tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/1967-referendum-38608/articles1967 referendum – The Conversation2023-10-11T19:06:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149602023-10-11T19:06:33Z2023-10-11T19:06:33Z‘We should be listening’: the long history of Liberal innovation – and failure – on Indigenous policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552624/original/file-20231007-19-4viaai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
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<p>We have had compelling accounts from Indigenous activists of “<a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/long-road-uluru-walking-together-truth-before-justice-megan-davis/">the long road to Uluru</a>”. But another perspective on the Voice debate can also be gleaned from the political insiders – especially Coalition leaders – who engaged with Indigenous communities, learned from them, sought to develop consultative and policy solutions, yet failed to “close the gap”.</p>
<p>The furious opposition of the current Coalition parties to the Voice disowns their own history and an initiative that was arguably their own creation. So it is illuminating to explore their divergence from some of their former leaders who were passionate about trying to fix Indigenous disadvantage.</p>
<p>Paul Hasluck, journalist, historian, and diplomat was elected for the Liberals to parliament in 1949. Growing up in country Western Australia with Indigenous friends, he empathised with their connection to Country. </p>
<p>Curiosity stimulated his masters thesis, Black Australians, an account of 19th century relations between Indigenous people and colonists in Western Australia, published in 1942. He was appointed minister for territories in 1951.</p>
<p>He sought first to work with the states but faced resistance: they insisted they were already doing everything possible for “native welfare” and that it was a minor problem. Hasluck tried to bring change to the Northern Territory, hoping success would induce states to follow his lead. The difficulties were considerable: a department whose efforts were desultory, an administration that dragged its feet, a lack of bureaucratic and economic infrastructure in the Territory.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552612/original/file-20231007-15-v2l57o.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Minister for Territories Paul Hasluck tried to introduce policies to ameliorate Indigenous disadvantage, but ultimately failed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/afternoon-light-podcast/william-sanders">Robert Menzies Institute</a></span>
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<p>Hasluck persisted, aware of key factors driving policy failure in settler-Indigenous relations: racism, inequality, disparity in administration across states, inability to ameliorate Indigenous disadvantage, denial of agency. He sought to address this through cooperative federalism. </p>
<p>But his was a vision of assimilation, limited by inherited patterns of thought. It discounted the affiliations that tied Indigenous people to social and group identity. </p>
<p>Hasluck <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/1891893">eventually understood</a> that he had been captured by tunnel vision. </p>
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<p>My outlook on aboriginal welfare […] influenced by the evangelism of mid and late Victorian England […] placed emphasis on the individual. The individual made the choice and made the effort and as a result was changed. This influence […] meant that we did not see clearly the ways in which the individual is bound by membership of a family or a group.</p>
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<h2>Success in 1967 – but deep division remains</h2>
<p>In the 1950s and 1960s, widespread recognition of the need for change led to bipartisan support for and success in the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2017/May/The_1967_Referendum">1967 constitutional referendum</a>. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Harold Holt then established the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. His successor, <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-2408">Billy McMahon, signalled policy change</a>. McMahon said Indigenous peoples </p>
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<p>should be encouraged and assisted to preserve and develop their culture, their languages, their traditions and arts so that these can become living elements in the diverse culture of Australian society.</p>
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<p>McMahon tried to bridge divisions in his Coalition by offering a Northern Territory Land Board that could grant 50-year leases to Indigenous groups that could prove a long and continuing connection with land, rather than the land rights Indigenous groups were demanding. The fallout was such that it sparked the establishment of the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-tent-embassy">Aboriginal Tent embassy</a> in 1972.</p>
<p>So it was that Gough Whitlam picked up the baton, making land rights a centrepiece of Labor policy. Among his initiatives were the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) expunging state laws restricting the rights of Indigenous people. He also established <a href="https://antar.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Woodward-Royal-Commission-Factsheet-1.pdf">a royal commission</a> into land rights in the Northern Territory. The Whitlam government’s Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Bill (1975) was drawn from its recommendations.</p>
<h2>Fraser picks up where Whitlam left off</h2>
<p>However, it was Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser who, in 1976, passed the Land Rights legislation that Whitlam had developed, but had been unable to progress in the Senate before his 1975 dismissal. He also passed the Aboriginal Councils and Association Act, allowing Indigenous bodies to register as corporations for community purposes. </p>
<p>This was the foundation for hundreds of Indigenous corporations, a springboard for community development that stimulated the emergence of Indigenous social entrepreneurs. Once a staunch assimilationist, Fraser had visited remote communities, met with impressive Indigenous leaders such as Galarrway Yunupingu, and now Indigenous policy reform became part of his broader Human Rights Agenda.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552614/original/file-20231007-23-f71u4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Malcolm Fraser and Galarrwuy Yunupingu in Arnhem Land, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/australias-prime-ministers/malcolm-fraser/during-office">National Archives of Australia</a></span>
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<p>Fraser established an Aboriginal Development Commission, directed by Charlie Perkins, and a National Aboriginal Conference, (NAC) chaired by Lowitja O’Donoghue. His Administrative Appeals Tribunal (1977) and Human Rights Commission (1981) provided additional avenues for Indigenous scrutiny and appeal against decisions affecting them.</p>
<p>All of these were opposed from within the Coalition parties themselves. Their carriage required resolute action. They were radical initiatives in conservative circles. Yet, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/malcolm-fraser-paperback-softback">reflecting later</a>, Fraser rued that he was too timid, that he should have acted on an idea raised by the NAC: to negotiate a treaty.</p>
<h2>Command and control rather than community engagement</h2>
<p>John Howard’s policy initiatives were the next significant Coalition incursion into Indigenous conditions. He provoked Indigenous leaders by refusing to apologise for the actions of past governments. He abolished Bob Hawke’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC) – the first legislated attempt to combine consultation and program management under Indigenous leadership – announcing the “experiment” in self-determination had failed.</p>
<p>His legislative response to the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/research_pub/wik-coexistance-pastrol-leases-mining-nati-vetitle-ten-point-plan_0_3.pdf">Wik High Court decision</a> enabled him to amend the Keating government’s landmark <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/about-native-title">Native Title Act</a>, itself a response to the High Court’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mabo-decision-and-native-title-74147">Mabo decision</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, he endorsed the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), a remarkable attempt to address dysfunction and restore order in remote communities by mobilising army and police intervention where Indigenous responsibility had failed. Significantly, it was also Howard who first raised the prospect of Constitutional recognition.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ten-years-on-its-time-we-learned-the-lessons-from-the-failed-northern-territory-intervention-79198">Ten years on, it's time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention</a>
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<p>Howard had a clear rationale for each of these steps. Apology, Howard argued, could only be offered by the perpetrator of wrongs. ATSIC, despite research now confirming <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/video/fellowship-presentation-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-commission-toward#:%7E:text=In%2520this%2520Fellowship%2520presentation%252C%2520Associate,its%2520achievements%2520and%2520its%2520legacies.">the extent of its achievement</a> under the indomitable Indigenous public servants Lowitja O’Donoghue and Pat Turner, had later fallen under heavy scrutiny before being abolished in 2005. It was also subject to incandescent <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/the-end-of-big-men-politics/">critique by Indigenous leaders</a> and lost the faith of the Labor Party which had created it. </p>
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<p>The Wik decision, like Mabo, demanded legislative address. The NTER was a response to a <a href="https://www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/resources/ampe-akelyernemane-meke-mekarle-little-children-are-sacred-report-of-the-northern-territory-board-of-inquiry-into-the-protection-of-aboriginal-children-from-sexual-abuse/">devastating report of domestic violence and child abuse</a>, and had followed advice, and was supported, by influential Indigenous public intellectuals such as Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/many-claim-australias-longest-running-indigenous-body-failed-heres-why-thats-wrong-209511">Many claim Australia’s longest-running Indigenous body failed. Here’s why that’s wrong</a>
