Australia's secret slave trade

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From the mid-1800s, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped, tricked or coerced into labour on Queensland's sugar and cotton plantations. Ryan Butta (Author, Blackbirding) and Emelda Davis, whose grandfather was taken from Vanuatu as a boy, tell Marc Fennell (Stuff The British Stole) how Australia avoided the word "slavery" by disguising the trade in euphemism. It was called 'blackbirding' and it came to an end thanks to what is arguably the most racist piece of Australian…