The brutal reality of life as a Kanaka worker - but Scott Morrison claims 'there was no slavery in Australia'
Tens of thousands of Pacific Islander slaves were ripped from their families and forced into back-breaking labour on sugar farms across Australia, in direct opposition to controversial remarks made by Scott Morrison.
The prime minister sparked outrage on last Thursday by claiming there was no slavery in Australia, despite historians widely documenting the fate of the slaves - called Kanakas.
Edmund Barton, Australia's first prime minister, even admitted in a speech in 1901 that Kanaka people lived in slavery.
Speaking during the second reading of Pacific Islands Labourers Bill on October 2 1901, he said: 'The traffic, we say, is bad, both for the Kanaka and for the white man. It is bad for the Kanaka ... because, in some aspects, it must be slavery.'
