7. EL CONTRATO DE CONCESIÓN
7.3 Pacto de exclusiva
For the first time in over 80 years, a white man was seen chopping his own wood at Wave Hill this week...No one comes running when the white missus of the station rings her little bell now. 1
Twenty years after Pilbara workers walked away, Aboriginal workers and families left impoverished pastoral station existence in another part of Australia. This time, no singular Don McLeod figure dominated, but communist and unionist activity was highly evident as the campaign progressed.
The Wave Hill cattle station walk-off in the Northern Territory (NT) has been recounted in books, documentary films and songs.2 On 23 August 1966, over 200 people (mostly Gurindji) gathered up meagre belongings and walked to Victoria River. There, in most uncomfortable living circumstances, they sat down as „illegal squatters on a pastoral lease‟.3
Before moving to interpretation of this extreme action, the background needs to be considered.
Aboriginal Workers and the NT Cattle Industry
Northern Australia is an extremely challenging place to farm cattle. Enticements to NT pastoralists, in the form of low-rent leaseholds, had been on offer since the early 1860s, but the initial take-up rate was extremely low. Droving cattle up from South Australia (to which the NT was annexed) or over from Queensland was a costly and labour-intensive exercise, and markets were limited. The NT cattle industry did experience some growth during the 1880s, as markets opened up and prices rose, but this halcyon period was short-lived. The northern cattle industry became a casualty of
1Tribune, No. 1475, 7 September 1966, p. 1. This front-page story about the Wave Hill walk-off was published two weeks after workers walked away.
2The Unlucky Australians (Melbourne, 1968) is the best-known account by non-Aboriginal observer Frank Hardy. Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody‟s From Little Things Big Things Grow tells the story in song – Paul Kelly, Don‟t Start Me Talking, Lyrics 1984-1999 (Sydney, 1999). Ted Egan wrote musical protest GurindjiBlues in the late 1960s – The Aboriginals Songbook (Melbourne, 1987), pp. 78-9. ABC television documentary „Ripples from Wave Hill‟ included interviews with participants and supporters, and was broadcast on Message Stick, 13 and 20 July 2008. Transcripts are located at
<http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/stories/s2302700.htm>, accessed 3 October 2010.
3 Lyn Riddett, „The Strike That Became A Land Rights Movement: A Southern „Do-Gooder‟ Reflects on Wattie Creek 1966-74‟, Labour History, No. 72, May 1997, p. 54.
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the 1890s international depression that overwhelmed the rest of the nation‟s economy as well. But, with the new century came industry advancement. Cattle became more resilient to tropical diseases and insects, and sales to other states increased. Pastoralists learned how to synchronise their routines to the two (dry and wet) seasons of the tropics. However, overall economic performance of the NT cattle industry was poor, and herd management proved particularly problematic. Fences were few and far between, and so were the cattle, making the job of locating, monitoring and mustering them time and manpower intensive. The NT became an expensive and burdensome appendage that South Australia‟s government was relieved to hand over to the Commonwealth in 1911.4
Federal control of the Territory heralded infrastructure improvements. New roads and a railway line from Darwin to Katherine were built. A government deal with the newcomer Vestey Brothers group facilitated the construction of meatworks at Darwin in return for, among other things, public upgrading of the city‟s jetty. The industry grew for several years, but by 1920, again experienced sharp decline. Prices fell, the meatworks closed, and smaller failed pastoral property leases were gobbled up by the two big company players, Vestey and Bovril.5 Vestey had acquired Wave Hill cattle station a few years earlier, and its relationship with the area is explored shortly. Aboriginal labour produced Vestey‟s profits, and the communist press wasted no time revealing the situation. The Communist Party had a long tradition in its short history of disseminating its truths of the NT cattle industry, and in 1923, its first national article about the situation had appeared: „“Advance, Australia Fair”: The Black Slaves in the Northern Territory‟. Romantic imagery of intrepid frontiersmen wrestling valiantly with Australia‟s hostile, but tameable, native landscape was brutally confronted. Cold prose described their industrial pursuit as:
...wealthy squatters „obtaining‟ Federal Government permits that entitle them to force aboriginals [sic] to work on their holdings without any wages being paid. In return for their labour they receive some food, a few rags, and a bark gunyah. The blacks are
4
Judith Elton, „Comrades or Competition?: Union Relations With Aboriginal Workers in the South Australian and Northern Territory Pastoral Industries, 1878-1957‟, unpublished PhD thesis, Flinders University, 2007, pp. 37-44; Deborah Bird Rose, Hidden Histories: Black Stories From Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations (Canberra, 1991), p. 11.
