Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
20.3.27 Prior to 1968, Aboriginal voting rights varied throughout Australia. No special restrictions applied to Aboriginal voting rights in South Australia, New South Wales or Victoria. 26 Many Aboriginal people were still denied voting rights even after the Nationality and Citizenship Act was introduced in 1948, which made all Australian-born residents citizens. Despite being officially classed as citizens, the Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that only those Aboriginal people enrolled to vote in the States or who had been members of the defence forces could vote. In Western Australia only people with a certificate of citizenship could vote, while Queensland Election Acts from 1915 excluded all Aboriginal people from the vote. Those 'half-castes' who did not come under the Act (and who held exemption certificates) were entitled to vote, but on reserves the superintendents could effectively disenfranchise Aboriginal people by refusing to provide information on the numbers entitled to vote to the Commonwealth Electoral Office or by refusing to provide voter education. In the Northern Territory, Aboriginal people were excluded from voting, and in 1953 'wards' were not entitled to vote. This is revealing of Australia's sense of nationhood; Aboriginal people were to be part of the past, not the future. 27
20.3.28 Aboriginal people were often granted the right to drink before they were given voting rights. Certainly many would not have known about their voting rights or been enrolled. The fact that many Aboriginal people did not enrol to vote was no doubt tied up with their attitudes to surveillance, record-keeping and citizen rights. Previously, 'rights' had meant the rejection of Aboriginality and kin relations. It meant conforming to non-Aboriginal society, close supervision and the ever-present threat of withdrawal of rights.
20.3.29 In 1962, the right to vote for those Aboriginal people not already entitled to do so at Commonwealth and most State elections was granted, with Queensland lagging behind in 1965. 28 Yet 1967 is seen as a much more important turning point for Aboriginal people. Section 51, clause 26, of the Federal Constitution prevented Commonwealth Parliament making laws about Aboriginal people. They were also excluded from the Commonwealth Census by section 127. In 1967, 90% of the Australian public voted to give the Commonwealth powers to make laws relating to Aboriginal people and to require that they be counted in the census. 29 Aboriginal people were first counted in a national census in 1971.
20.3.30 Colonial takeover denied Aboriginal people the right to live by their own rules, to decide on their own policies. They were denied the freedom to run their own economic and family life. They were also denied the right to own land, to earn a secure living as farmers, merchants, or in the labour market at their own discretion, to earn a family wage, to receive welfare benefits, to live where they pleased. Under various policies their private, reproductive lives were under scrutiny by government and missionary officials. They could not necessarily marry the person they chose, fraternise with people of their choice, speak to people of a certain colour skin, live in a particular street or on a particular reserve. They could not decide how many people they shared their house with. They were not eligible for old age pensions, for workers' compensation, for maternity allowances or for child endowment. Even when legislation on such matters changed in the 1940s and 1950s, it was often the manager of the mission or reserve rather than the individual who was paid this money. They could not run their own bank accounts. Anyone who objected could end up exiled hundreds of kilometres away or imprisoned for an unknown time. After release, they could be again banished from their families. The law extended its arm into the bedroom and into the post-natal ward. Children were taken from mothers after birth, others were taken once they reached the age of three or four years. Many Aboriginal families were thus denied the right to nurture, to rear and educate, to love their own children, to see them grow up. They lost these children, and the children became lost themselves. Who were they? Often children had been taught to detest everything Aboriginal, and this could extend to themselves once they realised their skin was not white.
20.3.31 Aboriginal people were rarely consulted for their view on policy in the pre-1967 period. In the nineteenth century, advisers were leading business people and missionaries. In the twentieth century, there was more of an emphasis on 'expert' advice, with doctors and anthropologists being consulted as well as influential employer groups and missionaries. From the late nineteenth century to the 1930s and beyond, many Aboriginal spokespersons had lobbied for their people to be allowed human dignity, yet such people were so often discredited as ratbags or not 'real Aborigines', or were said to be Nazis or communists, depending on the tenor of the day. But by the 1960s, Australian Governments were starting to pay some heed to Aboriginal voices. Prime Minister Menzies accepted a delegation of FCAATSI representatives in 1965 which was interested in the mess of legislation that required they live under six different sets of laws. To relieve the tension of the meeting, they broke for refreshments, and Menzies offered Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) a whisky:
Kath told the Prime Minister that if he had made that offer to her in Queensland, he would have been gaoled. Shock clouded Menzies' face and when he had regained composure he told Kath that he 'was the boss around here' and proceeded to pour her a drink. I believe that was the turning point the incident caused him to give the situation of Aborigines more thought. 30