Bill Shorten has announced an initiative that would tackle the educational disadvantage faced by Aboriginal girls, and also pledged a Labor government would address the “justice gap”.
How many issues can be put to the Australian people for votes in a single year? This is a key question for the referendum to recognise First Australians in the constitution.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has said that Indigenous recognition in the Constitution cannot just be “empty poetry” but must lay to rest “the ghosts of the discrimination” haunting the document.
Tony Abbott’s rejection of Indigenous-only conventions need not derail the push for constitutional recognition. But it demonstrates just how crucial sound process is to achieving change.
Constitutional recognition may have very limited impact if the groups benefiting from the change lack the political weight to leverage it into greater social change.
The problem with constitutional recognition lies in the way in which it changes the nature of the constitution away from a procedural document by introducing issues of identity into it.
Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten and Indigenous leaders dealt primarily with process rather than substance in their Monday meeting on constitutional recognition of the first Australians. This made it a whole…
David Leyonhjelm is a conviction politician whose positions are governed by principle, not populism. But he is exposing the disturbing moral thinness of the libertarian principles he espouses.
The parliamentary committee’s report highlights the deep division between those who want to advance Indigenous recognition through minimal constitutional change and those who seek more substantive reform.
A defeat for Indigenous constitutional recognition would be disastrous and demoralising. But history tells us that even worthy proposals with bipartisan support are not assured of success.
An Australian senator says the evidence on who should be recognised as the First Australians is only “conjecture”. So what does the evidence really say?
Tony Abbott wants Australia’s Indigenous people recognised in the constitution on May 27, 2017, the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which gave the Commonwealth power to make laws for Aborigines…
Important steps have been made in 2014 in the campaign to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia’s Constitution. Prime Minister Tony Abbott affirmed his commitment to hold…
The parliamentary committee on constitutional recognition of Australia’s first people has put forward three possible propositions for change. It has also said the vote should be “at or shortly after the…
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australia has been on the national agenda for a long time, but is back in the headlines with the news that the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader hope to release…
One of Tony Abbott’s best and boldest election promises was for a referendum to recognise Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution. That’s a promise he won’t want to break. Yet, as time goes on…
Australia has taken another step towards constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait…
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University