investigation
WA Government hopes to settle massive historical Indigenous stolen wages case out of court

Glenys Yarran still carries the emotional and physical pain of a childhood spent working — and never being paid. She was just 11 and living with her family, including her army veteran father, in tents in Meenaar, near Northam, when they were herded up and put in trucks like cattle. Yarran and her three sisters were taken to St Joseph’s Native School and Orphanage in New Norcia, where they worked from Monday to Saturday, washing, ironing and meticulously folding “truckloads” of white schoolboy uniforms, checking every button on the shirts and mending holes in socks. Yarran, who says she cried for a full fortnight after arriving, remembers being hit with a strap for talking and wiping maggots from the sheep heads they used to make broth while working in the kitchen. The older children had to pick fruit, but were forbidden from eating it and if they were caught sneaking a grape, would cop a whacking. The younger ones, including Yarran’s sister, would surreptitiously eat from the buckets of veggie scraps from the nuns’ meals before they threw them to the chickens. She lived this way for five years, until she was kicked out at 16, with nothing to show for all her work. On May 30, mediation will resume on a class action, in which Yarran and up to 14,000 other Indigenous people who worked for no pay or next to nothing will seek to recover stolen wages from the State Government, with an out-of-court settlement possible. Backed by Litigation Lending Services, the size of the claim is anticipated to be far bigger than the record-breaking $190 million settlement achieved with the Queensland Government for nearly 12,000 stolen wages claimants in 2019. The action was lodged in the Australian Human Rights Commission in August 2020 by Shine Lawyers, representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who lived and worked in WA between December 1936 and June 1972. At the time, they were classified as a “controlled native” under now-defunct laws first established by the Native Administration Act 1905-1936 (WA), which gave the Department of Native Welfare the power to hold up to 75 per cent of earnings in a complex network of government-controlled trust accounts. In many cases, those workers — including stockmen, farm hands and laundry, kitchen and domestic workers — never received even part of the money they were owed. The legislation also paved the way for the forcible removal of children from their parents — the Stolen Generation. Mediation with the WA Government began in 2021 and follows a long and emotional process for the families involved, Shine Lawyers joint head of class actions Vicky Antzoulatos says. “These workers earned and were deprived of this money — it’s as simple as that,” she says. “The proceedings seek to expose and in some measure, heal, the generational wounds to First Nations people caused by these practices. “As a nation, we are on a constant path to reconciliation. It’s imperative these stories are heard, and that we make every effort to correct the wrongs of the past and learn for the future. We hope a resolution of these proceedings can be reached.” And it appears the State Government is amenable to settling out of court, with Aboriginal Affairs Minister Tony Buti indicating it is his hope “this matter can be resolved through mutual agreement”. “We are committed to working in partnership with Aboriginal people to acknowledge the inter-generational impacts of past injustices,” he tells STM. “The State Government is working with all parties to progress the Federal Court proceeding.” For 77-year-old Yarran, who still suffers pain in her joints as a result of years spent cleaning floors on her hands and knees, is among four generations of her family to have been exploited with hard work. The mother-of-nine, grandmother-of-20 and great-grandmother to six, says she’s angry at the inhumane way the New Norcia “orphans” were treated — and justice is long overdue. “That’s what I’d like to see, for all the ones who have been in there,” Yarran says. “My friends (from New Norcia) have all died now. There’s only a couple of us left.” Barbara Moore is another taking part in the class action — she was separated from her family and dragged in and out of institutions and foster care until age 18 as a ward of the State, spending her teens working when she should have been enjoying her youth and bonding with her eight siblings. “I grew up around Guildford and Midland but my mum and dad split up and my younger brothers were taken away . . . I was classed as uncontrollable under the Welfare Act,” Moore tells STM. “I didn’t like a lot of the places that I stayed in.” The 72-year-old mother-of-five and grandmother-of-16 gazes into the distance from a park bench as she describes how she was first sent to the Receiving Home in Mt Lawley, where she was made to do heavy laundry work at just 14. The State Government-run facility temporarily housed youths awaiting placement with foster parents or institutions, but because Moore kept running away, she spent a lot of time there. “We used to do the sheets and pillowcases, tablecloths and all sort of things . . . all day. Very hard, very hot, away from family, just head down and continuously working,” she says. “Sometimes I was burnt with hot rollers.” As she approached 15, Moore was sent to work for a poultry business and told she couldn’t have any of the cash that she earned because she would “just take off” and leave them short of workers. “There was never any money in my hand. I was only working for my meals and my bed,” she remembers. “There was no little kitty or little bank so when we did get relief from those places, we’d have something. We just thought that was our punishment. “We were just placed in these homes to be maids, servants . . . I took off from there again because I wasn’t happy away from my family. I’d cry every night. No communication with anyone.” Later, Moore was sent to the Good Shepherd in Wembley, which she describes as “a monastery behind walls — so beautiful on the outside . . . until you were in there”. “That’s where they really put us to work — I was like a servant,” she says. “We just got