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<p>It was these Indigenous advisers, too, who persuaded Howard to support Constitutional recognition. Nonetheless, major initiatives proceeded hurriedly, without explanation or consultation with the Indigenous communities affected.</p>
<h2>The Coalition’s reconciliation agenda leads to Uluru</h2>
<p>It is striking, if one leaves aside the inadequacy of Tony Abbott’s <a href="https://www.indigenous.gov.au/indigenous-advancement-strategy">Indigenous Advancement Strategy</a> (which again ignored the necessity of community engagement), or the Coalition’s outsourcing or offloading to states of Closing the Gap arrangements, that the next significant initiative was fostered by a bipartisan meeting on advancing reconciliation between Abbott (with Bill Shorten) and Indigenous leaders. </p>
<p>There followed a Referendum Council established by Abbott’s successor, Malcolm Turnbull, with a sub-committee of the same Indigenous leaders tasked with creating a dialogue on reconciliation with Indigenous communities nationwide. It led directly to the National Constitutional Convention that delivered the Uluru Statement in 2017. </p>
<p>The Uluru Statement then, responding to years of lobbying by those most closely engaged with Indigenous disadvantage, was developed by Indigenous representatives with the encouragement of successive Coalition administrations. </p>
<p>Yet it was Turnbull who declared that its proposal for a Voice referendum was not politically feasible. Turnbull has since <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-opens-up-on-his-changing-opinions-with-the-voice-referendum/video/86257acb8aaca03e967961d569277b8a">endorsed the current referendum</a>, arguing “a lot has changed since then […] the Indigenous community has backed this in for six years […] we should be listening to how they want to be recognised”.</p>
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<h2>A Coalition trapped by ‘settler liberalism’</h2>
<p>Some of these engaged politicians looked back with remorse and saw how they had been constrained by their own political frameworks (Hasluck), hobbled by their colleagues’ policy priorities (McMahon, Turnbull), or too cautious (Fraser). </p>
<p>Above all, they recognised that their failure lay in not having heard what Indigenous communities told them. One might have expected the cumulative knowledge of these policy leaders to have influenced their peers. Yet what they had learned was rarely understood by their successors.</p>
<p>Partly it was a symptom of endemic short-termism. More significant, however, was another strand, exemplified by Hasluck’s rueful recollection: a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/030437540102600201">“settler liberalism”</a> that takes its own commitment to a particular form of individualistic liberal freedom so much for granted that it is blind to collective forms of social relations, and to the structural and institutional consequences of colonisation. </p>
<p>Howard and Mal Brough, the minister who so energetically drove the NTER, were undoubtedly committed to better outcomes for remote communities. They were, unlike Hasluck and Fraser, not remorseful about <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-ask-us-come-and-see-us-aboriginal-young-people-in-the-northern-territory-must-be-listened-to-not-punished-199297">the trauma and dismay that is still evident</a> as a consequence of the intervention. Instead, they were frustrated that successors had not seen it fully developed to address dysfunction in the manner proposed. Their conviction is a manifestation of the persistence of settler liberalism, now so much embedded in the contemporary Coalition’s engagement in the Voice debate.</p>
<p>So here we are, cycling back decades while the remorse of Liberal innovators about the limitations on what they could achieve is forgotten. With it, settler liberalism is reincarnated as a salve that Hasluck, Fraser and others would have thought discredited in their day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Walter has received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past for research on which this article is based. </span></em></p>Many Liberal politicians have been passionate about redressing Indigenous disadvantage, but have come unstuck by the pitfall of ‘settler liberalism’.James Walter, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126932023-09-05T20:06:21Z2023-09-05T20:06:21ZFrom badges to ball gowns: how fashion took centre-stage in the 1967 and 2023 referendums<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. This story also contains examples of outdated language</em></p>
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<p>During the campaign for the 1967 First Nations referendum, which would go on to receive a 90.77% “yes” vote, the late human rights campaigner Faith Bandler believed fashion and clothing could play a key role in encouraging voters.</p>
<p>A South Sea Islander/Scottish Indian woman, Bandler played a <a href="https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/faith-bandler-1920">lead role in the 1967 referendum campaign</a>. She described <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/collection/highlights/faith-bandler-gloves">wearing white day gloves when campaigning</a> and speaking to non-Indigenous audiences:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I used to wear short white gloves. They were acceptable to the white community I came in contact with when I was campaigning for black women’s rights. I wore them from 1956 until the mid-1960s. During that period I only ever addressed white audiences. I only had to convince them.</p>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Seven people in business wear." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546102/original/file-20230904-248771-3zn8pi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Faith Bandler (second from left) and Harold Holt (third from left) meeting during the campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harold_Holt_and_FCAATSI.jpg">National Archives of Australia</a></span>
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<p>The fashion during the 1967 referendum was conservative. Speakers such as Bandler featured subtle accessories and respectable clothing, occasionally accented by a badge that modestly communicated their message. </p>
<p>It is a far cry from the overt – and often casual – ways fashion is being used in the 2023 referendum campaign.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vale-faith-bandler-anti-racist-intellectual-and-activist-37623">Vale Faith Bandler: anti-racist intellectual and activist</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Subtle style</h2>
<p>First Nations <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-key-to-australias-most-successful-referendum/bzh8qtlo7">women, and particularly older women</a> were often the voice of the 1967 referendum, and appearances were important. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Well dressed Aboriginal women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546065/original/file-20230903-21-7lui76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Aboriginal Rights Referendum Rally in Wynyard Park, May 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/n5lVPWw9/qkVzMKOpyWQMO">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy SEARCH Foundation</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Campaigners emphasised respectability and etiquette by wearing structured and formal outfits. Older women wore their Sunday best: dresses with hats, skirts with jacket sets or casual pencil skirts with dressy turtlenecks, and small and subtle jewellery.</p>
<p>The older men wore suits, short-sleeved shirts (with or without structured jackets and slacks) and knitted vests. </p>
<p>In reflecting the changing times and optimism, younger men often wore smart and structured t-shirts with trousers. </p>
<p>Young women chose headbands over hats, knitted jumpers and sweaters over suit sets and large earrings over delicate adornment. </p>
<h2>The iconic badges</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Badge reads: Vote Yes for Aborigines" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546062/original/file-20230903-29-3t7gw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A badge from the 1967 referendum campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1958811">Copyright Museums Victoria</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an iconic photo of the campaign efforts, Ngarrindjeri and Boandik campaigner Shirley Peisley <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-key-to-australias-most-successful-referendum/bzh8qtlo7">wore a white dress with peter pan collar</a>. Ever so subtly, a 1967 referendum badge is displayed on her lapel. With her hair perfectly coiffed, her only jewellery was a bracelet and wedding ring. </p>
<p>Badges were instrumental in the campaign. They were striking, temporary and expressed an articulate campaign. </p>
<p>Jackie Huggins (Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru) remembers, as an 11-year-old, <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/sister-girl-reflections-on-tiddaism-identity-and-reconciliation">handing out badges to promote the campaign</a>.</p>
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<p>If I was asked to make one more toffee or lamington for a fundraising drive (or do the hula) or stand on another street corner handing out badges …</p>
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<p>Badges have long been used for First Nations political and social statements. In the late 1800s, some First Nations people wore <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9130383">temperance badges</a> as a pledge of abstinence from alcohol. </p>
<p>Returned & Services League and Mothers Mourners badges were significant for First Nations people who served or lost family members in war. These badges were a <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243764149/26446178">source of pride</a> of service and mateship. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman and two young men wearing badges." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546289/original/file-20230905-17-h5q79o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members on the Freedom Rides SAFA (Student Action For Aboriginals) wore badges, including in the shape of a boomerang.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/n7oVGW3n/ZRQlr6RDaqrav">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy SEARCH Foundation</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the 1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act, which granted First Nations people the right to vote in Federal elections, tin badges declared “<a href="https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/images/our-vote-our-future-metal-badge">Our Vote = Our Future</a>”. Other badges worn by the 1960s First Nations rights groups featured boomerang shapes and circular <a href="https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/1sev8ar/alma9939659306907636">Aboriginal rights designs</a>. </p>
