May 27th marks fifty years since more than 90% of white Australians voted to give, at least in name, some semblance of equality to Indigenous Australians. If that was the purpose of the 1967 referendum has that been achieved? The referendum did not give aboriginal people the right to vote, nor did it give them the rights of citizenship, In fact it gave very little to the first Australians. It did give the government the power to make laws for all Australians, including aboriginals, and it also required the government to take account of Aboriginal people when determining the population of Australia. Some would say not a great deal was actually given, and they would be right!
The question is, fifty years on, where do Indigenous Australians now stand in relation to equality with the rest of the Australian population

Hi Paul,

Forty-something thousand university graduates, roughly equivalent to the number of Maori graduates. Fifty thousand before 2020. A hundred thousand by 2030-2032. That will be one adult in every four, one in three women.

Currently, around 120,000 Indigenous people have been at some time to university, and around 18,000 are currently enrolled.

A rapidly growing urban, educated middle class.

Around 20 % of the country under Indigenous control.

No, the 1967 Referendum approved of the Federal Government taking control of Indigenous affairs from the States and make laws respecting Indigenous people instead of it being a State matter, and the States were quite happy to see those changes. The wording of the proposal in 1967 could have been more felicitous.

People were already counted by the States, and the difficulty back in 1901 was in estimating how many Aboriginal people still remained 'outside of civilization', which affected the number of parliamentary seats that WA and Queensland would have been entitled to, if an estimate of their numbers were included. Whinge about that if you like.

Indigenous people were already citizens, from the passing of the Citizenship Act of 1949: before that, nobody in Australia was a citizen: British subjects yes, and so were Indigenous people.

Aboriginal people already had the vote, some had had it uninterrupted since the nineteenth century. Indigenous women in SA had the vote twenty four years before British women over thirty, and thirty four years before British women over twenty on. French women got the vote in 1945. Saudi women (I think?) either don't have the vote yet, or have only recently gained it (Oh, hello, Yassmin, didn't see you there).

Anything else ?

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Paul,

Here's a link from the 7.30 Report that may be of interest:

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2017/s4619991.htm

Oh that was unkind of you Joe, shooting poor Paul down with facts.

You must surely realise our lefties can't stand facts, they get in the way of a good emotive bit of bleeding.

You'd best duck now. When they get hit with irrefutable facts, they come after the messenger, after all they have nothing else to argue with, but personal attacks.

Hi Has been,

I'm a big boy, I can take it :)

Thanks anyway. Yes, facts are dangerous things. Perhaps one day, they'll be banned, as tends to happen in totalitarian societies, where the Conventional Narrative rules with an iron fist, Gulags and a revolver.

Joe

@Loudmouth honestly i agree with your opinion.