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PERTH - Western Australia should immediately establish a compensation scheme for stolen Aboriginal wages following a recommendation by a federal Senate committee, a WA Aboriginal land council says.
Goldfields Land and Sea Council (GLSC) Executive Director Brian Wyatt says Aboriginal wages and welfare were withheld, underpaid or not paid throughout the Goldfields pastoral industry and at some missions until the late 1960s.
"The evidence shows that state government agencies and officials knew about the abuses, yet prolonged delays in addressing them and in many cases the complete failure to act was commonplace," Mr Wyatt said.
"Recompense is vital ... in many cases the abuses denied people their sole means of accumulating cash reserves that might otherwise have enabled them to chart different life courses, including economic independence."
Earlier this month, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee published its Unfinished Business: Indigenous Stolen Wages report.
It recommended the WA government establish a compensation scheme in relation to stolen Indigenous wages and welfare entitlements, using the NSW Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme as a model.
The NSW scheme was set up last year to repay wages or other money paid into Aboriginal Trust Funds between 1900 and 1968 and never repaid.
Mr Wyatt said the GLSC had written earlier this week to the then state Indigenous Affairs Minister Sheila McHale seeking a commitment to implement the compensation scheme.
Comment is being sought from the new Indigenous Affairs Minister Michelle Roberts, who was appointed yesterday in a state government cabinet reshuffle.
- AAP
