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THE Queensland Government deliberately underpaid Aboriginal people working on remote church-run missions in Cape York in the 1970s and 1980s. Cabinet submissions and correspondence now before the courts show the then government was in breach of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Cabinet was warned that setting wages of Aboriginal workers on Wujal Wujal and Hope Vale Lutheran Church missions was in breach of the Act. But it did not agree to pay wages equal to those paid to non-indigenous people until 1987. Former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was chairman of the Lutheran council before the 1980s and personally helped establish Hope Vale, north of Cooktown. The State Government faces a payout of hundreds of millions of dollars if a test case on behalf of 1500 Aboriginal people who worked on the missions in the 1970s and 1980s succeeds in court. Eight men and women from Hope Vale and Wujal Wujal have sued the Lutheran Church and the State of Queensland, each seeking $500,000 for wages they were underpaid from 1975 until 1987.
Approximate Word count = 580
Approximate Pages = 2.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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