<p>Unlike today, t-shirts were not a part of the 1967 referendum campaign. First Nations slogan t-shirts were <a href="https://nit.com.au/21-06-2023/6446/the-iconic-aboriginal-flag-t-shirts-evolution">first worn in the 1970s</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512">‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?</a>
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<h2>Referendum fashion today</h2>
<p>Fashion is again playing a role in the 2023 referendum. </p>
<p>Today, clothes are brighter and more casual. Concepts of “etiquette” have almost entirely broken down. </p>
<p>First Nations designers and artists have shaped <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110896107?">textiles</a> and <a href="https://collection.powerhouse.com.au/object/138424">fashion</a> over the decades. Youth and street styles, which often pair text with clothing and make cheeky or ironic gestures, are worn by many. </p>
<p>At a Blak Sovereign Movement press conference, Senator Lidia Thorpe (Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung) wore an outfit representing cultural pride. Her jacket, pants, and shoes represented the Aboriginal flag colours of black, yellow, and red. Her Treaty t-shirt and Aboriginal flag earrings were strong with symbolism.</p>
<p>Fellow “no” campaigner from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Senator Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price (Warlpiri/Celtic), chooses a t-shirt with the slogan “Vote No to the voice of division”, often with a conservative blazer. </p>
<p>Mutthi Mutthi and Wamba Wamba woman and Senator Jana Stewart wore a <a href="https://www.clothingthegaps.com.au/blogs/blogs/the-dress-that-says-yes">ball gown designed by First Nations label Clothing the Gaps</a> to the Midwinter Ball. </p>
<p>The white silk dress featured the Uluru Statement from the Heart written in black and of different sizes and red embroidered yeses. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ctxm1snhyzT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u0026igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>The “yes” campaign merchandise of t-shirts, jumpers and badges highlight bright or natural colours as a cheerful and optimistic response to the movement. These are being worn by official campaigners and casual voters alike.</p>
<p>The fashions of the 2023 referendum are very different from 1967. The act of protest incorporated in everyday street wear and evening dresses would have shocked the general public in the 1960s. It would have amazed people to see campaigners wearing outfits that overtly described the campaign movement.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-was-written-for-nuclear-disarmament-but-today-youre-the-voice-is-the-perfect-song-for-the-yes-campaign-212769">It was written for nuclear disarmament – but today You’re The Voice is the perfect song for the 'yes' campaign</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Treena Clark has received funding through the University of Technology Sydney Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellowship scheme.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McNeil does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It would have amazed campaigners from 1967 to see people today wearing outfits that overtly describe the movement.Treena Clark, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology SydneyPeter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036602023-04-14T04:37:25Z2023-04-14T04:37:25ZDutton’s ‘no’ vote reflects 40 years of Coalition partisanship on the Voice<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s hope for a bipartisan approach on the Voice to parliament referendum has crumbled.</p>
<p>Late last year, the National party declared it would oppose the proposed model, while the Liberal party did the same earlier this month. </p>
<p>Nationals Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationals-declare-they-will-oppose-the-voice-referendum-195446">said</a> the current Voice model “lacks detail”, “divides us along the lines of race”, and that it’s “a way to push people into feeling guilt for our nation’s history”.</p>
<p>And Opposition Leader Peter Dutton <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/05/peter-dutton-confirms-liberals-will-oppose-indigenous-voice-to-parliament">said</a> “it is divisive and won’t deliver the outcomes to people on the ground”.</p>
<p>If these words sound familiar, that’s because in the late 1980s, the Coalition used the same arguments to oppose the creation of another First Nations advisory body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).</p>
<p>Indeed, the Coalition has a long-held opposition to an empowered Indigenous advisory body, and Dutton is parroting a well-rehearsed Coalition songbook. </p>
<h2>The Coalition’s battle against ATSIC</h2>
<p>Over the past 40 years, cooperation between the major parties on Indigenous affairs has been a complicated matter.</p>
<p>Even the ostensibly bipartisan approach to the 1967 referendum – which succeeded in altering the constitution to enable the Commonwealth to make laws for Indigenous people – concealed partisan differences.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-1967-referendum-was-the-most-successful-in-australias-history-but-what-it-can-tell-us-about-2023-is-complicated-198874">The 1967 referendum was the most successful in Australia's history. But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated</a>
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<p>Gough Whitlam’s policy of self-determination became self-management under the Coalition in the late 1970s. Bipartisanship deteriorated further in the late 1980s after the Aboriginal affairs minister in the Hawke Labor government, Gerry Hand, announced the need to recognise and legislate Aboriginal self-determination.</p>
<p>Hand’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Bill would establish a national commission and regional councils across the country to monitor programs, develop policy and advise the minister. This was styled as a revolution in Aboriginal affairs. </p>
<p>In the 40 hours of parliamentary debates over the bill, clear ideological lines were drawn.</p>
<p>Hand said it was about giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people access to all levels of government to ensure the right decisions were made about their lives. It was about a new partnership and an attempt to right the wrongs of history.</p>
<p>Opposing it, the Coalition argued it would <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F1989-04-11%2F0025%22">divide the nation</a> rather than unite it, that it constituted a “black parliament”, that it was a racial law, and that it would not overcome Indigenous disadvantage. </p>
<p>The Liberals and Nationals rejected what they <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F1989-04-11%2F0028%22">called</a> the “symbolism, separatism and perpetual guilt” of the appeal to history.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1643539561354760194"}"></div></p>
<p>But it was Hand’s suggested preamble that worried the Coalition most. It acknowledged the distinct status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as prior occupants and original owners of the land. It aimed to provide them with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>full recognition and status within the Australian nation to which history, their prior ownership and occupation of the land, and their rich and diverse culture, fully entitle them to aspire.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The parliamentary debates reveal the Coalition’s visceral rejection of the preamble, which it <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F1989-08-30%2F0038%22">called</a> a “gross irresponsibility”.</p>
<p>In 1989, then MP John Howard <a href="https://www.vinnies.org.au/icms_docs/168244_2004_Ozanam_Lecture_-_Thursday_20_May_2004.pdf">declared</a> the establishment of ATSIC an act of “sheer national idiocy”. Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Christopher Miles declared his party’s <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F1989-05-23%2F0119%22">intention to abolish ATSIC</a> if it proceeded as Hand had envisaged.</p>
<p>When the ATSIC bill finally passed, it was stripped of the preamble, and self-determination had been removed from its wording. </p>
<h2>What’s happened since ATSIC?</h2>
<p>As it turns out, the abolition of ATSIC became a bipartisan affair. In 2004, Prime Minister Howard declared the ATSIC Act <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/howard-puts-atsic-to-death-20040416-gdxoqw.html">would be repealed</a>, after Labor leader Mark Latham announced his decision to do the same if elected to office. Latham suggested a reconstituted body, but Howard declared no intention of replacing it.</p>
<p>While there has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-territory-intervention-extended-but-is-it-working-8005">some cooperation</a> on Indigenous policy since, bipartisanship around an advisory body has been a slippery proposition.</p>
<p>Disagreements emerged in 2017 when Labor backed the Referendum Council’s recommendation of a constitutionally enshrined Voice to parliament. Then Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/26/indigenous-voice-proposal-not-desirable-says-turnbull">rejected it</a>.</p>
<p>Bipartisanship cropped up again when Liberal and Labor leaders <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/turnbull-and-shorten-agree-on-restart-for-indigenous-referendum-20180301-p4z2eb.html">agreed in 2018 to a restart on the referendum</a> through a parliamentary committee, to find common ground on Indigenous recognition. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1640821535274303488"}"></div></p>
<p>Given this history, it’s not surprising two of the main sticking points for the Coalition around the Voice proposal are that it will be permanent, and that it will have a voice to parliament and the executive (the cabinet and government departments).</p>
<p>The last time an Indigenous body advised the executive was when the Keating government sought to legislate native title following the Mabo decision. ATSIC mobilised a large group of Indigenous organisations to present their case to Keating’s <a href="https://www.roberttickner.com/taking-a-stand">Mabo Ministerial Committee</a>.</p>
<p>Then, in a series of intense negotiations with Keating following his draft native title bill in 1993, they salvaged some rights in the face of their near extinguishment.</p>
