Under the system of Aboriginal Protection Boards established by state and federal legislation, Indigenous Australian workers' wages were paid into government-owned trust accounts.
In the early 21st century several class action lawsuits were instituted by Indigenous workers, leading to the establishment of compensation schemes by state and territory governments.
In 2006 a parliamentary inquiry tried to find out how much in wages had been withheld from Indigenous workers across Australia, but found the practice was so extensive that it could not reach a figure.
[1][2] Known officially as the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee Inquiry into Stolen Wages, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission made a submission to it.
[3] The Inquiry recommended that state governments must open their archives to improve access, fund awareness campaigns, and provide legal assistance to potential claimants.
[1] As of September 2021[update] more than 770 former stockmen, farmhands, domestic workers and labourers in the Northern Territory have joined in a class action to recover stolen wages, as well as other forms of reparations, such as truth telling.
[17] The payout represented wages that had been withheld by the state government, which often deposited it into trust funds inaccessible to Indigenous people, which was enabled under the legislation described above.
The law allowed wages of two-thirds that of non-Indigenous workers, but employers could get away with paying less, and unlike Queensland government archives, few records of these transactions exist.