I’ve always believed that the idea behind Bedford was a good one. They employ people with disability in industries like packaging, furniture manufacturing, catering and hospitality, laundry, cleaning, recycling, landscaping, and timber processing.
I was aware that employees at Bedford weren’t paid a full wage — and I’ve always thought that was unfair — but it wasn’t until this administration crisis that I started really looking into it. And to put it simply: it is an outrage.
Bedford Group is an ADE — an Australian Disability Enterprise. According to Inclusion Australia, there are approximately 600 ADEs across the country, employing over 20,000 people with disability.
ADEs are technically not-for-profit organisations, which means they don’t distribute profits to shareholders — but that doesn’t mean they aren’t making money. Many ADEs run large-scale commercial operations. They charge full commercial rates for their services, and in some cases, generate millions of dollars in revenue. While the profits are reinvested into the organisation, the core issue remains: the workers — the people with disability doing the actual labour — are often paid just a few dollars an hour under the Supported Wage System. So even though the ADEs are not-for-profit on paper, they are still profiting off the underpayment of disabled workers.
As an ADE, Bedford is allowed to pay its disabled workers under the Supported Wage System (SWS). This means their wage is calculated based on their assessed productivity compared to a non-disabled worker. So, if someone is assessed at 50% productivity, they may only receive 50% of the standard rate — sometimes just $2 to $4 an hour.
When the Bedford administration crisis was announced, journalists rushed to tell human-interest stories about the 1,400 workers who might lose their jobs. Much of the coverage focused on the tragedy of the potential job losses. But let’s be clear: these aren’t people losing jobs that support a household or cover rent. These are people losing their jobs and their lunch money.
Don’t get me wrong — I understand that a place like Bedford offers a social environment for people with disability that may not exist elsewhere. And when the Premier announced a potential $15 million lifeline, he said he wanted to preserve the “dignity that work provides.”
There is no dignity in being paid $3 an hour while your labour is used to turn a commercial profit. There is no dignity in being told — structurally, economically, legally — that your time is worth less than someone else’s. That is not support. That is injustice.
When I started reading more about this, my chest tightened, my heart raced. My first instinct was to write to all 600 ADEs, asking how they operate and what they believe about paying minimum wage. I wanted to write to every member of Federal Parliament — every MP and senator — and ask what they think of this quiet exploitation happening in plain sight. I wanted to photocopy their replies, display them, distribute them, and make noise.
But then I read an article in The Advertiser. A parent of one of the Bedford workers said he would pay Bedford just so his daughter could have the chance to work there. It made me pause — and for a moment, I saw things from their perspective.
I know the families of these workers probably don’t want someone like me kicking and screaming about this. But still — it’s not right. It is so unfair. We give them scraps and call it inclusion. We call it “support,” but it comes at the cost of dignity, equality, and self-respect.
So, for now, I’m sitting with this. And I’m quietly sticking my middle finger up at all the able-bodied, mentally competent, white men who cruise through life while the rest of us are constantly forced to compromise our own worth.
Why do we, as a society, still think people with disability should earn less — simply for existing differently?
26 January 1788 marks the date when the First Fleet, under Captain Arthur Phillip, raised the British flag at Sydney Cove and established a penal colony — beginning the British invasion and settler colonisation of this continent. Our British ancestors invaded and colonised Australia, which is what I’ve always associated with the word colonisation in an Australian context. But it turns out that we, as a separate nation — Australia as it stands today — have also been colonisers in our own right.
Australia administered Papua New Guinea for decades — first after World War I as part of a colonial arrangement, then under a United Nations trusteeship. After seizing German New Guinea in 1914 and taking over British Papua in 1906, Australia ruled the territory until PNG gained independence in 1975. During this time, resources were extracted, Indigenous governance was suppressed, and Papuans were forced into harsh labour with minimal rights or pay. Traditional cultures, languages, and spiritual practices were actively discouraged. Australia presented itself as a benevolent overseer, but its rule was deeply paternalistic and racist — treating Papua New Guineans as inferior and delaying self-determination under the excuse that they were not “ready.”
