Historical Information Sheet No 9: The Islanders and the Government Processes
The Islanders and the Government Processes
When the Islander recruits landed in Queensland they had to deal with Police Magistrates, Inspectors of Pacific Islanders, and Government Medical Officers. These men were responsible for supervising the arrival of the recruits, ensuring they had entered contracts voluntarily, were of a legal age, and were healthy enough to work for three years. If there were doubts on any grounds, recruits could be returned to their islands on the next available vessel. Although the process depended on the judgement and honesty of the officials, misunderstandings could be negotiated. The Magistrates and Inspectors controlled payment of wages, first annually, then six-monthly from the 1880s, and all deposits and withdrawals from the Islanders’ bank accounts. They also dealt with tens of thousands of re-indenture agreements negotiated by Islanders who had served their three-year terms and chose to stay for subsequent contracts of various lengths. Complaints by Islanders over conditions were directed to these officials. Islanders who stayed for long periods —often ten or twenty years, or even permanently—dealt with many of these Queensland-based government officials on a regular basis, and at least, once every six months.
Categories of Labourers
One of the myths of the labour trade is that the Islanders were not paid. For instance, Faith Bandler, recounting her father’s life, says that he was kidnapped and virtually a slave on a Mackay plantation in the 1880s and 1890s, for many years receiving no payment. More accurately, the Islanders were paid, at different rates depending on their category, and at rates much below (about one-third) of equivalent European workers. Over the forty years of the Queensland labour trade, the majority were first-indenture labourers who served out their three-year contracts and returned to their islands, but re-enlistments to Queensland were occurring right from the 1860s, and by the 1890s about one-quarter of new arrivals had already worked in Queensland, Fiji, or Samoa. A large proportion of the first-indenture labourers re-engaged without leaving Queensland, accepting further contracts of between three years and six months, becoming quite skilled in choosing employers and negotiating wages. These time-expired labourers dominated the colony’s Islander workforce during the final decades of the century. The last category was an elite but ever diminishing group generally called the ticket-holders, 835 Islanders already in the colony in September 1879. In 1884 this group were exempted from all subsequent restrictions and in effect became colonists.
Wages
First-indenture labourers were paid £6 per year, plus payment in kind through clothing allowances, food, accommodation and basic medical care. Employers absorbed the cost of the recruiting voyage, including the aforementioned ‘beach bonus’ paid on enlistment, repatriation expenses, and government charges, but took these amounts into consideration when deciding on the actual wage paid beyond the standard £6. Returning Recruits who had already worked in Queensland, Fiji, or Samoa received higher wages, between £6 and £12 per year as the trade progressed through the century. Time-expired Islanders re-enlisting in Queensland received even higher wages, between £16 and £25 per year, the amount rising rapidly in the 1890s and 1900s. Then there were the ticket-holders who could work in any part of the colony or often had their own small businesses. The point here is that between 1863 and December 1876 indentured Islanders were paid annually, after which they were paid bi-annually, by the local Inspector of Pacific Islanders or Magistrate. Collectively the Islanders earned tens of thousands of pounds, which they could choose to have paid into the government savings bank or withdraw as cash, keeping their money locked up in boxes or hidden in tins and bottles buried in the ground. Sometimes they asked employers to hold small sums for them.
Using Banks
At Mackay, the main sugar growing area, the Islanders were using banks as early as 1875, and ten years later when accurate statistics began, sixty-one Islanders had deposited £251. Between 1888 and 1904 the government published a full record of the total number of accounts and their credit and debit transactions. Mackay had 1,271 individual Islander account holders in 1892. The total amount deposited fluctuated, with £5,985 the highest level in 1893, and transactions also varied but during an average year £2,900 was deposited and a similar sum withdrawn. In 1892 Islanders in Queensland had £18,641 in the savings bank. Individual deposits were usually quite small, most no more than £5 or £6, but there is evidence from Maryborough of Islanders with up to £50 in their accounts. Although some learnt to deal directly with the banks, most Islanders relied on government officials to operate their accounts.
Using the Government Officials
Beyond these money matters, there is evidence that the Islanders were aware of the power these officials had to deal with a wide range of problems, and to be their advocates in negotiations with employers and in Court. For example, as early as 1876, Government Agents, Inspectors of Pacific Islanders and Magistrates from several centres in southern Queensland, when interviewed by a parliamentary Select Committee into Islander labour, showed quite clearly through their recounting of routine administration and interviews with employers and Islanders, and from cases when they interceded on behalf of Islanders in a variety of circumstances, that Islanders seem to have been well aware of an official’s role and used the access it provided. The same interpretation is clear from the records of W.R. Goodall, Mackay’s Magistrate from 1868 until 1884. He regularly visited the plantations and tried to make himself as approachable as possible, believing that all “the kanakas on the various plantations know me, and the position I occupy towards them and come to me when in any difficulty”. Perhaps he exaggerated his approachability and minimised the quite huge differences between himself and the Islanders, but there is no doubt that the Islanders realised that these officials were their allies. In one Mackay case in 1892, two Melanesians walked off Meadowlands plantation and headed into town to report their employer to Inspector of Pacific Islanders F.C. Hornbrook. W.H. Hyne, the planter, saw them leave, galloped his horse into town and charged them with absconding. Hornbrook defended them in Court: the charge was dropped and Hyne was cautioned by the Magistrate.