<p>The resulting Native Title Act was declared by the then Liberal leader, John Hewson, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/127525273?searchTerm=millstone%20around%20our%20country%27s%20prosperity">as a</a> “millstone around our country’s prosperity” and a recipe for division.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-high-cost-of-the-liberals-voice-rejection-for-both-peter-dutton-and-the-party-203419">Grattan on Friday: the high cost of the Liberals' Voice rejection – for both Peter Dutton and the party</a>
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<p>This week, Howard resurfaced to <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/indigenous-voice-john-howard-denounces-noel-pearsons-judas-attack-on-peter-dutton/news-story/3aa749e59860d1a3f9602f1bfdc66fa1">defend Dutton’s position</a> on the Voice referendum, declaring Dutton had not betrayed the Liberal party.</p>
<p>Howard was speaking a truth – the Coalition’s position on the Voice is entirely consistent with their partisanship in this area of Aboriginal policy since the 1980s.</p>
<p>Everything they now argue to support their “no” vote to the Voice they have long maintained.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Holland receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP230100714 - Policy for Self-Determination: the Case Study of ATSIC) with Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt, Associate Professor Daryl Rigney, Dr Kirsten Thorpe and Lindon Coombes. </span></em></p>The Coalition’s position on the Voice is entirely consistent with their partisanship in this area of Aboriginal policy since the 1980s.Alison Holland, Associate Professor, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1988742023-02-16T19:16:11Z2023-02-16T19:16:11ZThe 1967 referendum was the most successful in Australia’s history. But what it can tell us about 2023 is complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510464/original/file-20230216-26-shxihw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article references antiquated language when referring to First Nations people. It also mentions names and has images of people who may have passed away.</strong></p>
<hr>
<p>Before the end of this year, Australians <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Voice_to_Parliament">will vote</a> on enshrining an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the nation’s constitution. Referendums are famously fraught, and both <a href="https://thewest.com.au/opinion/patrick-dodson-yes-to-the-voice-referendum-will-help-make-amends-c-9436639">advocates</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationals-declare-they-will-oppose-the-voice-referendum-195446">detractors</a> of the Voice have drawn comparisons to the 1967 referendum, the nation’s most successful to date.</p>
<p>Then, 90.77% of Australians endorsed two constitutional amendments. One removed Section 127, whereby “Aboriginal natives” were not counted when “reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth”. The second altered Section 51 (xxvi) – the race power – to allow the Commonwealth to make “special laws” concerning Aboriginal people.</p>
<p>Why was this campaign so successful? Today commentators largely put it down to unanimity: there wasn’t a “no” campaign in 1967. This is one of the reasons, no doubt, but as historians often say: “it’s complicated”. Deconstructing the mythology that surrounds the vote provides a fuller answer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-referendums-in-australia-is-riddled-with-failure-albanese-has-much-at-risk-and-much-to-gain-198799">The history of referendums in Australia is riddled with failure. Albanese has much at risk – and much to gain</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The road to referendum</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-26/larissa-behrendt-mythbusting-the-1967-referendum/8349858">Indigenous</a> and <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.200709280?download=true">settler</a> scholars have long questioned the accepted narrative around 1967. The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_for_the_Advancement_of_Aborigines_and_Torres_Strait_Islanders">founded in</a> 1958 with the purpose of fighting for constitutional change, had a big role in shaping the referendum’s meaning. The council first fought a petition campaign in 1962-3, and the vote itself, on the basis that a “yes” victory would grant citizenship rights for Indigenous people.</p>
<p>This was only ever <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/JTZM6/upload_binary/jtzm62.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/prspub/JTZM6%22">partly true</a>. The same activists who led the council’s campaign, including feminist Jessie Street, communist and scientist Shirley Andrews, Quandamooka poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and Faith Bandler, an activist of South Sea Island and Scottish-Indian heritage, had already fought for and won many of the trappings of citizenship. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1031461X.2017.1313875">Voting rights</a>, for instance, were secured federally in 1962, and in every state by 1965. And while various state acts continued to limit movement and alcohol consumption for the people under their so-called “protection”, constitutional alteration in itself would do little to change this. By giving the federal government powers to override state laws, it was hoped, pressure from within and without would lead to the end of official discrimination.</p>
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<h2>The ‘wind of change’</h2>
<p>The long, conservative government of Robert Menzies had stone-walled moves to hold a referendum, at least partly owing to a desire to maintain Section 51 unamended. That the Commonwealth would make “special laws” for Indigenous people ran counter to the goal of assimilation. Menzies’ successor, Harold Holt, was more amenable.</p>
<p>Holt’s progressive agenda – as well as supporting the referendum, he removed discriminatory provisions from the Migration Act – signalled his difference from Menzies to a changing electorate. But he and his ministers were also looking internationally. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1960 declaration that a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)#:%7E:text=Macmillan%20went%20to%20Africa%20to,consciousness%20is%20a%20political%20fact.">wind of change</a>” was sweeping away racial discrimination and colonial domination had an Australian echo. </p>
<p>The 1965 “<a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride">Freedom Rides</a>” had done much to highlight continued apartheid-style practices in rural Australia. And during the Cold War, Australia’s overseas perception carried substantial weight. </p>
<p>Indigenous rights activists had <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/human-rights-in-twentiethcentury-australia/11327035CBFC43692CA18A2888DC9128#fndtn-metrics">long warned</a> that Australia needed to act on issues of discrimination, with anti-colonial sentiment widespread in Asia, and the quickly growing United Nations watching. Liberal parliamentarian Billy Snedden <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/692626/cabinet-submission-660.pdf">hoped that</a> removing mention of “Aborigines” from the constitution would also “remove a possible source of misconstruction in the international field”.</p>
<h2>Right wrongs, write yes!</h2>
<p>While reflective of international sensitivities, the 1967 referendum was hardly a rejection of assimilation policy. Indeed, the Federal Council’s slogan of “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Black_and_White_Together_FCAATSI.html?id=xM5yAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">black and white together</a>” can be read as a reflection of integrationist ideology: the goal of “Aboriginal advancement” was to live on white terms. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510258/original/file-20230215-3929-mkag9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1304&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of South Australia</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The campaign materials used in support of the referendum, much of which was produced by the Federal Council and distributed via trade unions and community organisations, reflected a simple message of unity and national absolution. Perhaps the most famous leaflet of the campaign – “Right Wrongs, Write Yes!” in large lettering, alongside an image of an Indigenous child – elevated the message above politics. The wrongs of the past could be done away with at the stroke of a pen.</p>
<p>The resounding victory was indeed read as a vindication of the decency of Australians. As <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">one commentator</a> put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The politicians were proud, the priests popular, the promoters propitiated, the public pleased. Being party to the most overwhelming referendum victory in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia demanded self-congratulation and the bestowal of bouquets upon all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/pm-says-voice-to-parliament-critics-are-attempting-to-start-culture-war/00d7b9d3-89dd-4c41-ba89-b366de90b757">channelling</a> similar sentiments earlier this month, declaring the Voice referendum offered a chance for Australians to show their “best qualities”. It would, he said, “be a national achievement in which every Australian can share”. </p>
<p>1967 shows us the power that such unifying language can have, but also that unanimity can conceal inertia.</p>
<h2>‘Advocated by all thinking people’</h2>
<p>This sense of national duty and righting wrongs at least partly explains why opposition to the proposed changes in 1967 was muted. Adelaide’s Victor Harbour Times <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/187330397?searchTerm=referendum">captured</a> the tenor: “a Yes vote is advocated by all thinking people”. But this opinion, much like today, was not unanimous.</p>
<p>Despite the lack of a formal campaign, the West Australian newspaper ran a particularly hard “no” line. Fears of creeping Commonwealth power over “<a href="https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/1967-referendum-%E2%80%93-state-comes-together">state rights</a>” were propounded, as was the referendum’s lack of detail. “It was a pity that this issue was not worked out in advance”, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">one article bemoaned</a>, for then “the people could have been presented with a firm, rational policy”. </p>