5
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not allowed to leave the stations, are rounded up like station cattle, and are fed on offal and other refuse...6
In 1927, Workers‟ Weekly reported that the vast majority of Aboriginal workers did not actually receive wages in return for labour. Two stations had paid their workers during the previous two years, but the Aboriginal people did not actually touch or even see their money, which was sequestered away into „trust funds‟ administered by station masters.7 In 1932, the Party actively investigated conditions in remote Aboriginal communities, with Secretary Bert Moxon going „among the aborigine [sic] in Central and Northern Australia to spread the doctrines of the party‟.8
Aboriginal protector, John Bleakley, had conducted an investigation into Aboriginal pastoral worker conditions in 1929. He found that most were not receiving wages and lived in appalling circumstances. The Bleakley Report concluded that the pastoral industry was „absolutely dependent upon Aboriginal labour‟, and government was guilty of inadequate service provision and oversight of the industry. But, unfortunately for Bleakley and the Aboriginal workers, timing of the Report‟s release
could not have been worse. His concerns were not addressed, as the global depression confronted governments with far more pressing issues.9
Communists and NT unionists had a frosty relationship during the 1920s and 1930s. Mainstream press reports cited in Workers‟ Weekly noted that Darwin unions were planning to draw „the color [sic] line among the toiling masses‟, by boycotting bosses
employing non-white workers. The Party unequivocally stated its position on Aboriginal workers: „the correct policy is to fight for the full wage for all workers irrespective of color [sic]‟ because:
The aboriginals [sic] are an oppressed people. They have been driven from their natural hunting grounds by the capitalist class...they are being absorbed into industry and there is no reason why they should not be organised with the rest of the workers in the trade unions.10
6
The Communist, No. 97, 26 January 1923, p. 1. This was the second version of the Communist Party national newspaper, superseding Australian Communist (first published on 6 May 1921). Workers‟
Weekly was the next incarnation, commencing on 22 June 1923. Tribune replaced it in 1940. 7Workers‟
Weekly, 9 December 1927, p. 3. 8
Northern Standard, „“Reds” Among the Blacks‟, 5 February 1932, p. 3, cited in Elton, „Comrades or
Competition?‟, p. 258.
9 Margaret Ann Franklin, Black and White Australians (South Yarra, 1976), pp. 120-1. 10Workers‟ Weekly
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Aboriginal workers were not protected by the North Australian Workers‟ Union (NAWU) which, according to Workers‟ Weekly, viewed them as a threat to white worker comfort levels. It reported the „plentiful supply of native workers at low rates of pay is a direct menace to the station workers in North Australia‟.11
NAWU members were described as „two-faced individuals [who were] exploiters of native labor [sic]‟.12 Industrially, then, Aboriginal workers were totally dependent upon flimsy „protections‟ offered by the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Until the 1940s, government protection in the north was scant, and pastoralists operated with impunity. Relatively recent settlement of the region meant that control and power was grasped overwhelmingly by white frontier settlers.13
Workers‟ Weekly described savage and brutal life in the north, reporting atrocities committed by colonial imperialists upon Aboriginal peoples. In one example, a group of seventeen – „old men, women and children‟ – were reportedly „shot down in cold blood by the police‟, for attempting to camp near a watering hole needed for white man‟s cattle. The story of these people, inconveniently in the way, was described as part of the NT „civilising process‟ incorporating slaughter, rape and dispossession of land, culture and hunting grounds.14
In 1931, the Party released its draft Policy of Struggle Against Slavery. This comprehensive Aboriginal policy included a demand for all lands in „Central, Northern, and North West Australia‟ to be handed back. It proposed „Aboriginal republics‟ to make treaties and operate independently of imperialism, to „prevent Capitalism exterminating this race‟.15
Meanwhile, humanitarian groups were establishing a defence against racial discrimination. Feminist organisations, church missionary societies and anti-slavery bodies shared common views about the treatment of Aboriginal people in northern Australia. However, the NAWU continued to beat a different drum, arguing that „full blood‟ Aboriginal pastoral workers should
11Workers‟ Weekly
, No. 349, 16 May 1930, p. 5. 12Workers‟ Weekly
, No. 351, 30 May 1930, p. 2.
13 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney, 1987), p. 95. 14Workers‟ Weekly, 23 November 1928, p. 1.