Australia also jointly administered Nauru with Britain and New Zealand after World War I, under a League of Nations mandate. The phosphate mining industry — led by Australia — devastated the island, stripping it bare and leaving much of it uninhabitable. This remains one of the clearest examples of resource colonialism: an entire landscape consumed for foreign profit, with little regard for the people who lived there or the long-term consequences of environmental destruction.
Back to Papua New Guinea. Even after World War II, when it became strategically valuable to Australia, development continued to serve Australian interests, not local communities. Health services were segregated, Indigenous voices were silenced, and the Australian administration deliberately delayed independence, which only came in 1975. Today, PNG remains economically dependent on Australian aid, which is often used as a tool of influence — a form of modern neo-colonialism. Australia has never formally acknowledged or apologised for its colonial rule, and its role in Papua New Guinea remains largely absent from Australian public memory. The scars of colonisation remain — visible in land loss, poverty, disrupted cultural identity, and the ongoing struggle for true sovereignty.
I haven’t even begun my deeper research into Australia’s colonial history in PNG, but something I’ve already come across is the role of the kiaps — Australia’s colonial patrol officers. These men were sent deep into Papua New Guinea’s highlands and villages with rifles, notebooks, and unchecked power. Acting as judge, police, tax collector, and bureaucrat all at once, they disrupted traditional authority and imposed a foreign system of rule. With little understanding of the cultures they dominated, they enforced Australian law in places that had governed themselves for millennia. Some may have come with good intentions, but the system itself was rooted in control, not care — a blunt instrument of colonisation wrapped in khaki.
Though often romanticised as adventurous bushmen, many kiaps ruled through fear. Their patrols were backed by armed police, and resistance was met with brutal force — arrests without trial, public floggings, and in some cases, killings. Entire villages were punished for the actions of one person. People were imprisoned for speaking out, or simply for failing to obey foreign orders they did not understand. The presence of the kiap was not just administrative — it was a constant threat, a walking reminder that violence stood behind the Australian flag. Where diplomacy failed, rifles spoke.
I don’t want to pretend I know more about the colonisation of PNG than I’ve just said. I have a lot of research to do simply because I want to know more.
Something else I recently discovered about the history of Australia: blackbirding.
Blackbirding was a form of slave labour that saw over 60,000 Pacific Islanders taken, tricked, or kidnapped from places like Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands to work in the sugarcane fields of Queensland. From the 1860s to the early 1900s, these men and boys — and sometimes women — were coerced through lies or outright force, shipped across dangerous seas, and made to labour in brutal conditions. Many never returned home. Though Australia never officially called it slavery, the system was built on the same foundation: exploitation, racial violence, and profit. The legacy of blackbirding still lingers, yet remains largely absent from Australian classrooms and national memory.
After decades of exploiting Pacific Islander labour, Australia turned around and expelled many of these same people under the newly formed White Australia Policy. In 1901, the Pacific Island Labourers Act was passed — just months after Federation — with the explicit aim of deporting thousands of Islanders who had been brought to Queensland, often against their will. Despite their years of backbreaking work and deep roots in local communities, they were now labelled as “undesirable” and forcibly removed to places they hadn’t seen since childhood — or had never known at all. It was a final betrayal: to use them as cheap labour, then discard them in the name of racial purity. Some were allowed to stay, and their descendants form the Australian South Sea Islander community today — a group still fighting for full recognition and justice.
I haven’t read enough yet about the colonisation of PNG or blackbirding to form an educated opinion. But the truth is — I’m not educated. I never could or would put an academic spin on it. All I know is: we are the bad guys. I have no words to express the shame and disgust I feel about these things — but also the disbelief that we don’t talk about them. We haven’t apologised or paid reparations to either parties, and yet we swan around chucking a shrimp on the barbie while we sit around with our mates watching AFL or AFLW like nothing ever happened. We are the bad guys.
I have just found two things —the colonisation of Papua New Guinea and blackbirding — that have gripped something deep inside me. I want to look into them further, and find a way to share what I learn with others, who I’m sure don’t know either.
