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Home » 2008 » #745 » Australian News » Qld Aboriginal wages stolen again

Jim McIlroy, Brisbane

Members of the Stolen Wages Working Group (SWWG) walked out of a meeting with Queensland Indigenous affairs minister Lindy Nelson-Carr on March 25 when they were told that $21.2 million in promised extra compensation payments would be redirected to fund scholarships for Indigenous students.

SWWG spokesperson and Brisbane elder Aunty Ruth Hegarty said the claimants, whose wages were withheld by government agencies up until the 1970s, had been ripped off yet again and should have receivedthe money.

"Why should our wages be used to pay for the education of other people’s children? This is absolutely opposite to what the claimants wanted", she told journalists.

A call issued by the SWWG, stolen wages claimants and Australian for Native Title and Reconciliation for a March 31 public meeting asked participants to express their views on how "the Queensland government is going to distribute the remaining $35 million of the $55.4 million Indigenous Wages and Savings Reparation Scheme".

It noted that Labor Premier Anna Bligh’s government plans "to pay an extra $3000 and $1500 to existing successful claimants starting in late May", but would not allow the "3200 people whose claims were knocked back due to missing documents to put in a claim backed by affidavits".

The government is also "not reopening the offer for those who refused to consider a $4000 payment, but might have considered $7000”; nor is it "allowing people whose parents worked for wages but died before they could make a claim, to put in a claim as their heirs".

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