In the Courts
Beyond enlistment, wage payment, banking, choice of destination and reengagement, the Islanders’ other major interaction with government processes was through the police and the Court system. Charges against them for offences against them for physical assault were quite numerous. Until the early 1880s, few property charges were brought against them, but these were becoming quite noticeable by the 1890s. Despite allegations that abuse of alcohol was a serious problem, apprehension for drunkenness and other public offences is lower than the average colonial rate in the 1880s and early 1890s. Aside from offences against the person, the other major category of prosecutions of Melanesians was under the Masters and Servants Act. Their arrest rate under this Act was ten times higher than other groups, also affected by their bonded employment status. The greatest number of charges under the Act were for desertion from service, although a number of charges were also brought for disobedience.
The Islanders’ appearance in arrest statistics indicates their vulnerability to certain types of policing. However, a different picture emerges from the Summons Court. Actions were brought by them or on their behalf for recovery of wages, and they could also use the Summons Court to seek satisfaction against employers or other whites for assaults. The Bundaberg Summons Court records for the years 1887 to 1906 contain 298 cases in which Melanesians can be identified. One-third of these cases were for assault, the great majority involving Melanesian defendants. A significant development in the 1890s, indicating growing accommodation by the Melanesians to Australian society, was the emergence of Melanesians’ complaints in the Courts. Thirteen cases of assault of Melanesians by Europeans were brought at Bundaberg: in three-quarters of the cases the assailant was convicted, with some significant fines imposed.
Over one-third of the actions involving Melanesians related to these assault cases. About three-quarters of the remaining Summons Court actions were related to the Masters and Servants Act. A large number of these cases were for absence from hired service or disobeying orders. The result was a fine or an order to return to work, although some of the absence cases were discharged or withdrawn. Fifty of the 298 Bundaberg cases for the period 1887-1906 were actions for nonpayment of wages. Over half of these resulted in a verdict in favour of the Melanesian labourers. These were more than nominal victories — the amounts involved were typically £10 and £12 and more — and in most successful cases, costs and even compensation were ordered against the European employers. Melanesians in such cases demonstrated agency, were conscious of their rights and interests, and were not just passive victims of an inequitable labour process. Of course, their position benefited from the bureaucratic structure that had been set up to oversee the labour trade. In many of these wage cases the charge was laid by the Inspector of Pacific Islanders. The intervention of an Inspector, by way of summons, frequently led to action being quickly settled out of Court.
All of this shows that the South Sea Islanders did have considerable contact with various government officials, and that in a variety of ways they were able to use and manipulate these officials, government regulations and processes for their own purposes.
The suing for wages and the appearance of Melanesian complaints in assault cases may certainly be taken as symptoms of a broader change in the position of the Melanesian within the legal system, and more reservedly within social life in Queensland in the 1890s. The law was not applied only in defence of the employers’ interests, although there can be no doubt that the employers’ interests predominated. The Islanders were assuming a position in relation to law and government processes that was becoming more like that of other nineteenth-century colonial workers. This was partly because several distinct categories of Melanesian labourers developed: first-indenture, re-recruiting and time-expired labourers, and ticket-holders.
The most important were the ticket-holders, comprising between seven and eleven percent of the overall Melanesian population of Queensland, and the time-expired labourers: these two groups made up forty to sixty-five per cent of the immigrant Melanesian population on from the 1880s. In reality they became a Melanesian segment of the general working class, although only the ticket-holders could truly be considered to be fully incorporated into colonial society. Racist sentiments kept the Islanders largely segregated from Anglo-Celtic colonists, and a proletarianisation process clearly beginning in the 1880s and accelerating in the 1890s, was truncated by the harsh mass deportation imposed by the Federal government in the 1900s.
Sources:
Clive Moore, “‘Me Blind Drunk’: Alcohol and Melanesians in the Mackay district, Queenland, 1867-1907”, in Roy MacLeod and Donald Denoon (eds), Health and Healing in Tropical Australia and Papua New Guinea, Townsville: Department of History and Politics, and the Centre for Melanesian Studies, James Cook University, 1991, pp. 103-22.
Clive Moore, “Working the Government: Australia’s South Sea Islanders, their Knowledge of an Interaction with Government Processes, 1863-1908”, South Pacific: Journal of Philosophy and Culture, Vol, 8, 2004-2005, pp. 59-78.