Position Paper: Profiting from Poverty
State Policies and Aboriginal Deprivation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600001343Keywords:
Aboriginal community, Palm Island, Queensland government, anti-discrimination legislation, Human Rights CommissionAbstract
In December 1995 I spent a week with the Aboriginal community of Palm Island. Here seven elderly men and women shared with me their life stories; stories of families torn apart by police deportations, of confinement in dormitories, of hunger and hardship, of decades of forced unpaid labour, and recent years of struggle on partial wages. These Aboriginal workers have been fighting for ten years to force the Queensland government to abide by the laws of the nation. Citing 1975 Federal anti-discrimination legislation which confirms that no worker should be paid less than the legal entitlement solely on the grounds of race, religious beliefs, or gender, these workers had turned to the Human Rights Commission for justice.
References
The documentary evidence on which this paper is based is located on two government files controlled by the Division of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs - file 01-077-006 and file TR257 lC/190. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission findings of The Hon William Carter QC in the matter of Kitchener Bligh et al and the State of Queensland were handed down on 24.9.96.