15Workers‟ Weekly
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not receive any wages.16 Prior to 1933, there was only one small group of NT Aboriginal workers (apprentices) who actually had parity with white workers. But, in that year, the federal government responded to white employer needs by ruling that Aboriginal workers were not entitled to the same rate of pay as their white counterparts. This ordinance removed the only slim-picking of Aboriginal worker equality, and wage rates fell significantly.17
Vestey Time
During the 1940s, communists turned their attention to the British-owned Vestey group of companies. By 1946, the NAWU was also attempting better support for Aboriginal pastoral workers. Tribune described their supply as „on-tap‟ to cattle stations by NT government officials, particularly to those owned by Vestey (operating as Australian Investment Agency Pty Ltd). Aboriginal workers were still unable to be protected by NAWU, as they remained outside the Award system, but now at least the union was actively attempting to gather these workers under its protective cover.18 It applied to adjust the Commonwealth Works and Services (NT) Award so that they were no longer excluded from coverage. This application was granted, and union confidence was buoyed. NAWU then attempted to vary the Cattle Station Industry (NT) Award, despite the curious situation that the union‟s own membership rules excluded most Aboriginal workers.19 At that time, Vestey leased eleven stations in the NT, including nearly four and a half million acres at Wave Hill Station. It also owned W. Angliss and Co., described in Tribune as „Australia‟s largest meat monopoly‟.20
Australia‟s northern cattle industry was, thus, firmly in British hands.
16 Ann McGrath, „„Modern Stone-Age Slavery‟: Images of Aboriginal Labour and Sexuality‟, Labour
History, No. 69, Nov. 1995, pp. 40-4.
17Workers‟ Weekly, No. 532, 15 December 1933, p. 5. This ruling applied to apprentice workers who were racially described and categorised at the time as „half-caste‟.
18
Tribune, No. 276, 20 December 1946, p. 7. For a union to provide protection, workers need to be employed under an Award to which that union is a „party‟, whereby the union has participated in negotiations to create or vary the Award.
19 Elton, „Comrades or Competition?‟, pp. 316-7. 20
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Vestey‟s role in the top-end pastoral industry was clearly substantial. Indeed, Gurindji people often refer to events as occurring before, during, or after „Vestey time‟. Minoru Hokari lived with this community whilst researching his doctoral thesis during the 1990s. He stressed the importance of this notion of time. For example, a Gurindji person may tell of a shooting which occurred „before Vestey time‟.21
Vestey was an integral component of Gurindji life for a long time. This powerful northern cattle industry business dominated many Aboriginal workers‟ lives, and merits a closer look.
21 Minoru Hokari, „Cross-Culturalizing History: Journey to the Gurindji Way of Historical Practice‟, unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2001, p. 257.
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The group of companies commenced operations in 1897, with two Vestey brothers at the helm. Their wealth grew rapidly. By 1913, Vestey was establishing processing and refrigeration plants in countries like China, Argentina, France, Russia and Madagascar. Its first Darwin meat-processing plant was built in 1917, following purchases of 36,000 square miles of pastoral leases throughout NT and East Kimberley.22 Thus, Vestey had already cemented a strong presence in the Territory fifty years prior to the walk-off from Wave Hill.
Vestey company wealth continued to grow. To avoid high freight costs shipping meat from Argentina to Britain, the group established its own shipping company, Blue Star Line. In 1933, Vesteys bought Angliss meat businesses throughout Australia, and its new shipping line facilitated profitable exportation of chilled meat to Britain. Vestey acquisitions increased exponentially. Shipping lines, stevedoring companies, butchers, cold-storage facilities, ice-cream manufacturers, frozen and canned meat suppliers and wool processing plants were bought or established within Australia and other parts of the world. In 1935, the Australian government allowed Vestey to lease even more NT stations. The pastoral industry was now firmly in the grip of overseas interests. This situation persisted despite insipid government murmurings about lease arrangement reviews and transport infrastructure (new roads and stock routes) supposedly assisting the smaller land-lessees.23
In 1936, Wave Hill Station was the focus of investigation by the Chief Protector of Aborigines. Findings indicated Vestey‟s booming financial situation was not being shared with its employees and families, whose conditions were described as „inadequate‟. Consequently Vestey was ordered to pay Aboriginal workers five shillings per week.24 However, its wages pain was short lived. In 1937, the company group discovered a loophole allowing it to earn „income derived directly from primary
22 Peter d‟Abbs, The Vestey Story (Melbourne, 1970), pp. 8-12 [published by the Australasian Meat Industry Employees‟ Union, Victorian Branch]. All profits from the sale of this book went to the Gurindji community.
23
d‟Abbs, The Vestey Story, pp. 13-18.
