1967 Australian referendum (Aboriginals)

The second question of the 1967 Australian referendum of 27 May 1967, called by the Holt government, related to Indigenous Australians. Voters were asked whether to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians, and whether Indigenous Australians should be included in official population counts for constitutional purposes. The term "the Aboriginal Race" was used in the question.
Technically the referendum question was a vote on the Constitution Alteration 1967 that would amend section 51 and repeal section 127.
The amendments to the Constitution were overwhelmingly endorsed, winning 90.77% of votes cast and having majority support in all six states. The amendment became law on 10 August 1967.

Background

In 1901, the attorney-general, Alfred Deakin, provided a legal opinion on the meaning of section 127 of the Constitution of Australia. Section 127 excluded "aboriginal natives" from being counted when reckoning the numbers of the people of the commonwealth or a state. His legal advice was that "half-castes" were not "aboriginal natives".
Prior to 1967, censuses asked a question about Aboriginal race to establish numbers of "half-castes" and "full-bloods". "Full-bloods" were then subtracted from the official population figure in accordance with the legal advice from the attorney-general.
Strong activism by individuals and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups greatly aided the success of the 1967 referendum in the years leading up to the vote. Calls for Aboriginal issues to be dealt with at the federal level began as early as 1910. Minimal changes were instigated for Aboriginal rights until the 1960s, where the Bark Petition in 1963 and the ensuing Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd and Commonwealth of Australia, and Gurindji Strike highlighted the negative treatment of Indigenous workers in the Northern Territory. From here, the overall plight of Aboriginal Australians became a fundamental political issue.
File:Harold Holt and FCAATSI.jpg|thumb|right|Gordon Bryant, prime minister Harold Holt and Bill Wentworth meeting with FCAATSI representatives Faith Bandler, Douglas Nicholls, Burnum Burnum, and Winnie Branson
On 7 April 1965, the Menzies Cabinet decided that it would seek to repeal section 127 of the Constitution at the same time as it sought to amend the nexus provision, but made no firm plans or timetable for such action. In August 1965, attorney-general Billy Snedden proposed to Cabinet that abolition of section 127 was inappropriate unless section 51 was simultaneously amended to remove the words "other than the aboriginal race in any state". He was rebuffed, but gained agreement when he made a similar submission to the Holt Cabinet in 1966. In the meantime, his Liberal colleague Billy Wentworth had introduced a private member's bill proposing inter alia to amend section 51.
In 1964, the Leader of the Opposition, Arthur Calwell, had proposed such a change and pledged that his party, the Australian Labor Party, would back any referendum to that effect.
In 1967, the Australian Parliament was unanimous in voting for the alteration bill.
The Australian Board of Missions, the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, the Australian Aborigines League, the Australian Council of Churches, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the Methodist Commission on Aboriginal Affairs, and spokespeople such as Ruby Hammond, Bill Onus, Faith Bandler, and Joe McGinness were some of the many groups and individuals who effectively utilised the media and their influential platforms to generate the momentum needed to achieve a landslide Yes vote.

Question

''DO YOU APPROVE the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled "An Act to alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the People of the Aboriginal Race in any State and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the Population"?''

Amendments to the Constitution

Voters were asked to approve, together, changes to two provisions in the Constitution section 51 and section 127.
Section 51 begins:
And the extraordinary clauses that follow list most of the legislative powers of the federal parliament. The amendment deleted the text in bold from subsection xxvi :
The amendment gave the Commonwealth parliament power to make "special laws" with respect to Aboriginal People living in a state; the parliament already had unfettered power in regard to territories under section 122 of the Constitution.
Section 127 was wholly removed. Headed "Aborigines not to be counted in reckoning population", it had read:
The Constitution required the calculation of "the people" for several purposes in sections 24, 89, 93 and 105. Section 89 related to the imposition of uniform customs duties and operated until 1901. Section 93 related to uniform custom duties after being imposed by section 89 and operated until 1908. Section 105 related to taking over state debts and was superseded by section 105A inserted in the Constitution in 1929 following the 1928 referendum. Accordingly, in 1967, only section 24 in relation to the House of Representatives had any operational importance to section 127.
Section 24 "requires the membership of the House of Representatives to be distributed among the States in proportion to the respective numbers of their people". The number of people in section 24 is calculated using the latest statistics of the Commonwealth which are derived from the census. Section 51 of the Constitution enabled the Parliament to make laws for "census and statistics" and it exercised that power to pass the Census and Statistics Act 1905.

