Holding the Government to Account: the ‘stolen Wages’ Issue, Fiduciary Duty and Trust Law

[This article examines whether trust or fiduciary law provides potential ‘stolen wages’ plaintiffs with a strong basis for a claim over money in bank accounts that previous governments held on the plaintiffs’ behalf. It also considers the broader issue of whether governments owed a fiduciary duty flowing from their obligations under general ‘protective’ legislation to prevent such workers from being exploited and underpaid. It is argued that potential stolen wages plaintiffs have a strong claim in trust, and that an argument based on fiduciary duty, whilst weaker than that based on trust law, is more likely to succeed than in the previous types of cases in which indigenous plaintiffs have unsuccessfully argued fiduciary duty in the Australian courts.]