24 NAA (Darwin), C: A1/15, 1938/329, letter from Cook to Administrator, Half-Caste Aboriginal Policy, Aboriginal Protection Policy, 1935-41, 16 October 1936, cited in Elton, „Comrades or Competition?‟, p. 291.
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production‟ in the NT without incurring income tax. This situation remained in place until 1952. It was a halcyon time for the non-resident British lessees.25
Vestey commissioned Ronald and Catherine Berndt to conduct anthropological surveys of seventeen northern Australian stations between 1944 and 1946. Their brief was to establish why the pool of Aboriginal labour was decreasing so significantly, but the Berndts soon discovered the company‟s real objective for their work. Vestey had hired them to identify and recruit a fresh workforce of „bush Aborigines‟, to buoy dwindling numbers of pastoral employees. Disease, malnutrition, low birth rates and high mortality rates among station Aborigines had created a labour shortage. The Berndts‟ response to what they witnessed was not what Vestey expected. For example, they described the Wave Hill Station a „feudal situation [consisting of] an overlord, with a circle of serfs‟.26 Their far-reaching recommendations included improved medical, housing, sanitation and food provision for Aboriginal workers. Vestey argued incapacity to pay for any of these improvements, and the Berndts‟ report was not released publicly. Indeed, they described their own document as too „hot‟, and politically dangerous.27
Their recommendations went unmet, and the Berndts maintained their castigation of the Vestey conglomerate decades later:
The AIA [Vestey] was blatantly engaged in exploiting the natural resources of the country, including the human resources, for commercial profit...Our own appointment within that structure was an anomaly, devised as a means through which benefits could be obtained for the firm.28
Vestey activities were also monitored in federal parliament. In August 1946, Member for the NT Adair Blain directed twenty-two questions to Minister for Commerce and Agriculture William Scully. Most pertained to Vestey operations and influence upon the Australian government. Blain suggested that Vestey‟s monopoly in the meat industry gave them a stranglehold on the booming export market, particularly to war- torn Britain. He also questioned Vestey‟s enormous Australian landholdings, given that Argentina had recently prohibited that company (as an exporter) from owning
25 d‟Abbs, The Vestey Story, pp. 17-18. 26
Ronald M Berndt and Catherine H Berndt, End of An Era: Aboriginal Labour in the Northern Territory (Canberra, 1987), p. 272.
27 Berndt and Berndt, End of An Era, p. 270.
28 Berndt and Berndt, End of an Era, p. 273. „Australian Investment Agency‟ was the Vestey Australian identity.
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land there. Scully‟s answers to Blain‟s questions were scant and evasive. He refuted claims that Vestey controlled Australia‟s meat industry or received special government treatment, and refused Blain‟s request to investigate the land-ownership ban in Argentina. Scully also refused to provide information detailing acreage across Australia under Vestey control.29 Vestey was a lucrative British-owned group of companies, and the Australian government appeared content with its presence and prosperity.
NT pastoral leases were again discussed in parliament two years later. Blain doggedly pressed the government about land lease extensions for companies like Vestey and Bovril. Minister for the Interior Herbert Johnson revealed that Lord Vestey and company representatives had negotiated lengthened leases on huge pastoral properties like Wave Hill until 1980. Blain was quick to point out Vestey‟s profitable arrangement with the government thus far, with the public purse paying for half of all Vestey improvements like fencing, water bores and windmills. The company had also been granted heavily-subsidised transport costs. Blain again raised Argentina‟s reaction, where inappropriate pressures upon government culminated with removal of all Vestey land rights there. Blain claimed that, by comparison, the Vestey Northern Territory „racket‟ was „taking the [Australian] government for a ride‟, and he pushed for a royal commission investigation of government dealings with the company group.30
Vestey-leased stations continued to make big profits whilst exploiting large Aboriginal workforces. Doris Blackburn MHR pressed Johnson about NT Aboriginal wages and conditions, and his answers present a clear picture of worker life in 1949. An industrial agreement determined Aboriginal wages, paid on a „sliding scale‟ up to a maximum three pounds ten shillings per week. Most stations were obliged to provide an unspecified quality of worker accommodation, with all wages held in-trust by Native Affairs Officers. This was because Aboriginal workers didn‟t understand
29
CommonwealthParliamentary Debates: Senate and H of R, Vol.188, 6 & 7 August 1946, pp. 3778-9. 30
CommonwealthParliamentary Debates: Senate and H of R, Vol. 198, 16 September 1948, pp. 513-5. Similar sentiment in 1949 noted the poor condition of cattle on large stations, and the size of large