A longtime campaigner for justice for Stolen Wages victims says the hard work of Aboriginal advocates in building a class action in Western Australia was erased by the substantial legal costs claimed by the law firm involved.

Mr Howard Riley told National Indigenous Times he would not participate in a second class action, aimed at recovering money taken from Aboriginal workers in WA ostensibly for children removed from their families, because he could not trust Shine – the law firm involved.

The WA government announced in November 2024 it would pay up to $180.4 million to eligible Aboriginal workers, their spouses and children in response to a class action involving almost 9,000 successful claimants.

Later that month, Justice Bernard Murphy, who had heard submissions from Shine Lawyers and other eligible claimants, the state government, and Litigation Lending Services (LLS) - the litigation funder backing the case, said Shine Lawyers would receive $27.5 million for their legal costs, having spent just under $30 million in the class action and LLS would be paid $15.4 million.

"When they told Justice Murphy how much was involved, Justice Murphy had to make a decision but he took two weeks to do that," Mr Riley said.

"In that time people like myself had been emailing him, telling him that we need to talk to him because Shine lawyers claim that they've been around, they've done their work to justify the spending.

"But we knew organisations from here right up to Kununurra and Wyndham, right down to Esperance, had done a lot of work to register people for the payments.

"Shine lawyers hadn't been to a lot of communities. Shine lawyers came to the last bit… about two or three months before they went to court for judgement, but never showing their faces."

Mr Riley worked as an advisor to the Gallop government's taskforce on Stolen Wages. He said initially there was talk of claimants receiving up to $30,000 each.

"However, we looked at the Treasury papers back about 20 years ago and said there was enough money there to pay people $78,000 each," he said.

He and other advocates made the case for the descendants of Stolen Wages victims to be compensated, given the period in question ended in 1972 (starting in 1936).

"We worked on that, but the government said no, it had to be paid out to the people who were alive and can't be paid out to the descendants of those people. So then when we finished the report, but it has never been made public," he said.

He said the 2008 state election saw the new Barnett government set a cap at $2,000 each in compensation.

"And that was only for the individual people who were alive, not for their families. We disputed that, we were really angry about that. Because it was never tabled - the report - people didn't know what we were talking about," Mr Riley said.

"On top of that $71 million that we talked about, there was another $620 million outstanding from people who were in mission homes, in the missions, and the government was docking their parents' wages to pay for those kids in a mission, then we never got that money.

"When a Shine lawyer rang me about two months ago and asked if I wanted to be chief claimant, to do another class action … I said I'm not going to do that, that's wrong, after what they've already done to us."

Mr Riley said after studying the Treasury papers, "we asked the task force to bring people in as witnesses to say that where their money (wages taken from parents for children who had been removed from their families) was supposed to have come to them and they never got it; and a lot of the descendants have died by now".

Mr Riley compared the limitations on the Stolen Generations redress, which applies to children taken up until July 1st, 1972.

"I was taken around 1978 myself, a lot of other people were taken too. And with the Stolen Wages, the cut-off point is 1972 – people were still working after 1972 and not getting paid," he said.

"All of that came with it because of the native welfare department having scrapped by then. That department didn't have any responsibility for the people after that, but they were still doing it.

"We had six Aboriginal people who were advisors to the task force, but I was the only one that spoke up because I was so angry. The other five were given pieces of paper to sign, we called them confidentiality agreements with the state."

Mr Riley told National Indigenous Times he was threatened with legal action for speaking out.

"They were adamant that I was guilty of something because they didn't want those figures released," he said.

"When we found out that the government was going to pay some money out, myself and other people… all the Stolen Generation mob and Jim Morrison and all the organisations that we knew that would help us; we needed the communities and people to register online.

"We've done all that work, Shine lawyers never came near us at all. If Shine lawyers contacted any one of us, it was a phone call, five minutes, you know, to tell us where they were up to. That's the only work they've done.

"Towards the end of this, before the court case, they made a big trip around Western Australia, that's it. You know, one trip. And then they justified all that spending… to say that this is what we spent. Bullshit, you know?"

A spokesperson for Shine lawyers told National Indigenous Times the Federal Court approved legal costs of about $27.5 million, with $15.4 million being paid directly by the State of Western Australia, and the remaining $12.1 million recoverable from the Settlement Sum.

"These legal costs were incurred over the course of six years and involved the prosecution of a vigorously defended class action, which settled only days before the trial was listed to commence," she said.

"The work was extensive, given the historical wrongdoing occurred many years ago. Lay witnesses and expert witnesses provided extensive evidence in preparation for trial.

"A significant portion of costs came as a result of Court-ordered outreach and a registration process which spanned 10 months from November 2023 to September 2024."

The law firm's spokesperson said other on-country work was necessary, which included identifying potential lay witnesses, the preservation of evidence hearings, and to notify group members of their right to opt-out of the case.

"Legal fees include the costs of barristers, experts, court fees among other disbursements which cumulatively make up the cost of high-stakes litigation," she said.

Shine said 27 lay witnesses gave evidence in five locations across WA between 27 June 2022 and 8 July 2022, and that a historian, anthropologist and sociologist, and forensic accountants, were engaged to prepare expert reports and appear to give evidence at the trial.

Shine said the WA Stolen Wages class actions a Court ordered opt out process, to inform group members of their right to opt out and not be part of the class action. The law firm said the Court controlled the information included in the notices and how the information about opt out could be disseminated, and the Opt Out Outreach Program information sessions were held in 61 communities.

The law firm said its team conducted 118 community information and registration sessions in 104 locations across WA between 19 November 2023 and 15 June 2024.

Mr Riley said the story of the Aboriginal advocates who worked hard for justice for workers who had their Stolen Wages had not been told.

"Nobody's spoken to us to give the real account of how Shine never helped us at all… When you looked at the lawyers that came here, there were four of them. So, you can't tell me that four lawyers got $10 million each," he said.

"Land councils and everybody, everybody, right across West Australia, made sure that the mob had their claims registered. And from the beginning, it was just as though the state was waiting for us to die so they didn't have to pay out much money.

"But now, they have someone sitting in a courtroom, saying that they've done this and done that and blatantly rip us off. And then it is because it was done in the court situation, it's deemed to be legal. So how bad does it make us feel? We can't trust the court systems anymore."

Mr Riley added, however, that "in WA political history, Roger Cook is the only premier to have worked extensively with and for Aboriginal people".

A WA Government spokesperson told National Indigenous Times: "The Stolen Wages Class Action Settlement was developed as part of a Court-mediated process and the WA Government has advocated for the overhead costs to be as low as possible, to ensure the maximum amount reaches the people this settlement is intended to benefit."