<p>Western Australia registered the highest “no” vote of any state at the referendum, at close to 22%. This reflects at least in part this editorialising. Post-referendum <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/ielapa.8111425093?casa_token=NOqhQxHENsMAAAAA:6NxHy_KYw3FDsRsxlUcJj4j0yt0nT_nTM_UOs4xdP-OnaC8IyLm5X0wbFo3ZKbNObaJ_iAOAa80pXe8">analysis</a> also indicated that racist attitudes shaped voting patterns. The greater the proximity to an Aboriginal reserve or mission, the more likely a person was to vote “no”. </p>
<p>That the referendum was, in the language of the West Australian, “double-barrelled” – paired with another, defeated, proposal to expand membership in the House of Representatives – does not seem to have affected the result. Even hard-right Democratic Labor Party Senator Vince Gair’s “<a href="https://archives.anu.edu.au/exhibitions/vote-yes-equality/voting-27-may-1967">No More Politicians Committee</a>” advocated for a “yes” vote on “Aboriginal rights”. Left and right understood, if for sharply differing reasons, that formal discrimination needed to end. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510262/original/file-20230215-14-dpyygn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1967, there was widespread understanding that formal discrimination needed to end.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.centreofdemocracy.sa.gov.au/event/remembering-the-1967-referendum/">Centre of Democracy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the referendum</h2>
<p>Today’s “no” campaign’s key talking point, that the Voice “lacks detail”, was made in 1967, but failed to sway many voters. A writer for the <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-684049566/view?partId=nla.obj-684073384#page/n26/mode/1up">Bulletin magazine</a> commented that while the West Australian was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>right when it says there should be a policy […] the time for it is after the referendum.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What mattered wasn’t the specifics, but that policy could be developed at all.</p>
<p>The referendum’s aftermath also illuminates another point of difference between then and now: a lack of Indigenous opposition. Indigenous scholar Larissa Behrendt <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRw/2007/96.html">argues</a> that an “unintended consequence” of the 1967 referendum, and the hopes it raised and subsequently dashed for many Indigenous peoples, was a “more radical rights movement” led by those “disillusioned by the lack of changes that followed”. The Commonwealth was slow to use its new powers, and reticent to override powerful premiers like Queensland’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen.</p>
<p>The land rights and sovereignty movements of today have their origins in this moment of radicalisation. The Referendum Council, whose 2017 <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/">Uluru Statement</a> from the Heart reads “in 1967, we were counted, [now] we seek to be heard”, represent the unifying spirit of that earlier referendum. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-are-the-voice-sydney-invasion-day-speakers-reject-voice-to-parliament-20230126-p5cfpe.html">Indigenous critics</a> of the Voice such as Lidia Thorpe and Gary Foley, on the other hand, inherit the radical tradition it inadvertently birthed. In Foley’s words, a Voice to Parliament would be <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/01/26/whose-voice-it-anyway">akin to</a> putting “lipstick on a pig”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1621307323921874944"}"></div></p>
<p>Does all this mean the vote will fall differently in 2023? Something Voice advocates have in their favour is that “no” supporters, while loud, appear to be in a minority. State, territory and federal leaders have <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnastaciaMP/status/1621746325766414336">unanimously</a> pledged to support the “yes” case, leaving the federal opposition isolated, while <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/indigenous-support-for-voice-at-80pc-despite-protests-by-noisy-few-20230127-p5cfwj">80% of</a> Indigenous peoples support it. </p>
<p>One thing though is certain. If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Piccini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the 2023 referendum fails, it will at least in part be due to the shortcomings and spoiled hopes of 1967.Jon Piccini, Senior Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1836262022-05-27T02:11:17Z2022-05-27T02:11:17ZChanging the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it’s impossible<p>Supporters of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament have celebrated the commitment of the new Albanese government to put the issue to a referendum. But is government support enough? </p>
<p>It’s a start, but the road to referendum success is a hard one, as it was always meant to be.</p>
<h2>The Constitution was meant to be hard to change</h2>
<p>When the Constitution was being written in the 1890s, the initial expectation was that it would be enacted by the British and they would control the enactment of any changes to it, just as they did for Canada. </p>
<p>But the drafters of the Commonwealth Constitution bucked the system by insisting they wanted the power to change the Constitution themselves. They chose the then quite radical method of a referendum, which they borrowed from the Swiss. </p>
<p>While it was radical, because it let the people decide, it was also seen as a <a href="https://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/view?docId=ozlit/xml-main-texts/fed0043.xml&chunk.id=&toc.id=&database=&collection=&brand=default">conservative mechanism</a>. British constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey described the referendum as “the <a href="https://archive.org/details/nationalreview2318unse/page/64/mode/2up">people’s veto</a>”, because it allowed the “weight of the nation’s common sense” and inertia to block “the fanaticism of reformers”. </p>
<p>The drafters of the Commonwealth Constitution were divided on the issue. Some supported the referendum because it would operate to defeat over-hasty, partisan or ill-considered changes. Others were concerned that change was hard enough already, and voters would have a natural tendency to vote “No” in a referendum because there are always objections and risks that can be raised about any proposal. Fear of the new almost always trumps dissatisfaction with the current system, because people do not want to risk making things worse. </p>
<p>In this sense, the referendum is conservative – not in a party-political sense, but because it favours conserving the status quo.</p>
<p>Another concern, raised by Sir Samuel Griffith, was that constitutions are complex, and a large proportion of voters would not be sufficiently acquainted with the Australian Constitution to vote for its change in an informed way. He favoured using a United States-style of constitutional convention to make changes. </p>
<p>The democrats eventually won and the referendum was chosen. But to satisfy their opponents, they added extra hurdles. To succeed, a referendum has to be <a href="https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coacac627/s128.html">approved</a> not only by a majority of voters overall, but also by majorities in a majority of states (currently four out of six states). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-indigenous-voice-must-be-enshrined-in-our-constitution-heres-why-153635">An Indigenous 'Voice' must be enshrined in our Constitution. Here's why</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A Constitution frozen in time</h2>
<p>The predictions were right. The referendum at the federal level has indeed turned out to be the “people’s veto”. Of 44 referendum questions put to the people, only <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/referendum_dates_and_results.htm">eight have passed</a>. No successful Commonwealth referendum has been held since 1977. We have not held a Commonwealth referendum at all since 1999. </p>
<p>There are many <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rp/2002-03/03rp11.pdf">suggested reasons</a> for this. Some argue that the people have correctly exercised their veto against reforms that were proposed for party-political advantage or to unbalance the federal system by expanding Commonwealth power. If reforms are put because they are in the interests of the politicians, rather than the people, they will fail. </p>
<p>Questions asked in referendums have been poorly formulated and often load too many issues into the one proposed reform. If a voter objects to just one aspect of a proposal, they then vote down the entire reform.</p>
<p>Another argument is that, as Griffith anticipated, the people know little about the Constitution and are not willing to approve changes to it if they are unsure. The mantra “<a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/1999_referendum_reports_statistics/yes_no_pamphlet.pdf">Don’t know – Vote No</a>” was extremely effective during the republic campaign in 1999. </p>
<p>Of course, if you don’t know, you should find out. But the failure to provide proper civics education in schools means most people don’t feel they have an adequate grounding to embark on making that assessment. </p>
<p>Decades of <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/better-civic-education-will-help-australians-respond-in-challenging-times/">neglect of civics</a> has left us with a population that is insufficiently equipped to fulfil its constitutional role of updating the Constitution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465242/original/file-20220525-20-1ebbwk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If people have the slightest uncertainty about what they are saying ‘yes’ to, they will inevitably say ‘no’ – something the republic referendum suffered from in 1999.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Griffith/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vulnerability to scare campaigns</h2>
<p>The biggest threat to a successful referendum is the running of a “No” campaign by a major political party, or one or more states, or even a well-funded business or community group. </p>
<p>Scare campaigns are effective even if there is little or no truth behind them. It is enough to plant doubt in the minds of voters to get them to vote “No”. Voters are reluctant to entrench changes in the Constitution if they might have unintended consequences or be interpreted differently in the future, because they know how hard it will be to fix any mistake.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465249/original/file-20220525-22-a5fyt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1967 referendum was one of the few that were successful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If a referendum campaign ends up focused on technical issues about the future operation or interpretation of particular amendments, then it is likely lost. </p>
