South Sea Islanders in Australia say they hope an apology by a Queensland city for historic blackbirding will help secure better rights for today's seasonal workers from the Pacific.
The Mayor of Bundaberg, Jack Dempsey, on Friday issued a formal apology for the trafficking of around 62,000 people from Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, who worked in Queensland's sugar cane fields between the 1860s and the early 1900s.
Jane Smith, a Bundaberg resident whose grandparents were taken from Tanna island in Vanuatu, said it was hard not to see the parallels between blackbirding.
“Our people today the seasonal workers are getting treated the same way as my forefathers, my grandparents got treated, but they came over on a ship. These fellows are coming over on an airplane, they still get unfairly treated from a lot of these farmers.”
Blackbirding was presented as consensual labour but was often coercive and exploitative and involved the kidnapping, enslavement and murder of Pacific Islanders.
Thousands of labourers died in Australia from being mistreated or overworked.
Smith works with many ni-Vanuatu seasonal workers in Bundaberg and she says they are hard-worked, often face unreasonable pay deductions and are unaware of their rights.
In February, Vanuatu's High Commissioner to Australia, Samson Fare, claimed a group of seasonal workers in Bundaberg had received death threats after they were sacked.
Smith said she would like to see conditions improve and the mayor's apology was a start but only a start.
The apology followed talks between Mrs Smith and her husband, and Mr Fare and the Bundaberg city council.
A sister city agreement was also signed with Luganville in Vanuatu.
“That is about empowering Australian South Sea Islander organisations to do this actual work, because they already exist in those regions," said Emelda Davis, the president of Australian South Sea Islanders - Port Jackson.
Dr David Welshman Gegeo, a researcher at Solomon Islands National University, told Pacific Beat he hoped other cities would follow the lead of Bundaberg.
“I see this as a starting point...and hopefully it will lead to other mayors in other states of Australia to come forward and do the same thing,” he said.
Photo file