TheBanyanTree: What the 1967 referendum really did

[Peter Macinnis]

PJMoney wrote:

> 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."

Janice and her marker are, of course, correct, and I knew that, but it 
was stored in some buried neurons.  The failure to count Aboriginal 
people was in part to reduce the number of seat in the House of 
Representatives given to Western Australia at Federation.  My slip 
occurred because the rhetoric of 1967 was more at "giving Aborigines the 
vote", which was more emotive and effective.

The census, House of Reps and Senate model and the link between the 
census and the lower house will be familiar to Americans, because we 
took it from them, with a few tweaks, like not counting Aborigines.  By 
the 1890s, processing a ten-year census was taking ten years in the US, 
so the Australian constitution framers added a couple of escape clauses, 
not knowing that Hermann Hollerith had invented his clever punch cards 
to speed the count up, allowing the census to stay ahead of the 
ballooning US population.

And so, folks, we got IBM, injunctions not to fold, mutilate or spindle 
and a massive injustice that is slowly being rolled back.

peter

-- 
   _--|\    Peter Macinnis       petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \   Designer of macroscopic diffraction gratings,
  \.--._*   collector of baroque vegetables and fruits
       v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm