Last month a Queensland court threw out the case of an Indigenous elder seeking to reclaim wages stolen by the state government.

Conrad Yeatman, 74, was seeking $35,000 for wages earned as a carpenter and labourer in northern Queensland during the 1950s.

Justice David Andrews did not dispute that Yeatman’s wages had been stolen. Using the same racist logic that originally justified the practice of “quarantining” Indigenous wages, he reasoned that the superintendent who “managed” Yeatman’s money could have withdrawn cash for food or other reasons on his behalf. Citing the government’s failure to keep records, he ruled, “The defendants have effectively no evidence whatsoever to test these claims.”

Like all Indigenous people living in Queensland at the time, Yeatman was subject to the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act, which meant that his wages were placed in a trust under the control of a third party – in this case the superintendent of Yarrabah mission.

According to historian Dr Rosalind Kidd, who is the recognised academic authority on stolen wages in Queensland, all other states had similar legislation, which lasted 60 to 70 years and encompassed hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of whom the government forced into employment.

Whatever the type of work and whatever names it was given, this practice was a form of legalised slavery.

Yeatman’s case took five years to reach trial. It is unlikely that another will be brought, despite the fact that the total amount stolen from Indigenous people in Queensland alone is estimated to be around $500 million. Dr Kidd’s research reveals that much of this money, in Queensland at least, went into general revenue and was used by successive governments to build major infrastructure projects such as hospitals.

This is the “black armband” view of history that Christopher Pyne and the Liberals are so desperate to erase from the cultural memory.

Slavery

By the late 19th century, white invasion had devastated the First Nations across Australia. It is estimated that in Queensland the Indigenous population of between 100,000 and 200,000 fell to around 25,000.

To suppress Indigenous resistance and the violence caused by white settlement, colonial governments introduced what they called “protective” laws. The first was in 1860 in South Australia, where a chief protector was charged to “smooth the pillow of the dying race”.

There was a widespread belief that Indigenous people would simply die out. The legislators’ role was to herd them into missions under state supervision in order that it all happened in an orderly fashion. Similar legislation was passed in Victoria in 1869, Queensland (1897), Western Australia (1905) and New South Wales (1909).

These and subsequent “protection” acts set up a system of surveillance and control that lasted for decades. Indigenous people were deprived of basic human rights such as freedom of movement, custody of children and control over personal property.

In Queensland, senior police officers in each district were appointed “protectors” and given the power to send people to government reserves or contract them out for work, as well as to control their personal finances: wages, property, savings, endowment payments and pensions.

Reserves were intended to train Indigenous people – particularly those of mixed descent, who were referred to as “half-castes” – in the ways of white society. The government also reserved the right to dispense summary punishment and prohibit Indigenous language and customs. It was cultural genocide.

Children were taken from their parents and taught values and behaviours that would make them “acceptable” to white Australia. In some states and the Northern Territory, the chief protector had legal guardianship over all Indigenous under the age of 21.

This system ripped Indigenous children from loving families and sent them to reserves and farms where they were often abused, raped and used as slave labour.

Melrose Donley was “handed over” to a Thomas Bell to work on a dairy farm in Kholo, Queensland, at the age of 14. In his submission to an inquiry into stolen wages in 2006, Melrose recounted, “The day started at 3:30am to round up cows in the dark, barefooted, chilblains on my feet, falling over logs and when a cow from lying on the ground, upon rising, would do her dropping, it being warm I would rub it up my legs and the warmth from it would ease the pain temporary.”

Melrose worked 14-hour days. “It was like working on a prison farm – never saw anyone, read a paper or a magazine, it was the same year after year, 365 days with no time off.”

The system continued to produce servants for the well-to-do of Australian society until the protection boards were disbanded in the 1960s.

“I didn’t even know anything about money. I didn’t know how to spend money … I was there to obey”, Valerie Linow told the ABC’s Rewind program in 2004.

At the age of two, Valerie was charged by the Newtown Children’s Court with being a neglected child. She ended up in the Cootamundra Girls’ Home.

As a teenager in the 1950s, she was moved from household to household as a domestic servant.

The turning point came when, at the age of 17, the grazier who worked her from sunrise to nightfall every day exploded in a fit of rage over a bucket of spilt milk. “He yelled out to me, ‘Get inside!’ And the next minute, he just belted me … And the elder … elder girl, she was about 10, and I could hear the girl calling, ‘Give it to her, Daddy! Give it to the nigger!’”

What came next was worse: “The next minute, he yells out to me, he said, ‘Valerie, get in here’. He said, ‘You didn't do the girls’ room properly’ … I went into the girls' room and then that's when he raped me.”

‘Freedom’

In 1965, under pressure from the local and international community, the Queensland government declared Indigenous people free from all state control, except for anyone on a government reserve and anyone who was deemed by a magistrate to be in need of “assistance”. Controls were maintained over their personal finances.

It was not until 1968 that a cash economy was introduced to government reserves and Indigenous people were allowed to work for money, rather than rations and board. But the government paid these Indigenous workers 45 percent less than what was deemed adequate for a white family to survive on.

“Deportations” to reserves ceased only after 1971. The government then abolished the “assisted” status, which had allowed it to keep Indigenous people in complete servitude, but retained the right to underpay them.

In wasn’t until 1972 that they were allowed to manage their personal financial accounts. Even then they had to apply for the privilege. Thousands of accounts remained in the hands of the government.

Pocket money for slavery

Fourteen years ago the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Legal Service Secretariat (QAILSS) started collecting testimony from more than 2,000 people who wanted to reclaim unpaid wages and funds.

When the Beattie Labor government realised that the case was getting serious, it began taking an interest. It approached QAILSS to negotiate a resolution.

In May 2002 the government announced its “full and final” offer: a pittance of $55.6 million, or $2,000 for each surviving worker under the age of 50 and $4,000 for older survivors. Anyone who signed the deal would also sign away the right to further legal action.

Beattie conceded that some might be disappointed, but said that the settlement was a win for the taxpayers. “[W]e can move on”, he said.

The settlement was the first official government acknowledgement of stolen wages. However, there was no attempt to provide any background to the case, such as a report or statement about the decades of systemic abuse, genocide and slavery endured by these Indigenous workers.

Dr Kidd described reactions among the Indigenous community to the deal as mixed, but she also found many openly hostile. At a meeting in Yarrabah, elders and community members described the payment variously as “pocket money for 40 years of slavery” and “insulting”.

Many were afraid that if they didn’t accept the offer, they would get nothing at all. Many felt rushed and intimidated into accepting. They were given three months to take it or leave it.

Yeatman was entitled to a payment, but refused to accept it. Now that his case has been lost, he is facing the prospect of paying the government’s legal costs.

Despite the government’s pitiful justification that there are no records of where the money went, there is now a mountain of evidence of government mismanagement and fraud. This includes historian and human rights advocate Dr Kidd’s painstaking 15 years of research, as well as a massive database collected by the government’s own special investigative unit.