<p>Campaigns tend to be more successful if they focus on principles or outcomes, such as the 1967 referendum concerning Aboriginal people. That referendum had the advantage of not being opposed in the Commonwealth parliament. The consequence was that there was only a <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/first-australians/rights-and-freedoms/argument-favour-proposed-constitution-alteration-aboriginals-1967#:%7E:text=In%20the%201967%20referendum%2C%20no,recorded%20in%20a%20federal%20referendum.">“Yes” case</a> distributed to voters, as a “No” case can only be produced by MPs who oppose the referendum bill in parliament. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512">‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Overcoming the malaise</h2>
<p>While recognising these difficulties, perhaps the greatest risk is becoming <a href="https://www.auspublaw.org/2018/12/getting-to-yes-why-our-approach-to-winning-referendums-needs-a-rethink/">hostage</a> to the belief the Constitution cannot be changed and referendums will always fail. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. </p>
<p>Instead, we need to face constitutional reform as being difficult but achievable and worthwhile. The Constitution should always serve the needs of today’s Australians, rather than the people of the 1890s. </p>
<p>The key elements for success include a widespread will for change, the drive and persistence of proponents, good leadership, sound well-considered proposals and building a broad cross-party consensus. Not every element is necessary, but all are helpful.</p>
<p>As incoming Indigenous Affairs Minister <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/linda-burney:-%E2%80%9Cwe-need-consensus-on-a-referendum/13895144">Linda Burney</a> recently noted, there is still a lot of work to be done in building that consensus in relation to Indigenous constitutional recognition, but the work has commenced.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Twomey has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and sometimes does consultancy work for governments and inter-governmental bodies. She is also a Director of Constitution Education Fund Australia which is concerned with trying to improve civics teaching in schools. </span></em></p>Of 44 referendums put to the Australian people since federation, only eight have passed – but those championing a First Nations Voice to Parliament need not be deterred.Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1766962022-02-14T01:53:23Z2022-02-14T01:53:23ZA new musical, Panawathi Girl, is a fantasy of Australia’s past – and a critique of Australia’s present<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446134/original/file-20220213-15-vc2ymg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C6165%2C4134&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Weeks/Perth Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of people who have died.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Panawathi Girl, written by David Milroy and directed by Eva Grace Mullaley, presented by Perth Festival and Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company.</em></p>
<p>Viewing David Milroy’s new musical Panawathi Girl, the production is inevitably refracted through the fame of Jimmy Chi’s equally ground-breaking 1990 Perth Festival premiere <a href="https://theconversation.com/bran-nue-dae-review-exceptional-singing-and-music-obscure-the-political-heart-of-this-classic-australian-musical-129793">Bran Nue Dae</a>. </p>
<p>Both are comedic music theatre works authored by First Nations artists from northern Western Australia, set in 1969, and staged with a live, rocking band. </p>
<p>This aside, they are very different.</p>
<p>Bran Nue Dae is a tropical love story which, while alluding to the complex racial divisions and crossings typical of Broome, offers a feelgood portrayal of the protagonist’s sexual and romantic awakening.</p>
<p>In contrast, Panawathi Girl is a buoyant yet cynical depiction of racial conflicts in the Western Australian countryside, self-consciously set in a fantasy of an Australian past: violence free, brightly coloured and populated by surprisingly sympathetic white politicians. </p>
<p>Through this fantasy, however, comes a telling critique of our own times. </p>
<h2>The rodeo comes to town</h2>
<p>It is 1969. Reformist Labor leader Gough Whitlam (Luke Hewitt) is heading for election against lacklustre Liberal prime minister John Gorton (Geoff Kelso). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: Gough Whitlam" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446135/original/file-20220213-15-4qx4s1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1967 referendum passed, but Aboriginal people still don’t have equal rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Weeks/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Gorton confides to Whitlam, despite the Labor minister’s support for land-rights, it seems an impossibility to “close the gap” – a clever if depressing reference to the 2008 Closing the Gap agreement and its <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-we-arent-closing-the-gap-a-failure-to-account-for-cultural-counterfactuals-129076">woeful implementation</a>.</p>
<p>A rodeo has come to the town of Chubb Springs, where the places in which people can drink and live are divided between the “blacks” and “whites”.</p>
<p>Although the 1967 referendum means Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are now formally part of the national population, they are <a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512">often excluded</a> from voting and other rights.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512">‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a woman with a suitcase" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446137/original/file-20220213-19-19dwy89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Molly arrives in Chubb Springs, hoping to connect with Country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Weeks/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Molly Panawathi (Lila McGuire) is the estranged daughter of local white farmer Chubb (Peter Docker). Molly has come to Chubb Springs to learn about her presumed dead mother Pansy (Angelica Lockyer). Having been brought up in Perth away from Country and culture, she is not welcomed by the local Aboriginal community.</p>
<p>Billy (Wimiya Woodley) is sick of the flack he gets from other mob for playing the role of loudmouthed rodeo drunk and has decided he will “head out bush… get my head straight.” </p>
<p>His sister Ada (Teresa Rose) has chosen to keep working for her lanky but intimidating boss Buckley (Maitland Schnaars), who passes as white.</p>
<p>Molly eventually stages a joyous rebellion of sorts at the rodeo ball, complete with a wonderful drag turn by her queer city friend Jojo (Manuao TeAotonga). Like a true panto villain however, Buckley is unrepentant. </p>
<p>“50 years from now,” he explains, leaning comfortably back in his tall frame, “nothing will have changed.” </p>
<h2>Idiosyncratic and appealing</h2>
<p>The gentle country-and-western twang of pedal steel guitar (played by Lucky Oceans) competes with the more rhythmic strums of conventional guitars (electric and acoustic) to take us from uncertain, yearning songs performed by Molly and others, to party pieces, and other tunes. </p>
<p>There is even a dash of tuba to underpin the sillier moments, some Andrews Sisters-style harmonies with Ava’s slightly awkward turn at the ball, and a particularly demented elegy to a Palomino pony who has become sandwich-meat from Molly’s hippy friend Beth (Grace Chow).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a man and a woman dance" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446138/original/file-20220213-87622-1sqhbrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Panawathi Girl draws on many musical references.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Weeks/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gorton and Whitlam come together as a recurring double-act, adding political depth and humour to proceedings. Their song and dance routine The Land of the Long White Sock is a particular highlight.</p>
<p>Rodeo broncho buster Knuckles (Gus Noakes) gives some impressive boot scooting in the style of Oklahoma! and Noakes has the finest voice in the cast. </p>
<p>While other actors have beautiful character voices, their vibrato and sustain is not strong. Even in the climactic moments, they don’t belt it out. </p>
<p>But despite this lack of strength, the casts’ voices are idiosyncratic, appealing, and either crack or soar as required, adding to the vaudevillian feel.</p>
<h2>Celebration, and critique</h2>
<p>Panawathi Girl’s antecedents are at least as much the hilarious but politically pointed vaudevillian Australian music theatre works <a href="https://www.nida.edu.au/library-archives/jane-street-exhibition/experimental-theatre/experimental-tabs/1970-the-legend-of-king-omalley">The Legend of King O’Malley</a> (1970) or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_Clark%27s_History_of_Australia_%E2%80%93_The_Musical">Manning Clark’s History of Australia</a> (1988) as they are Bran Nue Dae.</p>
<p>Milroy’s canny political references and criticisms are woven throughout an enjoyably diverse array of styles and references, from Oklahoma! to electrified country, from vaudeville double acts, to wistful solos, set in a kind of Neverland past where everything from the safari suits, to the stripey clothing and Whitlam’s reformist rhetoric, are amplified and celebrated.</p>
<p>But although much of the play feels like a celebration, with an engaging tone and musical appeal, underneath it is truly a critique of how far those dreams have receded in 2022.</p>
<p>As Milroy states in the program, “fifty years on it is difficult to maintain the same optimism.” </p>
<p><em>Panawathi Girl played as part of the Perth Festival. Season closed.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan W. Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>David Milroy’s Panawathi Girl is a rocking, vaudevillian, politically sharp and engaging piece of Australian First Nations’ music theatre.Jonathan W. Marshall, Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/784032017-05-30T01:49:34Z2017-05-30T01:49:34ZFifty years on from the 1967 referendum, it’s time to tell the truth about race<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171326/original/file-20170529-25241-o0bekg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We cannot talk about building truthful relationships without being honest about the racialised realities of our social world.'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">3CR</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, in a sunset ceremony in central Australia, approximately 300 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates from across Australia delivered the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-05/Uluru_Statement_From_The_Heart_0.PDF">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>. Convened by the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/">Referendum Council</a>, the statement put forth an Indigenous Australian position on proposed constitutional reform, rejecting constitutional recognition in favour of a treaty. </p>
