1967 Referendum

The 1967 Referendum

_{Source: Australian 1967 referendum - Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/australian-1967-referendum}

Multiple Choice

A constitution is...

• A set of rules by which a country is governed.

• A type of government

Multiple Choice

A referendum is...

• A vote taken by the people to change the government.

• A vote taken by the people to change the constitution.

• A vote taken by the people to decide on a new Prime MInister.

• A vote taken by the people to change the head of state.

What was the 1967 referendum about?

• The 1967 referendum proposed to include Aboriginal people in the census.

• The 1967 referendum proposed to allow the Commonwealth government to make laws for Aboriginal people.

What the 1967 was NOT about

• It did not give Aboriginal people the right to vote. This happened in 1962.

• It did not grant Aboriginal people citizenship. By the time of the referendum, most of the specific federal and state laws discriminating against Aboriginal people had been repealed.

• It was not about equal rights for Aboriginal people. The Constitutional change would not impact at all on laws governing Aboriginal people. However, campaigners hoped that a 'yes' vote would require the Commonwealth government to enact reforms which would eventually achieve better rights for Aboriginal people.

Multiple Choice

What was the 1967 referendum about?

• Giving Aboriginal people the vote

• Giving Aboriginal people equal rights

• Counting Aboriginal people in Australia's population

Multiple Choice

The 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people the right to vote.

• True

• False

State Laws

Before 1967, stage governments made laws for Aboriginal people and the federal government had no power to make laws for the benefit of Aboriginal people.

Laws for Aboriginal people varied greatly from state to state and supporters of the referendum hoped that these laws would become uniform if the federal government had power to change them.

Multiple Choice

In which state did Indigenous Australians have the least rights?

• NSW

• Qld

• Vic

• SA

Multiple Choice

In which state did Indigenous Australians have the most rights?

• Qld

• SA

• NSW

• WA

SECTION 127

Section 127 meant that when the population of the Commonwealth, of a state or territory is counted, Aboriginal people are not included.

Until well into the early 1960s politicians feared that by counting Indigenous people this would affect the quota that decided the number of seats a state could hold in parliament. Hence the greater the number of Aboriginal people within a state, the greater the number of seats.

Multiple Choice

Section 127 was a part of which document?

• The government

• The pre-amble

• The constitution

• The law

Multiple Choice

Section 127 stated that Aboriginal people would not be counted in

• The census

• The law

• The vote

Multiple Choice

Many politicians did not want Indigenous poeple counted in the census because it would affect how many seats a state could hold in parliament.

• True

• False

Australia is shocked!

In early 1957 the Grayden Report revealed that malnutrition, blindness and disease were all commonplace among the Aboriginal people of the Warburton Ranges region, about 300km west of the border between Western Australia and South Australia. Australia's shocked white population learned for the first time about the appalling living conditions of Aboriginal people whom they had scarcely heard of before.

Concerned individuals formed action groups, one of which was the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) founded in 1958. To achieve equal citizen rights for Aboriginal people the FCAA wanted the Australian Constitution to be changed to enable the Commonwealth government to legislate also for Aboriginal people.

The Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship ran a petition campaign in 1957 about the situation of the Aboriginal people of the Warburton Ranges. A year later the FCAA ran a similar petition which was signed by 25,000 people in three months. [8] Both petitions called for the amendment of section 51 and the repeal of section 127. Both failed.

Open Ended

Why were people shocked in Australia and what did they do?

On March 2nd 1967 Prime Minister, Harold Holt introduced legislation for a referendum to be held on May 27, 1967.

In April, FCAATSI (Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) organised a deputation to Canberra to seek support for a 'Yes' vote on the Aboriginal question [17]. FCAATSI feared that voters would not understand the effect of a 'yes' or 'no' vote and wanted to check on what politicians had done in their electorates to support a 'yes' vote.

FCAATSI was helped by the heads of churches who also supported a 'yes' vote, distributed how-to-vote cards and tried to explain to voters what it was all about.

Multiple Choice

Who was the Prime Minister that introduced legislation for the 1967 referendum?

• Gough Whitlam

• Kevin Rudd

• Tony Abbott

• Harold Holt

What the 1967 referendum meant to Aboriginal People

In an article published shortly before the 1967 referendum, Charles Dixon, Manager of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs explained how he as an Aboriginal person felt about the referendum:

-- Acceptance as a person. Dixon felt that up until the referendum Aboriginal people had not been seen as "human beings".

-- A unified law. For too long an Aboriginal person would break the law somewhere purely by moving around as a citizen or to "exist on that very spot", because each state had its own laws governing Aboriginal people.

The question

Referendum question:

"Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'An Act to alter the Constitution' so as to omit certain words relating to the people of the Aboriginal race in any state so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the population?"

The results

For the referendum to pass it was required that the question was supported by a majority of voters in a majority of states, in 1967 that meant about 2.5 million 'yes' votes in four states (the 'territories' were not eligible to vote, i.e. Northern Territory and ACT).

Multiple Choice

Which state had the highest "yes" vote?

• Victoria

• NSW

• Qld

• SA

Multiple Choice

Which state had the highest "no" vote?

• NSW

• Vic

• WA

• Qld

Jack Horner, member of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, remembers the night the votes were counted: "On the night of 27 May 1967, Jean [his wife] and I were in the tally room at Circular Quay, in Sydney, and we couldn't believe it as the results were consecutively dropped onto the calculating machine. Those results exceeded our greatest expectations, and everyone's—it was the triumph of an appeal to the sense of justice."

Open Ended

How did many Aboriginal Australians react to the results?

Referendum notes:

-- The heaviest 'no' voting came from country electorates (e.g. 18% in northern NSW).

-- It was the biggest 'yes' vote in history on any Commonwealth referendum to-date.

-- In the WA electorate of Kalgoorlie more than 28% of votes opposed the proposal.

-- The proposal on Aboriginal people was only the fifth to be carried since Federation.

-- The 'no' vote was most dominant in states that had the largest Aboriginal population and have been criticised most for their treatment of Aboriginal people.

Open Ended

Why would many people see the 1967 referendum as an important part of Australian History?