TheBanyanTree: What the 1967 referendum really did

[PJMoney]

Way back in June 1998 I was working towards my grad dip in public health.
For the unit "Sociology and Health" I had to write an essay on this topic:

"Writing about the health of indigenous populations, Kunitz has argued,
'that the major determinant of differences in contemporary health are the
different ways in which governments have dealt with indigenous peoples.'
Discuss."  

The lecturer, Peter D'Abbs, (who is now an Associate Professor in the School
of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Science at JCU) took
me to task for including this phrase; "the granting of citizenship in 1967".

On my paper he wrote,
"Contrary to widespread misconception the 1967 referendum did not (double
underline) bestow citizenship on Aboriginal people, but merely provided for
them to be counted in the Census, and authorised the Commonwealth Govt. to
legislate on their behalf."

I was very surprised to learn that what was common knowledge was quite
wrong.  

In fact Aboriginal people became Australian citizens (along with all other
Australians) in 1949.  Prior to that date we were all just British subjects.
My 1972 passport describes me as an Australian citizen and British subject.
The "British subject" part wasn't dropped until 1987 - a mere 20 years ago.

Apparently, the 1901 Constitution allowed Aboriginals to vote in
Commonwealth elections if they were allowed to vote in State elections but
this seems to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
In 1962 Aboriginals were given the right to vote in Commonwealth elections
irrespective of whether or not they were allowed to vote in State elections
and by 1965 the only two states that previously did not allow Aboriginals to
vote in their elections (W.A. and Qld.) had granted them the right to vote.

I think it was when I was doing the unit on demography that I learned the
importance of allowing Aboriginals to be counted in the census.  It was all
about politics and money.

The Commonwealth disburses money to the states according to a complicated
formula that takes each state's population into account.  It also allocates
parliamentary seats according to population counts.

The Constitution, as originally written, had a clause providing that
Aboriginals could not be counted in the census.  This, it seems, was to
prevent the states with the largest number of Aboriginals (again W.A. and
Qld.) from being allocated more seats or being given more money.  

I'm not sure that allocating more seats in parliament would have been much
use to Aboriginal people living at the beginning of the twentieth century,
but considering that the states had responsibility for Aboriginal welfare it
seems like a no brainer that those with most of them might have done better
towards them if they'd had more money to do it with.  Then again, who knows?
The world was a whole different place a hundred years or so ago.

Another clause in the Constitution said that the Commonwealth had the power
to make laws for people of any race for whom special laws were deemed
necessary, except for Aboriginals.
 
The 1967 referendum allowed the removal of those two clauses from the
Constitution.  As a consequence the Commonwealth can make, and has made,
laws specifically for Aboriginal people, and the Aboriginal population of
each state is factored into the grant allocation formula.  The latter
probably doesn't make much difference in most of Australia where the
Aboriginal population is something like 1 - 2% (3 - 3.5% in W.A. and Qld). 

Where I live it's 25% but though we have self-government we're not a state
and the Commonwealth government can, if it can get the numbers in
parliament, do whatever it thinks best here.  With a population (including
everybody) of less than 200,000 I think it's fair enough that we're not a
state.  As it is, to get enough parliamentarians to do the job of running
the Territory, we have to have electorates with only about 4,500 voters.  In
the states the electorates are roughly 10 times that size. 

Janice