Western Australia

Western Australia’s approach to Aboriginal welfare had been a little different from the approach of the other states, and not just because if was the home of A.O. Neville.

In some ways, early WA legislation relating to Aboriginals was enlightened, in others it was not so good.

One significant proclamation made in 1850 stated

‘nothing contained in any pastoral lease shall prevent the aboriginal natives from entering upon the lands comprised therein, and seeking sustenance in their accustomed manner’

[The significance of this will be clearer when I do actually talk about the results of the equal pay decisions.]

In 1905 The Aborigines Act ignored an enquiry recommendation that Aboriginal pastoral workers be paid in cash, and everything seemed to go downhill from there.

Western Australia Before Equal Pay

While Aboriginal stockmen were granted equal pay in the Northern territory with a starting date of December 1968, Western Australia did not follow suit until 1972.

When I first set out to write about the consequences for Aboriginals of these equal pay decisions, I began to wonder why things were so much worse in Western Australia than in the Northern Territory. Hopefully, this little detour will provide some clues.

The new award

For all this, Pastoralists were quite aware of the likely disruption the award would cause. Instead of a part wage plus keep for a bunch of people, Aboriginals would now get one wage, and have to spread it around.
This is probably the opposite of what many Aboriginals were hoping for - they were hoping bosses would acknowledge a reciprocal obligation; Aboriginals would do their share of the work, and the bosses would make sure all the dependants have decent clothing and accommodation, and that kids would have a chance to start school and so on.

What the case summary shows is that Pastoralists, Unions and the Arbitration Commission alike had all made an effort to understand the reasons for Aboriginal economic and social practices, to understand the various stages Aboriginals were at in adapting to the whitefella world, and the probable impact of equal pay. (The decision certainly makes interesting reading for anyone who wants more detail of Aboriginal progress in the 1960s than I am offering here.)

Despite the arguments of the Pastoralists, the world was changing and by now there was no way Equal Pay could be denied. Different basic wages for different races were not an option. In handing down his decision, Chief Justice Kirby made it clear that awarding Aboriginals equal pay would create welfare problems and other government departments would have to step in and deal with them.

“The introduction of award coverage for aborigines will therefore come into operation on 1^st December 1968... The intervening period will enable the parties [to consider] questions such as accommodation and rations which may require change when aborigines are covered by the award.”

Kirby’s intention was to allow time for Pastoralists to make adjustments to their labour force, allow time for responsible government departments to plan housing, infrastructure, and rationing arrangements for those Aboriginals who might no longer have a place on stations in the future, and allow time for Aboriginals to decide how they would adapt to the changes.

A Queensland Trades & Labor Council Pamphlet

Before this decision was made there were around 600 Aboriginals employed in the Northern Territory pastoral industry, but a total 4,000 Aboriginals dependent on these jobs.

The consequences of this decision were felt in two main ways:

• it led to the displacement of thousands of Aboriginal people
• it precipitated more strike action, culminating in the famous Wave Hill walk off, setting in chain a whole swag of land rights problems.

Going Walkabout

Just one of the examples Pastoralists gave of Aboriginals unreliability was that they had a ‘habit of going walkabout’. For thousands of years Aboriginals survived by working only when they were hungry, and not all Aboriginals were keen to put in the extra effort white bosses expected.

There was a time when a white boss might be told, by an Aboriginal worker ‘we're going walkabout’. This is, more than anything, a polite Aboriginal way of explaining the unexplainable, of saying “we’re leaving for a while and we are not going to tell you where we are going or why’.

It wasn’t the ‘can’t-be-bothereds’ that drove Aboriginals to go bush from time to time, but secret business, sacred or family business, or a sorry time. These were not matters Aboriginals could or would freely discuss with outsiders.

The white perception that this leave-taking was purposeless was so widespread the expression ‘to go walkabout’ became part of the Australian language. If some thing 'went walkabout' it was lost or missing (like my car keys, maybe). Any person who ‘went walkabout’ was someone whose mind wandered because they lacked focus.

No one bothered to include Aboriginals in these wage negotiations.  Given a chance, they might have pointed out they were reliable. The station work was seasonal and when required Aboriginals worked their buns off, often existing on rations that were not nourishing.

If given a chance they might have pointed out that no sane white person would bother doing more than their wage justified. They might have asked how anyone sitting on a horse not yet broken in could ‘go slow’.

On the other hand, some Aboriginals were more westernised and more suited to station work than others.
In many instances, it was an Aboriginal person who allocated Aboriginals to tasks, because they knew who could work with whom (based on relationships), who was free or who needed to go away for some reason, and so on.
Pastoralists wanted workers they could deal with directly, who would be literate, and had a 24/7/52 desire to work hard.

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.

The new Assimilation Policy

The new Welfare Ordinance reflected a shift from the era of ‘Protection’ to a new era of ‘Assimilation’.

The old Protection era focused on the idea of ‘breeding out the colour’ of half-castes, or miscegenation.

The new policy of Assimilation was defined by Minister of Territories Paul Hasluck in 1951:

“Assimilation means in practical terms, that in the course of time it is expected that all persons of Aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia, will live like white Australians do. The acceptance of this policy governs all other aspects of native affairs administration.”

Under this policy, not just half-castes but full blood Aboriginals would be free – so long as they were no longer ‘Aboriginal’ in any way other than colour.

Hasluck was actually a voice of sanity in many respects, believing that some Aboriginals would need more help than others, and that absorbing Aboriginals into mainstream Australia would take time.

We might (quite rightly) interpret the Ordinance as patronising and interfering, or even promoting exploitation. It certainly showed whites were determined Aboriginals should abandon any trace of Aboriginal beliefs, practices or identity, so a cultural form of genocide was to continue.

On the other hand, if it had been implemented by people of good will and in the right spirit, the Ordinance might have been more constructive than it turned out to be.

New Northern Territory Ordinances 1953

In 1953 the Aboriginals Ordinance was replaced by the Welfare Ordinance and the Wards Employment Ordinance.

These new laws were thinly disguised as race-neutral documents.

In theory,

• they would also apply to any white children made wards of the state;
• Aboriginals would no longer automatically be deemed wards of the state, only becoming wards if the state decided they needed help;
• Aboriginals who had merged with the modern world need no longer apply for an exemption in order to achieve the full benefits of Australian citizenship.