Aborigines to be paid only one-third

Annabelle McDonald in the Australian reports some shocking news

ABORIGINAL cultural heritage workers in Queensland will be paid about a third of the amount white people earn for performing similar roles, under a controversial ruling by the state’s Land and Resources Tribunal.

Well, on the face of it, it is shocking news but my life experiences lead me to a different conclussion. In 2004 I visited the Northern Territory and the Gulf country of Queensland and while there came across cultural heritage workers. At Gregory River I spoke to a Telstra manager who was charged with laying a optic fibre network for the local Aborigines. I quote from an article I wrote at the time.

Mick, (not his real name) the Telstra manager, told us horror stories of dealing with the local indigenous population. Cultural monitors demand $300 per day for their presence at any work site. Once the monitors on any Telstra job exceed 6 then there is a Cultural Monitor Supervisor who gets paid in excess of a $1,000 per day to make sure the monitors are doing their job. Telstra are expected to have an Archeologist on site as well and he is charged with ensuring the Optic Fibre lines are not desecrating culturally significant sites. Stories of the Archeologist picking up a rock and saying… “This looks like an old axe� or whatever, and the monitor saying “Is it? Oh yeah, so it is. You fellows have to go around� Ah, such science. Four D11 dozers are used on an optic fibre line. One to clear the scrub, one to level the path, one to rip the trench and one to fill. These things cost thousands of dollars per day so I would hate to think of the costs associated with rerouting the line a kilometre or two around a culturally significant piece of rock.

I don’t think it’s quiet the racist issue Annabelle would have us believe and I just wonder, for the record, what similar roles do white cultural heritage workers get involved in?