Australiana

To raise the topic of the legacy of South Sea Islander sugar workers brought to Queensland in the latter half of the 19th Century is to invite a sense of surprise that Islanders were ever here. This is not unusual considering the comprehensive deportation process that took place on Federation. In the context of recent debates over guest worker schemes from the Pacific, however, politicians have been all to keen to remind us of this history, where it suits. This piece was written in the context of the debates during the Howard era. (With thanks to Sophia Callaghan)

Part 1

Portrait of a South Sea Islander in the sugar cane fields at Bingera, ca. 1898. State Library of Queensland

In 2006, a debate over the introduction of guest workers from the Pacific raised the spectre of racial exclusion and historical amnesia within a society that had been told to forget the past.  Yet the discussion did not revisit contested historical ground; instead it maintained a cleavage between past and present for the purposes of validating a contemporary agenda without raising guilt or responsibility. Under the influence of political agendas and restraints, South Sea Islanders and their experiences were assigned a simplified and peripheral position both within contemporary and historical Australia. Contemporary political debate can be used to confirm a national historical narrative which assigns people and their stories to the margins.

The involvement of South Sea Islanders in the Queensland sugar industry through indentured labour schemes in the 19th century was both implicitly and explicitly influential in the political discourse of those involved in the 2006 debate.  Discussed within the parameters of industrial relations, international labour trends, domestic economic pressures and immigration imperatives, the historical figure of the “Kanaka” was evoked as representing the implications of guest worker schemes. While race was generally avoided as a focus of these historical references, Australia’s history of racial exclusion through the White Australia policy, and the deportation of Islanders immediately post-Federation, was always near the surface.

As early as the 1860s trade in the labour of South Sea Islanders was a highly contentious issue in the Australian colonies. Politicians were divided on the effects of the presence of a non-white community. Some felt that black labour was a necessity for clearing and cultivating land. Following the rise of humanitarianism in the mid-19th century, others raised questions about the morality of the trade itself. It was this final issue in particular which was given prominence during debates over the abolition of the labour trade during the first parliament following federation in 1901.