It witnessed many a deed and vow, We must not change its colour now

A couple of days ago, delivering the keynote address at the organisation’s Indigenous conference in Darwin, the national Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Jeff Lawrence, puffed out his chest (he may not have; that's just how i imagine it) and declared, “Australian unions have always stood by our Indigenous brothers and sisters.”

Indeed.

And that shame-faced figure slinking off into a shadowy corner? That’s Australian History. She’s very embarrassed.

‘Always’ is a definite term. In Western Australia (and the situation was mirrored in the other states), in the early twentieth century, “The white working class sought the removal of Aborigines from the labour force from a blend of humanitarianism, racial prejudice, and fear of cheap competition… working class politicians favoured measures which would restrict the employment of Aborigines.” (I owe Professor Geoffrey Bolton for this)

Under pressure from the unions, State Parliament implemented in the notorious 1905 Aborigines Act rulings that Aborigines not be paid cash wages and could only be employed under a permit system. Aboriginal people did not gain employment in any unionised industry in that time. Isolated from the rest of the labour force, and unsupported by the unions, they had no chance to break out of the virtual slave labour conditions they found themselves living under for more than half a century.

There were union-driven protests against Aboriginal grave-diggers in Southern Cross in 1902, against the employment of Aboriginal shearers on Noonkanbah station in 1908, and against the use of women as labourers in the Toodyay district in 1911.














The climax of the unions’ campaign to exclude Aborigines from the workforce came in 1912, when the state executive of the Australian Labor Party moved a resolution banning the employment of Aborigines on private property. Prof. Bolton concluded, “It was no coincidence that the harassment of the south-west part Aborigines occurred under the Scadden Labor Government of 1911-16.”

So. How’s that again, Jeff? “unions… always… stood by” &c.

Enough, of course, is enough. Since about 1950, unions in Australia have been, increasingly, supportive of Aboriginal rights. It’s just that ‘always’ bit that raises a VCH’s hackles.

Ah, Australian History. Look at you; you look positively downcast. Your makeup’s all askew. And is that a graze on your knee, you poor thing? Sit down, you don’t look at all well. What’s that? A massage? Oh, no, absolutely not. There’s been far too much of that already.