Aborigines To Get Equal Pay

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31003, 8 March 1966, Page 17

Aborigines To Get Equal Pay

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, March 7. The Commonwealth Arbitration Commission decided today that full Aborigines employed on cattle stations in the Northern Territory should receive equal aw'ard pay and privileges with white workers.

Awards coverage for the Aborigines will begin on December 1, 1968.

The president of the commission (Sir Richard Kirby) said the date nearly two years hence would give everyone concerned ample time to deal with various practical matters involved.

The Court’s “equal pay” judgment will affect the lives of nearly 5000 full-blooded Aborigines, most of whom are semi-tribalised. The North Australian Workers’ Union applied to the commission, last year, for deletion of a clause excluding Aborigines from the Cattie Station Industry Award. The union claimed the granting of award rates would provide a new starting point for Aboriginal assimilation.

Award wages would result in the Aborigines receiving weekly increases ranging from four to 20 dollars. The present low rates were regulated by Government ordinances and few Aborigines on cattle stations have been paid more than 10 dollars a week. Pastoral employers opposed the claim. They claimed the granting of the claim would result in many Aborigines being displaced by white labour. Few aborigines were worth award pay. they said.

The Commonwealth Government intervened in the case, in the public interest. Its representative said the Govern ment favoured award pay for the Aborigines. But it believed the rates should be given to the Aborigines, gradually over a three-year period.