up, had our meals, no talking. Truckloads, huge van loads of all things from hotels, motels — laundry again. “We never went outside the walls, no outings. No nothing. We couldn’t eat until Mother Superior came in, we couldn’t sit down until she sat down. And then you’re straight back into that laundry. You’re so tired.” Aged 16, she was sent to the Methodist-run Mogumber Mission, near the Moore River Native Settlement north-east of Perth, where the older children like her had to look after the younger ones. “We did all the cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, hanging clothes, folding clothes — we did everything,” she remembers. On weekends, they were sent out to be “servants and maids for rich farmers”. “We used to look after their children, wash them, wash the clothes, polish floors, shining glasses, collecting eggs,” Moore says. “I thought ‘what am I doing out here in the never-never, on my own, no family?’ Traumatised. “We lost our culture, visitation. I didn’t even know where my brothers and sisters were. You might get a chocolate or a Coke but you never saw any money. “I’m getting it off my chest now — about time.” When she was 18 and freed from her servitude, she went to Perth looking for her family. She ended up in Fremantle Prison, after she lashed out and hit someone for calling her a “black c...”, and wound up back in the laundry. For that work, she got a small stipend, which was more than she’d ever got in her teens. Moore’s eldest sister, who she had gone almost all her life without seeing, found her in prison, but it took time to be reunited with her other siblings after completing her sentence. Most were at Sister Kate’s Children’s Cottage Home, which became a brutal place of abuse after its namesake founder died and it was taken over by the Uniting Church in the 1950s. Ms Moore is the last of nine siblings left and has a simple, deeply poignant wish, should the class action or mediation prove fruitful. “I’d also help my grandchildren: I’d still be the same, going to a second-hand shop. I’m not going on a cruise or fly on holidays or things like that.” In 2012, the Barnett Government paid out a paltry total of just $2.55 million to 1276 WA claimants under an ex-gratia scheme, with individual payments capped at just $2000. The Barnett Government had reportedly commissioned financial modelling on how much the State owed unpaid Indigenous workers, with the ABC quoting a “whistleblower” as saying that in early talks, “Treasury agreed that individual payouts would be as high as $78,000”. An LLS spokesperson says the current action in WA is one of the most significant of the nation’s stolen wages claims. “There is a significant number of affected group members who are elderly and interest continues to accrue on outstanding wages,” the spokesperson says. “It’s extremely difficult to compensate people who have been subjected to wage theft and slavery. “Whatever the amount, it is hoped the WA Government will use the opportunity to help make right the injustices of the past, settling these claims to allow group members and their families to move forward with their lives.” They said the action was also about “facing up to the inter-generational poverty caused by the past practice of controlling labour and withholding wages/payments from Indigenous workers”. “At its heart is the Australian principle of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” the LLS spokesperson says. Buti says he also hopes the ongoing mediation process will be the avenue through which “all parties can reach a successful resolution”. LLS is also funding a stolen wages class action in the Northern Territory and working with Shine to prepare the evidence of group members along with expert evidence. The Federal Court will travel to the Top End in July for an evidence preservation hearing, held for elders or ill witnesses. For Yarran, if mediation is successful, it will be at least some justice for the pain of the past. Even before she was taken from her family and put to work, her family had experienced exploitation — when she was a child in York, her mother worked for farmers doing cleaning, laundry and many other things, and was only paid in hand-me-down clothes. Her father did odd jobs for them and also sheared, paid a minimal salary. She and her six brothers and three sisters spent their early life living simply in tents in York, when her father was enlisted in the army, then in Meenaar when he returned from service and sewed together chaff bags for their bedding. The meagre payments her father received was “enough to buy a bit of meat and flour, sugar and tea — that was all,” Yarran says. Aboriginal people were not allowed to live in towns and forced to live on the outskirts. The adults could only visit with a permit and had to abide by a 6pm curfew. It was a tough time, but there was love in the family. Then their worlds were torn apart by Native Welfare trackers, who took her along with younger siblings and a nephew. In the New Norcia institution run by the Benedictine Missionary Sisters, Yarran remembers the children would eat almost exclusively mutton broth, with no vegetables or meat in it, and their after-school snacks were biscuits they had to wipe the weevils off. They’d get a shower once a week using soap made from dripping, outside in front of the “cruel” nuns, who would spray kerosene in their hair to prevent nits. They only had Sunday afternoon off, to spend playing in the paddock. “We used to roll in the grass so the nuns can’t see us, for a swim in the creek,” Yarran laughs, at seemingly the only pleasant memory of those five years. For Barbara Moore, who has also had multiple generations of family members “basically paid in tea, sugar and tobacco”, and robbed of identity, the reason behind the fight for her wages is simple. “It’s justice I want,” she declares. “It’s time for them to pay the rent. “I demand that we be paid, as a slave, a servant and a maid.”

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WA Government hopes to settle massive historical Indigenous stolen wages case out of court

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WA Government hopes to settle massive historical Indigenous stolen wages case out of court