I don't respect Birney or Grant... they both decided to ignore half their ancestral heritage...

As for Birney and fauna... I'd expect an MP State and Federal would know what she was talking about... I simply accepted that they know more than me and I must have missed it... I think 25 and 51 are the contentious parts they keep referring to.

Hi T800,

Yes, you would think so, ay ? Anyway, here's the Constitution:

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013Q00005

Sections 25 and 51:

25. Provision as to races disqualified from voting

For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted.

51. Legislative powers of the Parliament

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

(xxvi) the people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws;

I thought that Section 25 had been scrapped by the 1967 Referendum; Section 51 was modified by it. They were both State-oriented clauses. Neither has much place in today's conditions. Neither clause said anything about 'flora and fauna'.

Perhaps it's still wise not to believe anything without some evidence. From 1788, Indigenous people were deemed, like it or not, to be British subjects. Again and again, that ruling was applied (and presumably was also breached at least as often). But how could any British subjects be fauna ?

Please let's bury this rubbish and move on.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi T800,

Speaking of rubbish, in today's Australian, Shirley Peasley from Kingston in SA's South-East, asserted (p. 2) that 'terra nullius' meant that Aboriginal people weren't acknowledged as being in Australia at the time of settlement/invasion/contact.

I wonder who on earth ever suggested that ? Cook in 1770 writes of never being out of sight of the smoke from camp fires. Sturt, as we all learnt at school, was confronted in his journey down the Murray in 1830 or so, by a party of several hundred Aboriginal warriors. Phillip anticipated working with Aboriginal leaders before he arrived. That bastard Dampier spoke of seeing the 'most miserabilist people on earth' in the Kimberley in the 1680s. Hartog wrote in the 1640s of giants climbing trees in Tasmania. Many early explorers were speared, presumably by someone.

So who ever said that there were no Aborigines in Australia ? Nobody. Straw man.

But what did 'terra nullius' mean originally, in Roman law ? As far as I can tell, it meant 'land over which there did not seem to be any organisation of ownership'. Small islands, shoals, reefs, etc. and usually not inhabited. The problem seems to be whether or not a foraging system of land USE - which was recognised across Australia by the British, by the way (and still is, at least in South Australia) - amounted to a system of land OWNERSHIP, proprietorship, 'to the exclusion of all others', or was a much more basic system of land USE, providing what are called usufructuary rights to the land, which are recognised in British common law.

Unless I'm mistaken, the earliest use of the term in relation to Australia was made by Justice Blackburn in the Gove Case, in 1971. It was taken up then by Henry Reynolds in his series of books, culminating in its dismissal by the High Court in the Mabo case, 1992.

So the question should be, not whether or not people were here, but whether or not they had a recognisable system of land ownership, proprietorship, and/or title. The High Court said yes. End of.

Joe

I for one will not vote for this referendum because I just do not trust the federal govt because how come we only have a referendum which is binding on the govt, when the govt wants us to have a referendum?

This is vote is supposed to be about aboriginal recognition issues but I bet my bottom dollar there will be something sinister and underhanded go on as well.

Something tells the Australian people will be blackmailed into a situation where if you want 'x' then you must give the federal govt 'y'

Why is this upcoming referendum NOT ALSO about establishing mechanisms which make it relatively easy for the AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE TO INITIATE A REFERENDUM?

We have to learn off the Swiss experience people!

//From 1788, Indigenous people were deemed, like it or not, to be British subjects. Again and again, that ruling was applied (and presumably was also breached at least as often).//

Although in Queensland, they didn't have the right to vote until 1962. We haven't all been as nice to the Aboriginals as you South Australians.

Hi Toni,

Yeah, we forget now that Indigenous affairs were still officially State matters until the 1967 Referendum - that, in fact, this may have been the point of the Referendum - to take Indigenous affairs out of the hands of States and lodge them with the Commonwealth.

Even so, it seems that the law after the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1949 ensured the right of Indigenous people to vote in Commonwealth elections IF they had the right to vote in their respective State elections.

This is interesting, because of course the Northern Territory was administered by the Commonwealth at the time, so Indigenous people there automatically gained the vote - but as we know, by declaring 'full-blood' Aboriginal people to be 'wards', they were barred from voting. But people of mixed race did have the right, even if they had to keep fighting for it well into the mid-fifties, when they were exempted (I think?) from the restrictions of any legislation. Somebody would know much better than I do.

Thanks,

Joe