PAYMENT OF ABORIGINES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 56, 4 September 1944, Page 3

PAYMENT OF ABORIGINES

SYDNEY, September 3. Protests are being made against a decision by the Federal Arbitration Court not to pay Australian aboriginal workers .in the pastoral industry the same'wage as the whites. Announcing the Court's decision, Mr. Justice Kelly said: "It would be foolish inadvisable, and even cruel, to r>ay fullblooded aborigines at the wage standards appropriate for civilised white workers." "Aborigine? are fighting for Australia on the same conditions as whites, and they should return to I equal conditions in civil life," declared Mr. H. R. Redding, secretary ofJH, Australian Natives' Association. If the aborigines cannot be paid on the same basis as the whites full award rates for work done should be paid to their account with the Proitector of Aborigines." . I Other critics declared that the deicision left the way open for exploitation of the aborigines by unscrupulous squatters. In New South Wales the Government does not i-ecognise any differences of labour conditions and pay between the aborigines and the whites