From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – July 25

I have known for 65-years that the white man in this country
has been stealing from the black man – and with impunity!

IT has been reported, after years of ignoring, obfuscating, and doggedly protracted negotiations, the Queensland government has settled a long-running, stolen wages case for $190 million, with thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people seeking to recover wages earned over three decades – and never paid! The Queensland figure is thought to be closer to $500 million.

It has been going-on since the First Fleet arrived to colonise Australia. It is beyond comprehension. That everyone should now be so astonished and wringing their hands in disbelief and abject regret is a load of hubristic, white supremacist, rubbish. Blind Freddy could have told you it was happening. The opportunity for gross exploitation, intentional theft, and insatiable greed, was too irresistible. That former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, argued, spuriously, it was a settlement and not an invasion when Britain took possession of this country gives some indication of how the white man feels about the black man and his 60,000 of history in this country. That we were taught Captain Cook discovered Australia speaks volumes.

His dates were 1728-1779. What about Dirk Hartog, Abel Tasman, Willem de Vlamingh, and William Dampier? That we have statues around the country saying Cook discovered Australia is a nonsense, and an insult to all Australians – black and white. Even the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was heard to propagate the historical solecism. The truth is most people (including politicians) have scant knowledge of this country’s history. They have – at best – a sanitised, white man’s, primary school version of events. The degree of historical ignorance is a bloody disgrace. I concede, 55 years down the track, my factual recall is not as immediate, or as accurate, as once it was, but I’ll bet you, London to a brick, I could set an oral, matriculation-standard, history test which most politicians would fail.

As a child, I saw, but was understandably unaware of the discrimination, Aboriginal workers being treated badly, and poorly paid for the domestic and mustering work they did on the out-lying sheep stations which surrounded my hometown, Gwalia, in the north-eastern goldfields of Western Australia. Their accommodation was of a third-world standard (no running water, light, heating, or sanitation); and the weekly food rations (given in lieu of wages) from the station store consisted of flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, and inferior meat off-cuts which never would have made it to the station owner’s table. If the Aboriginal stockmen were paid, it was an amount equivalent to less than a quarter that of their white counterpart. Black and white stockmen were quartered in separate accommodation. For the Aborigines it was, usually, a lean-to arrangement of tarpaulins and tin. The station cook (usually the Missus assisted by a black domestic) prepared food only for the white stockmen. It was, in all but name, blatant apartheid.

Hans Pearson, the uncle of Noel Pearson, the lead applicant in the case seeking to recover unpaid wages earned in the period between 1939 and 1972, told ABC television’s 7.30 program, “We worked for over 10 to 12 years for nothing.” When, finally, he went to collect his total wages from the local police station he was given a cheque for twenty-eight pounds ($56). Mr Pearson said his wife and brothers died before they got to see a proper settlement. He has lived in community housing for more than 40 years, and said being denied his wages had deprived him of his life-long dream of home ownership.

The Vestey brothers (Wave Hill station – Northern Territory) were said to be amongst the worst perpetrators of Aboriginal wages theft.

Roland can be heard every Monday morning – 10.30 – on radio 3BA and contacted via contact [email protected].