SYDNEY – In the midst of recent anti-racism protests in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison controversially suggested that concerns about the legacy of historical and racial injustice in the United States do not necessarily apply in Australia.
“There was no slavery in Australia,” he told 2GB Radio.
Actually, as Mr Morrison later admitted, there was slavery in Australia.
More than 60,000 southern Pacific islanders were brought as slaves to work in Queensland’s sugar plantations between 1863 and 1904. The islanders were transported on more than 700 ocean voyages. About 15,000 died in the plantations. Aboriginal Australians were also forced to work as slaves in the cattle and pearling industries.
Indeed, after Mr Morrison’s slavery comments, descendants of the South Sea Islander slaves invited him to travel to Queensland to meet them.
Mr Moe Toraga, who was born in Fiji and now lives in the Queensland town of Bundaberg, said the evidence of the slave trade could be seen in the unmarked graves which still lie in former plantations across north-east Australia.
