Dividing spoils of $190m stolen wages win ‘risks injustice’

Using race and gender to determine how much people receive from a class action would be an injustice, Mick Gooda says.

Aboriginal leader Mick Gooda. Picture: Emma Murray

Torres Strait Islander women who had their wages stolen by the Queensland government will be paid less than half the compensation for Aboriginal men, under a proposed $190m settlement scheme based on race and gender drafted by lawyers for the indigenous workers.

Federal Court judge Bernard Murphy will on Thursday be asked to approve the dispersal of the $190m July settlement from the Queensland government, after thousands of indigenous workers had their wages taken by the government, or effectively worked as slaves, between 1939 and 1972.

The Australian can reveal the settlement scheme is based on whether the workers are alive or have died, their age, race and gender, with $50m to be carved off first for the litigation funders and lawyers.

Settlement documents show that, broadly, Aboriginal men will receive a certain amount, Aboriginal women’s payments will be discounted by 20 per cent, Torres Strait Islander men will be paid half of what Aboriginal men are paid, and Torres Strait Islander women will be paid 60 per cent less than what Aboriginal men get.

Aboriginal leader Mick Gooda — who led the Queensland Stolen Wages Repar­ations Taskforce that paid out $21m in 2016 — said the dispersal plan and the fees were “flabbergasting” and risked perpetuating an “historic injustice” and creating division.

Justice Murphy will be asked to sign off on $38m — or 20 per cent — of the settlement going to litigation funders Litigation Lending, which took on the risk of the class action, and $12.5m for legal costs to be shared between solicitors, barristers, accountants and anthropologists.

More than 11,000 workers and their descendants will share in the remainder, about $140m.

Justice Murphy will be asked to decide whether the scheme is fair, reasonable and in the interests of the class action members.

Cairns-based Bottoms English Lawyers, solicitors for the workers and their relatives, helped devise the settlement scheme. Associate Jerry Tucker said a flat distribution would be unfair, and the scheme had been based on evidence and the law. “The reality is, female ­Aboriginal workers such as cooks or domestic servants received a significant disparity in wages (compared with Aboriginal male stockmen),” Ms Tucker said.

“This is a deeply unfair historical aberration, it’s not some­thing we support, and we did not make that decision lightly, but we could not ignore the reality.”

She said Aboriginal people were in line to receive more than Torres Strait ­Islanders because evidence showed Islanders working on pearling and fishing boats received more pay, and had more control over their bank accounts.

Mr Gooda, who chaired the Queensland Stolen Wages Repar­ations Taskforce that paid out $21m in 2016, said the proposed scheme was “flabbergasting”. “A lot of our women were treated like sex slaves while they were there,” he said. “Others, like my mother, she was a domestic and was taken away with all my aunties from Woorabinda.”

Mr Gooda said the reparations scheme he administered did not make a distinction for race or gender, only age, which reflected the years worked.

“This will continue the injustice,” he said.