Position Paper: Profiting from Poverty: State Policies and Aboriginal Deprivation

Extract

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.