First published in (The Courier Mail)[http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/]

IMAGINE that the government instructs your employer to withhold four-fifths of your pay, over and above the normal tax deducted, ordering the money be forwarded to a government-administered account.

You query this but are told what the government is doing is lawful and that your money is to be spent in ways that will further your welfare.

Where you live, schools are run down and the public health and housing services are low-grade and deteriorating.

But despite all the money you and others are handing over, no improvements are made to your services and infrastructure.

It transpires the money is being spent on projects, some public infrastructure, some not, thousands of kilometres away.

Years pass before the government suddenly stops taking your money. It says it got things wrong. It says sorry.

However, it refuses to pay back to you what was taken or even give you back your portion of what's left in the so-called welfare fund.

Instead today's Government offers you a tiny amount in "reparation" and announces the leftover money is to go into an education scholarship fund that, if your child is one of the lucky few, may assist you to send your child hundreds of kilometres away to school.

You try to take legal action to recover your money, but the Government says, whoops, its records are incomplete, missing, washed away in floods, burned or eaten by the cat and so you can't prove that it really did take your money, or as much as you say it took. So, how would you feel if all this happened to you? It's a reasonable question, because this is no hypothetical.

It happened to indigenous people in this state and it's an ongoing scandal.

Ongoing because just this week the old Aborigines Welfare Fund worth $10.8 million was absorbed into a new Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education foundation, which the Government says will supply about 100 scholarships a year worth $20,000 each to young Aboriginal people.

The old fund was established in 1943 and was operational until 1993 when the Goss government froze it. Into it, over the years, went withheld wages belonging to Aborigines and the fruits of additional special levies imposed on them. In fact, Aborigines' wages, Commonwealth entitlements such as child endowment and savings were controlled from 1897 to 1984.

Historian Dr Ros Kidd estimates between $200 million and $500 million was stolen.

Kidd has said her research of Cabinet documents revealed a history of misuse of the money, including fraud prosecutions of government representatives who administered it.

Native Affairs Department budgets were frequently topped up with money from the fund and, during the Depression, the government took more than $5 million to cover consolidated revenue deficits.

By the time the welfare fund was frozen, all that remained was about $5 million. Since then it has accumulated another $5.8 million in interest.

Calls for an inquiry and audit have been ignored by successive governments.

Also to be absorbed into the foundation will be about $15 million left over from the $55.4 million stolen wages reparations fund set up by the Beattie government in 2002.

Under this scheme, people could apply for $2000 or $4000 capped payments, depending on their age – payments that were a far cry from the thousands taken from individuals.

It was estimated that up to 20,000 people whose wages were controlled could apply.

But before last March, only about 5500 people had received payments, leaving more than $20 million left over.

The Stolen Wages Working Group – which consulted with claimants around the state – told the Bligh Government the majority wanted the balance of the money paid out in top-up payments.

This was also ignored, the Government ruling in March it would offer top-up payments of $1500 and $3000, with the balance along with the welfare fund moneys, to go into the scholarship foundation.

Premier Anna Bligh justified this by saying it struck the correct balance between righting past wrongs and providing for future generations.

She is mistaken. In no way can she claim that the wrongs of the past have been righted by giving people a maximum of $7000 compensation for up to a lifetime's labour. The "wrong" stolen wages policies condemned Aboriginal workers and their families to lives of poverty.

Bligh also said: "I want this fund to create a long and lasting legacy out of some very painful things in the past, to create a bright future for those children who currently have a very bleak future in front of them."

Several things need to be said about this. If the children in remote indigenous communities face a bleak educational future, then this is attributable in large part to the failure of successive governments – most recently Bligh's – to provide quality schooling and services equivalent to a standard enjoyed by the rest of the population. It is incumbent on the Government to properly fund a decent public education system for indigenous children – an equitable system that will benefit all indigenous youngsters, not just the cherry-picked few.

Margaret Wenham is a senior Courier-Mail journalist.