Results

At this time, territorians, while able and required to vote in elections, were not permitted to vote in referendums. That was not established until 1977.

What the referendum did not do

Give voting rights

It is frequently stated that the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people Australian citizenship and that it gave them the right to vote in federal elections; however, this was not the case.
From 1944, Aboriginal people in Western Australia could apply to become citizens of the state, which gave them various rights, including the right to vote. This citizenship was conditional on adopting "the manner and habits of civilised life" and not associating with Aboriginal people other than their parents, siblings, children, or grandchildren, and could be taken away at any time. This situation continued until 1971. Most Indigenous Australians continued to be denied the right to vote in elections for the Australian Parliament even after 1949. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1949 gave Aboriginal people the right to vote in federal elections only if they were able to vote in their state elections, or if they had served in the defence force.
The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 gave all Aboriginal people the option of enrolling to vote in federal elections. It was not until the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Act 1983 that voting became compulsory for Aboriginal people, as it was for other Australians.
Aboriginal people living in the Northern Territory were not allowed to vote in the referendum, which remained the case for both the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory until the Constitutional amendment to section 128 after a referendum in 1977.

Supersede a "Flora and Fauna Act"

It is also sometimes mistakenly stated that the 1967 referendum overturned a Flora and Fauna Act. This is believed to have come from the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, which controlled Aboriginal heritage, land and culture. The other states had equivalent acts which were managed by various departments, including those relating to agriculture and fishing.

Right to be included in the census

Section 127 prevented the inclusion of the Indigenous Australians in the official population for constitutional purposes, i.e. their population would not be included in the calculation of the number of seats to assign for each state or in the determination of tax revenue. The section did not prevent the Bureau of Statistics from counting or collecting other information about Indigenous Australians. From 1911 to 1966 the Bureau had collected information about Indigenous Australians, however this was published separately to the general population. Inclusion in the general population was thus important symbolically, but the change did not directly improve the information available to government.

Legacy

Ninety percent of voters voted yes, and the overwhelming support gave the Federal Government a clear mandate to implement policies to benefit Aboriginal people. Many misconceptions have arisen as to the outcomes of the referendum, some as a result of it taking on a symbolic meaning during a period of increasing Aboriginal self-confidence. It was some five years before any real change occurred as a result of the referendum, but federal legislation has since been enacted covering land rights, discriminatory practices, financial assistance, and preservation of cultural heritage.
The referendum result had two main outcomes:

The first was to alter the legal boundaries within which the Federal Government could act. The Federal Parliament was given a constitutional head-of-power under which it could make special laws "for" Aboriginal people in addition to other "races". The Australian Constitution states that federal law prevails over state law, where they are inconsistent, so that the Federal Parliament could, if it so chose, enact legislation that would end discrimination against Aboriginal people by state governments. However, during the first five years following the referendum the Federal Government did not use this new power.
The other key outcome of the referendum was to provide Aboriginal people with a symbol of their political and moral rights. The referendum occurred at a time when Aboriginal activism was accelerating, and it was used as a kind of historical shorthand for all the relevant political events of the time, such as the demands for land rights by the Gurindji people, the equal-pay case for pastoral workers, and the Freedom Rides to end segregation in New South Wales. This use as a symbol for a period of activism and change has contributed to the misconceptions about the effects of the constitutional changes themselves.