Wednesday, Monaghan declared that unions will step-up their campaign for full recovery of the $55.4 million Stolen Wages reparations, originally promised in 2002 by former Premier Beattie. Monaghan also announced that litigation would start on behalf of Uncle Conrad Yeatman from Yarrabah. And personally I applaud these declarations, and think it’s about time too that unions get behind efforts to repay Aboriginal workers’ stolen wages. Hopefully Monaghan will go the next step and work towards having the Queensland government repay the entire estimated amount of stolen wages owing to Aboriginal workers and their families.

Follow the QCU’s work on this campaign –> HERE <–

Follow what’s being said about Stolen Wages on Twitter –> HERE <–