<p>Through the establishment of a Makarrata Commission (a body that would oversee agreement-making between governments and Indigenous groups), the Uluru statement expressed Indigenous peoples’ “aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171256/original/file-20170529-6415-p4ein8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AIATSIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, 50 years ago, 90% of Australians voted in favour of what they believed would be a “fair go for Aborigines” in supporting the amendment of two clauses within the Constitution.</p>
<p>Fifty years on, there remain some uncomfortable truths about what those amendments did to improve the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. </p>
<p><a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/1967-referendum-race-power-and-australian-constitution/paperback">Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus</a> have argued that the “yes” vote did little to change the administration of Indigenous affairs; nor did it grant Indigenous peoples citizenship rights, voting rights or put an end to racial discrimination.</p>
<p>The constitutional amendments attended to what appeared to be racially discriminatory clauses, which excluded Aboriginal people. The result may well have made Australia appear less racist, but it did not address the inherently racist nature of the constitution. </p>
<p>One example is the amendment to <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s51.html">Section 51 (xxvi)</a>, referred to as the race power, which excluded Aboriginal people from the Commonwealth’s special powers to introduce laws affecting “the people of any race”.</p>
<p>The original intent of this clause was to enable the Commonwealth to “<a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRw/2007/95.pdf">regulate the affairs of the people of coloured or inferior races</a>” in restricting immigration of non-white non-British populations. </p>
<p>In 1901, the Commonwealth’s power was put to work with the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act, known as the White Australia Policy, and was rationalised by the then prime minister, <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/ImmigrationDebate">Sir Edmund Barton</a>. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think either that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is that basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races — I think no one wants convincing of this fact — unequal and inferior.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171293/original/file-20170529-25247-1kbxmkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Campaigning on the 1967 referendum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is hard to imagine how our inclusion as a raced people within this racially discriminatory clause would be emancipatory. In being raced, we were not just named – we were claimed.</p>
<p>When the First Fleet arrived in 1788 on the land of the Gadigal people, it did not just bring convicts, marines, seamen and civil officers. It also brought with it “the Aborigine”, and our racialised construction as Aborigines has served the colonial project well. </p>
<p>Being an Aborigine has circumscribed our being, our relationship to this place and to the state. In being raced, we have become known by the state and through our relationship with it. It has cemented a relationship of power over us, physically, morally, intellectually, politically and legislatively.</p>
<p>Racism is not just echoed in the words of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/bolt-found-guilty-of-breaching-discrimination-act/3025918">right-wing commentators</a> or the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/nrl-star-sam-thaiday-at-centre-of-racism-scandal/news-story/6dafa264cc5e54f9c52da40d8652edc1">jokes of professional football players</a>; it is ingrained in our society, enshrined in our institutions and our legislation. Race is inescapable and it has been central to the colonial project.</p>
<p>We cannot talk about building truthful relationships without being honest about the racialised realities of our social world. </p>
<p>As a racialised subject, I have been subjected to lies dressed up as racialised truths that insist upon our inferiority. Every day, we are forced to contest these lies while having to live with them. In order to get by and get on in a social world that discounts us, we create for ourselves other lies.</p>
<p>I remember the words of my father growing up, insisting that if I worked ten times harder than them, that I would “make it” – that it was possible to rise above my station, to rise above race. These were lies that we lived with in order to make the injustice of the world seem less insurmountable. </p>
<p>But I cannot be blinded to the ways in which my presence is read racially, regardless of how hard-working I am, how articulate I might be or how acceptable my presence might appear. </p>
<p>It does not inhibit the surveillance by police who perceive my presence as a predisposition to an unknown criminal act. </p>
<p>It does not inhibit a rendering of me as an Aboriginal mother or my husband as an Aboriginal father being deemed at risk of not being able to look after my children properly. </p>
<p>It does not prevent colleagues from seeing my presence as a scholar as an equity act, as an accommodation of my intellectual incapacity or as a cultural broker to white knowing. </p>
<p>The lie I can no longer live with is the insistence that our racialised being can be remedied through our own efforts: that if we just acted better, if we just articulated ourselves better, that if we were recognised better, that our lives would be better. </p>
<p>I don’t know if we can overcome race completely, but I do know that we cannot minimise the power of race by ignoring the power of race. Race was the foundation on which this nation was built and it continues to structure our society, its institutions and social life.</p>
<p>We cannot build a better nation by simply piling new bricks or new clauses to cement over the reality of race and the way it manifests interpersonally and institutionally. </p>
<p>While it was a remarkable feat that, 50 years ago, 90% of Australians supported in principle the idea of a fair go for Aborigines, we cannot get too swept away with the idea that the attending to the power of race is unfinished, or that it is confined to a constitutional clause or two. </p>
<p>At every turn, conversations about race are downplayed, dismissed or <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/why-booing-sydney-swans-star-adam-goodes-is-racist-20150729-gin2xi.html">booed into submission</a>. It would appear that more effort in this country is spent on <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2017/03/21/pm-s-credibility-at-risk-over-18c--labor.html">not looking racist</a> than on not being racist. The danger of the next step (in whatever direction that might be) is that we will fail to tell the truth about race. </p>
<p>We can only hope that the federal government and the Australian people will heed Indigenous peoples’ call for a “fair and truthful relationship” through a fair and truthful conversation about the power of race in maintaining power over Indigenous peoples’ lives and lands.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This essay is an excerpt from Chelsea Bond’s keynote address at the State Library of Queensland’s <a href="http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/calevents/kd/dont-just-count-us/50-years-and-counting">50 Years and Counting</a> event.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow, Dr Chelsea Bond receives funding from the Department of Education and Training. </span></em></p>The result of the 1967 referendum may well have made Australia appear less racist, but it did not address the inherently racist nature of the Constitution.Chelsea Watego, Senior Lecturer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit (ATSIS Unit), The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/783282017-05-26T00:23:46Z2017-05-26T00:23:46ZDefying Empire: the legacy of 1967<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170912/original/file-20170525-31748-1wnl09v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brenda L. Croft
shut/mouth/scream (detail) 2016
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Third National Indigenous Art Triennial: Defying Empire at the National Gallery of Australia would have been unimaginable 50 years ago. Despite the widespread goodwill towards Aboriginal people in 1967, there was little recognition that they had a living visual culture. Those few curators, such as the late <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tuckson-john-anthony-11888">Tony Tuckson</a>, who admired the aesthetic qualities of the intricate forms made by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote areas of the north, rejected as kitsch works by artists such as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/namatjira-albert-elea-11217">Albert Namatjira</a> who incorporated western traditions.</p>
<p>For the last three decades, Indigenous artists working in non-traditional media have made their mark, including at the two preceding National Indigenous Art Triennials and at national and international art exhibitions – including the Venice Biennale. It is not news to say that some of Australia’s most admired artists are Indigenous, so why is Defying Empire such a satisfying exhibition?</p>
<p>It all comes back to that year, 1967. Curator Tina Baum has woven a narrative and an argument around the legacy of that remarkable act of national unity when <a href="http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs150.aspx">90.77% of Australians</a> voted to include Aboriginal people in the census, and to enable laws to be made on their behalf. </p>
