Mr Schorel-Hlavka,

You may have interpreted the 1967 Referendum proposals inaccurately:

* one proposal was to include the Aboriginal people in the Census: up until that time, at least since the twenties, Indigenous people had been counted within each state by state authorities, but not in the national census, since they were not regarded as the responsibility - as all other Australians were - of the national government;

* the other was to remove the exclusive power of the states to make laws regarding Indigenous people, and to bring Indigenous people into the population for which the national government could make laws, i.e. all other Australians.

The essence of both proposals was to REMOVE some discriminatory legislation, not to introduce it. Back in 1901, issues to do with Indigenous people had been excluded from the deliberations about a Constitution of Australia, and left to the states. The 1948 Citizenship Act formally recognised Indigenous people as Australians and as citizens, but this was not drawn attention to until during the lead-up to the referendum, by FCAATSI and other bodies.

Yes, you are right that 'Education, health, etc, should be equal for all regardless of race, religion, colour of skin, etc. ' The Referendum proposals were in this spirit, of complete equal rights in a formal and open democracy. But this spirit was subverted from the early seventies by a retreat to 'difference' - as if Indigenous people had not been treated differently for a couple of hundred years by then.

Joe

I have no issue with Section 127 as it was long overdue to be removed.
Section 51(xxvi) however was inserted in the constitution to specifically DISCRIMINATE against “inferior coloured races” and when a special law was enacted they also would lose their “citizenship” (political rights). My books in the INSPECTOR-RIKATI® series on certain constitutional and other legal issues canvas this extensively.
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Australian citizenship is a political status nothing to do with nationality, and I succeeded in Court on 19 July 2006 after a 5-year legal battle with the Commonwealth that neither Section 245 of the CEA of compulsory voting was constitutional valid.
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This post doesn’t allow me to set it all out but there is no such thing as “Australian nationality” called Australian citizenship. See INSPECTOR-RIKATI® on CITIZENSHIP published in 2003.
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Aboriginals were equals and specifically protected from racial legislation by the way Section 51(xxvi) used to be but they wanted to be discriminated against and so they are now. Section 51(xxvi) is there for the specific purpose to discriminate!
As a CONSTITUTIONALIST I did bother to check this out!
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Aboriginals who had State franchise upon federation did vote in the first federal election! As such, constitutionally they had the right to vote if the State had granted franchise. You seem to be under some illusion as most Australians are and then blame me for being wrong or misconceiving matters.
see also
INSPECTOR-RIKATI® & What is the -Australian way of life- really?
A book on CD on Australians political, religious & other rights

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Again on 19 July 2009 the Court upheld my case against the commonwealth and so I am entitled to rely upon this court decision!

I think perhaps that you have to defer to a superior wisdom on this matter Joe.

David

'Aboriginals who had State franchise upon federation did vote in the first federal election! As such, constitutionally they had the right to vote if the State had granted franchise.'

Yes, I'm aware of that - here in SA, where Aboriginal people had the vote under State (provincial, colonial) legislation from as early as 1856 (men) and 1894 (women), if they were registered at the time of Federation, 1901, then they could continue to bote in State elections and they could (perhaps upon specifically registering?) vote in Federal elections. But after 1901, no new registrations were permitted until the fifties: the last man who could vote in state elections, down around the Murray Lakes, died in 1943.

As for Aboriginal people wanting to be discriminated against, given the exclusion from many federal government welfare provisions until the sixties, that really is ludicrous.

Joe

SA was the front runner of women voting and because of this s.41 was constructed to ensure “adult” was inserted so if any State after federation granted women the right to vote then they AUTOMATICALLY had the right to vote in federal elections.
Aboriginals were in the same position but in 1908 the Federal Parliament, albeit unconstitutionally, limited voting to :”white only” and instead of pursuing this unconstitutional law to be over turned the Aboriginals went on seeking to have subsection 51(xxvi) amended, despite that the Federal government in the early 1950’s was warned that this was the wrong way to go about as a complete new section should be created for Aboriginal rights and not use the subsection 51(xxvi) that is specifically to discriminate.
The States had the powers to protect Aboriginal culture and religious items and the commonwealth has no such power (See Section 116).
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As such people were blind to go for an amendment they didn’t understand how it would in fact jeopardize Aboriginals.
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In their misconception they asked to have the amendment to be discriminated against and so be it. Even the United Nations was supporting this in their ill-conceived perceptions. This post doesn’t allow to set out the proper argument regarding it all. The point is that you do not amend the constitution to try to stop problems because of an unconstitutional legislation!
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Gerrit,

I defer to your expertise, but I'm still puzzled why you think that Indigenous people wanted to be discriminated AGAINST. That 1908 federal decision may have had more to do with not wanting to take responsibility for Indigenous affairs out of the hands of the states than with any definite decision: i.e. 'it's not our business', rather than 'it's our business and we'll discriminate against whoever we want to'.

On this interpretation, what the Referendum decided was to transfer responsibility for Indigenous affairs from the states to the federal government, to allow the federal government to treat Indigenous people as it did other Australians, no matter how defectively, at least until the RDA in 1975. Not that most of the states took any notice, apart from South Australia under Hall and Dunstan. Certainly, Queensland and WA thumbed their noses at the Feds well into the eighties.

So in terms of human rights, the intention of the Referendum was to end discrimination, as I see it - certainly, without it, the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 may not have become law, at least for a long time afterwards. Is this on the ball ?

Joe