Australian wages

When it comes to wages in Australia:

• The basic wage is supposed to be a living wage; enough for a man, his wife and two children to live in ‘frugal comfort’.
• An award wage is a basic wage plus an allowance for special skills or qualifications required in an industry.

When equal pay was discussed in a hearing of the Arbitration Commission in 1965, pastoralists complained they could not absorb increases in the Aboriginal wage. They not only wanted any wage increase to be phased in over a number of years, they insisted there should be an award allowance reducing the pay of Aboriginals who were slow, unreliable, or less skilled than other workers.
While some awards allow for slow workers, the idea there is that the employer would apply for permission to pay a lower wage to an individual, not a whole class of people, and certainly not to such a large number of people.
The Commission decided it was all or nothing - if Pastoralists wanted to only hire the best workers at the award rate and not employ others at all, then that is how it would have to be.

All references to Aboriginals were deleted.