Billions of dollars withheld from Australian Aborigines: study

Australian government bodies withheld billions of dollars from Aboriginal workers, stockpiling the money while children were dying of malnutrition, a study released Wednesday said.

The wages, pensions and child endowments were supposed to be paid to Aboriginals over the last century but never reached them, instead ending up in government coffers, said historian Ros Kidd, the study's author.

"Overall, we are looking at billions of (Australian) dollars nationally, which has never been accounted for," she was quoted by AFP as saying as she launched the report, named "Hard Labour, Stolen Wages."

While the state governments retained the money "kids were dying of malnutrition," she said.