Child labour under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909-1969
From 1909 to 1969, the Aborigines Protection Board and later the Aborigines Welfare Board could remove certain Aboriginal children from their families under the Aborigines Protection Act. These children were placed in training homes and apprenticeships. Apprenticeships were used to separate Aboriginal children from their communities and assimilate them into non-Aboriginal society.
Aboriginal children had been placed into apprenticeships during the 1800s (see SUB0040), but from 1909 the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW) () enabled a more formal system for Aboriginal children, giving the Board the power to apprentice out to approved employers:
- children of certain ‘Aborigines’; and,
- ‘neglected’ children of a person who appeared to have mixed blood (from 1909 to 1918).
The words ‘Aborigine’ and ‘neglected’ had special meanings in the law. These laws that determined which children the Board could remove and apprentice changed numerous times (see SUB0087 and SUB0093 for more about who could be placed in an apprenticeship or training home).
From 1909 to 1915, the Board was required () to follow the rules in the Apprentices Act 1901 (NSW) (), which gave apprentices and their parents certain rights. In 1915 the Aborigines Protection Amendment Act 1915 (NSW) () changed this so the Apprentices Act rules no longer applied, and the Board could apprentice these Aboriginal children ‘on such terms and conditions as it may think, under the circumstances of the case, to be desirable’ ().
When the Parliament debated these changes, some Parliamentarians believed this equated to ‘the reintroduction of slavery’; others that it would provide the children with ‘a chance to better themselves’ and ‘merge into the present civilisation and become worthy citizens’ ().
Initially, the minimum age for these Aboriginal apprentices was 14 years (, ). From 1915, there does not appear to be a minimum age (). It has been calculated 20% of girls were sent out at age 12 and 13 years between 1916 and 1928 (). By 1940, in practice, children were apprenticed at 14 years () and the Board had no authority to apprentice them after the age of 18 years ().
Incomplete Board records means it is difficult to know how many children were apprenticed, however there was a ‘concentration on removing girls’ () and between 1916 and 1928, ‘570 girls were apprenticed’ (). A Select Committee Report in 1981 found that, between 1913 and 1938, 800 children removed from their parents ‘were taken by the Board to be trained as cheap labour for “employers” under the apprenticeship scheme’ ()
Terms and conditions
The terms and conditions of employment for these Aboriginal apprentices were set out in the Aborigines Protection Regulations, originally made in 1910 () and revised intermittently.
The Regulations set out the apprentice rates of pay and the amount of pocket money to be paid to the apprentice. Wages were paid to, and held by, the Board (, ). Pocket money was a small portion of the wages that was supposed to be given directly to the apprentice. However, payment of pocket money was usually not checked by the Board and was not always paid () (see SUB0464 for more about stolen wages). The Regulations also included requirements for employers to provide accommodation, food, clothing, medical care, ‘moral training’ and allow church attendance ()
These wages were significantly lower than wages paid to other apprentices and young, unskilled workers. For example, in 1907, the minimum wage set by the Harvester case for a first-year apprentice in a harvester factory was nearly 8 times the wage paid to Aboriginal apprentices () ().
During a 1924 debate, one Parliamentarian pointed out the difference between the wages of Aboriginal apprentices and the ‘living wage’ set down by the Arbitration Court and suggests ‘if the employers could not get aborigines for such a small consideration, they would employ white people. It is purely and simply a question of cheap labour’ ().
Compulsion
In 1915, when Parliament was debating the Board’s apprenticeship powers, it was told ‘any child who chooses can refuse to be apprenticed’ (). However, if an Aboriginal child did refuse to go, the Board could send them to an institution (). One Parliamentarian responded saying, ‘when a black child is boarded out, she is generally either hooked on to the plough or swings an axe. Nobody cares what becomes of her. Once the children get out of the hands of the mission stations and are boarded out or apprenticed, they have no chance whatever’ ().
Aboriginal children were ‘indentured’ (bound by an official agreement) by the Board to their employers for a period of up to four years. They did not have the freedom to change employers if they were abused or unhappy (). In contrast, other apprentices had transfer rights under the Apprentices Act and industrial awards ().
From 1915 to 1940, the Board could decide whether an apprenticeship could be cancelled (). From 1940, any complaint about an employer breaching the employment conditions of an apprentice had to be proved in the Children's Court and the Court could then order that the apprenticeship be cancelled ().
Apprenticeship life
A 1940 inquiry found ‘children are generally apprenticed, especially girls, to domestic duties; and boys in rural employment and as house boys’ ().
The Discussion and Analysis documents provide insight into the ‘hard, very hard’ () conditions of apprentices with working hours for female domestics in the 1920’s ‘starting at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning and finishing when they went to bed at night’ (), a lack of education and training () and ‘all too common’ pregnancies, sexual harassment and abuse (, , ).
Training homes
Children who were too young to be apprenticed by the Board were sent to homes run or overseen by the Board and then, from the age of 10, to the training homes (). At these homes, they were required to work in farm work, domestic work and construction (, ). For example, at Kinchela, boys worked long hours on vegetable and dairy farms run on the reserve (). Over 400 boys had suffered under this system by the time Kinchela closed in 1970 ().
Impacts
Children placed in training and apprenticeships were trained to think that although ‘they were superior to other Aborigines, they were inferior to the whites and … that they should reject their own families’ (). ‘After leaving [the training institution] for apprenticeships at the age of fifteen, they were placed as far as possible away from other blacks. They were warned, above all, not to return to their communities’ ().
One woman recounts her reunion with her community in Cowra, after having been removed as a child, in Read’s oral history collection (). She describes how the ties of Aboriginal apprentices to their Aboriginal communities and culture were severed. This illustrates how ‘a return to an Aboriginal identity and family can be one of the great ordeals of life’ and how ‘the most subtle weapon in the armoury of dispersal was not physical but psychological’ ().