The 1967 Referendum
On 27 May 1967 the Australian Federal Government held a referendum to ‘include Aboriginal people in the census’ and – well, Frank Hardy (in The Unlucky Australians) can take up the story.
The press is featuring the Federal Government’s referendum on the Aborigines, urging a ‘Yes’ vote as if this will solve all problems. The apparent aim of the referendum is to remove the bad image of Australia, created overseas by the White Australia policy and our treatment of Aborigines, by eliminating two clauses from the Australian Constitution which discriminate against Aborigines. To repeal Section 127 which reads: ‘In reckoning the number of people of the Commonwealth or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal people shall not be counted.‘ And to delete the discriminatory words from the clause which reads in part: ‘The Parliament shall, subject to the Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good Government of the Commonwealth with respect to the people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any State….’ No doubt when the Australian founding fathers wrote the Constitution at the turn of the century the let-the-abos-die-out theory led them to introduce these outrageous provisions. The motives of our present fathers in removing them seem less clear; no referendum is needed to enable the Government to count the Aborigines and it has legislated for aboriginal natives in the Northern Territory for nearly fifty years with the parlous results only partly revealed in this book. At best: window dressing; at worst: a confidence trick to delay mounting concern in the community about the crimes committed in its name against the Aborigines.
I enter the polling booth at the Manly School. Voting to me has always been an automatic process: Communist with second preference to Labor – and in a Referendum: ‘No’. Now, I must switch and vote: ‘Yes’. Yes, to perpetuate the power of the Federal Government over the NT Aborigines.
Picking up the ticket I mark it with the stub of pencil: ‘No’. Why? An impulse, or the memory of a remark by an official of the Health Department in Darwin: ‘The best thing the Federal Government could do for Aborigines is to disband the Welfare Department and have the other relevant departments – Health, Education, Social Services – apply equally to the Aborigines. Free compulsory education for Aborigines, free health service for Aborigines, and pensions, child endowment and dole, where applicable, to be paid direct to them in cash. The Welfare Department is a bottle-neck preventing equality, destroying the initiative of the Aborigines with paternalism and acting as an agent for the rich pastoral (cattle) companies.
An empty gesture. Ninety per cent vote: ‘Yes’ – and I am glad. But in some areas where relatively large number of Aborigines live, a majority votes: ‘No’. Citizens of the NT have no vote so their feelings are not revealed.
Written at the time.