<p>Ray Ken of the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunyatjara peoples and Lola Greeno of the Pakana people were adults in 1967. Maree Clarke of the Mutti Mutti/ Yorta Yorta/Wurrung peoples was a small child. Karla Dickens, a Wuradjuri woman was born months after, while Sebastian Arrow of the Yawuru came a generation later in 1994 – but all the artists here can claim to be heirs of the Referendum.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171068/original/file-20170525-23249-zzkltk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judy Watson, the names of places 2016 - part of a project to record all the sites of massacres of Aboriginal people in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The word “1967” dominates Reko Rennie’s<a href="https://nga.gov.au/ngaplay/"> NGA Play</a> installation at the entrance foyer of the building. This forms part of a special interactive project created for the exhibition, challenging adults and children alike. His defiant banner, Always Here, waves at the top of the escalators. His traditional Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay patterns also evoke camouflage. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171069/original/file-20170525-23249-1ei501p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reko Rennie’s Royal Flag 2013, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Purchased 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NGA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some Indigenous Australians survived over the years by camouflaging who they were, protected by paler skin. Others were stolen, their true identities hidden from themselves by the camouflage of institutional lies. This second history of camouflage is especially relevant to Reko Rennie’s OA RR, a gloriously dappled Rolls Royce parked at the National Gallery’s entrance.</p>
<p>Rennie’s grandmother was stolen and in her honour he has recorded his return to Kamilaroi land, filming from above the circular tracks in the red dirt made by the car to assert the ownership of the Kamilaroi people.</p>
<h2>Stolen children</h2>
<p>The running sore of the legacy of the stolen children runs through Defying Empire. Many of the artists are descendents of stolen children, but for Sandra Hill it is even more immediate. She is a Nyoongar woman who as a child was stolen, as were her mother and grandmother before her. In her Thin Veneer, layers of varnished wood stamp out the homogenised pattern into which she can never fit.</p>
<p>That question of identity lies at the core of Brenda L. Croft’s work. Croft was the curator of Culture Warriors, the first National Indigenous Triennial in 2007, but in recent years has turned her gaze away from the work of others and onto the legacy of her father Joe who was stolen from his Gurindji/Malgnin/Mudparra family when a small child. Her journey back to Gurindji country and the consequence of the Wave Hill walk-off is explored in great detail at <a href="https://www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/unsw-galleries/still-my-mind-gurindji-location-experience-and-visuality">Still in my mind</a>, currently on view at UNSW Galleries.</p>
<p>The NGA work focuses on the tough landscape around Wave Hill, the remarkable portrait shut/mouth/scream, based on a fragment study of her grandmother’s face.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170938/original/file-20170525-23279-1fztmr6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brenda L. Croft shut/mouth/scream (detail) 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Stills Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As well as children stolen, the history of race relations in Australia is of people murdered, sometimes indiscriminately as in Judy Watson’s exquisite record, the names of places - part of a project to record all the sites of massacres of Aboriginal people in Australia.</p>
<p>Then there are the particular events. Dale Harding’s <a href="https://nga.gov.au/defyingempire/artists.cfm?artistirn=37732">their little black slaves perished in isolation </a> evokes the 1930 killing of a girl forced into domestic labour and killed when her wooden prison shack caught fire. Harding’s reconstruction includes the pungent smell of the black burnt walls. Harding, a descendent of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples, is only too aware of the extent of the massacres in Queensland in the 19th century. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170940/original/file-20170525-23224-84rqc1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dale Harding Black days in the Dawson River Country – Remembrance gowns (detail) 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black days in the Dawson River Country places Victorian style dresses to commemorate the murder of a young girl, killed in broad daylight in the main street of the town now known as Toowoomba. Her murderer (wrongly) claimed she was wearing a dress owned by his murdered mother.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170941/original/file-20170525-23232-1t8new.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yhonnie Scarce Thunder Raining Poison 2015, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Purchased 2016. This acquisition has been supported by Susan Armitage in recognition of the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Janelle Low</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not all the deaths were deliberate. The glass artist Yhonnie Scarce, of the Kokatha/Nukunu peoples in South Australia, was born in Woomera. She has created Thunder Raining Poison, where glass yams evoke the poison rain that fell on her grandfather’s country at Maralinga bringing sickness and death. Her magnificent control of the medium is seen in the Glass Bomb (Blue Danube) series where dark glass yams are contained in larger glass bombs – blown glass inside blown glass.</p>
<p>The colonial legacies of mass killings are also at the core of work by Julie Gough, from the Trawlwoolway people of Tasmania. Her Hunting Ground videos revisit the site of some of the terrible massacres of the early 19th century, and incorporate reproductions of the smug letters recording the deaths of hundreds of people, offering their bodies for dissection. </p>
<p>A fellow Tasmanian, Lola Greeno of the Pakena people, works in the ancient tradition of making shell necklaces, which she has exhibited for many years. She has produced a virtuoso series of works, with large mussel shells interspersing more delicate shapes. I have become so used to seeing (and admiring) her work over the years that it was a surprise to see her strike a different note.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170942/original/file-20170525-23232-4i8qqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lola Greeno’s Green Maireener shell necklace 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Handmark Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The room in which Greeno’s work is displayed is near the entrance to the dedicated exhibition space, and is almost a separate homage to the first generation of Indigenous artists to have lived most of their creative life recognised as such.</p>
<p>Greeno from Tasmania, Yvonne Koolmatrie of the Ngarrindjeri people from South Australia, Pedro Wonseaamirri of the Tiwi people from Melville Island and Ken Thaiday senior of the Mariam Mer people of the Torres Strait, have well established records of exhibiting their work in national and international exhibitions. </p>
<p>Koolmatrie’s giant woven eel traps and baskets floated in the Australian pavillion in the Venice Biennale in 1997, her style is well established. But as well as the more familiar works, confidently executed, the exhibition includes a woven spiny echidna, complete with genuine echidna quills.</p>
<p>Ken Thaiday senior’s work has evolved from his original headdresses used in Torres Strait Island dance, to giant variations on these. His presence, along with that of Brian Robinson is a reminder that the reason the National Gallery has named this exhibition the Indigenous Triennial and not Aboriginal is that the people of the Torres Strait Islands may relate to Aboriginal culture, but remain distinct.</p>
<p>It brings into focus the central curatorial concern: how to show the complexities and the unities of an Indigenous culture that crosses both geography and generations, that deals with loss and redemption, that recognises the continuing intermingling of blood in what might be eight generations of colonisation, and yet never loses identity.</p>
<p>There’s a sense of the this in Raymond Zada’s video installation, At Face Value, that morphs a series of faces from black to blonde, from male to female, in a continual questioning of the notion of identity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170943/original/file-20170525-23224-wkxc7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Albert The Hand You’re Dealt 2016, Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Noonan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tony Albert of Queensland’s Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku-Yalanji peoples has a different take on the notion of identity. He honours the many Indigenous soldiers who fought in Australia’s wars as equals to their white comrades only to face discrimination on their return. This is a part of a continuing project on his part as he is also responsible for the <a href="http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/yininmadyemi-thou-didst-let-fall/">Aboriginal war memorial</a> in Sydney’s Hyde Park.</p>
<p>Albert’s work hangs near the quiet exposition of the most enduring act of defiance of empire – Jonathan Jones and Uncle Stan Grant Senior reinserting traditional Wiradjuri murru (design) into 19th century colonial prints. Uncle Stan Grant Senior has been a leader in the revival of Wiradjuri as a living language, which is also a part of the national revival of Aboriginal languages and the recovery of lost histories. </p>
<p>The defiance of Empire is not about being brash, but about endurance. While empires rise, they also fall. Those who appeared be conquered are now seen to be the long-term victors.</p>
<p><em>Defying Empire is at the National Gallery of Australia from 26 May – 10 September 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the ARC</span></em></p>The National Gallery of Australia’s Third National Indigenous Art Triennial presents a passionate well-considered argument for an enduring Aboriginal culture.Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765122017-05-25T20:26:40Z2017-05-25T20:26:40Z‘Right wrongs, write Yes’: what was the 1967 referendum all about?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168880/original/file-20170511-21603-1fhn7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C451%2C295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At a demonstration, Faith Bandler (right) and her daughter Lilon (2R) appeal to national unity as grounds for constitutional amendment. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aboriginal Studies Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On May 27, 1967, campaigners for Aboriginal rights and status won the most-decisive <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/1967-referendum-race-power-and-australian-constitution/paperback">referendum victory</a> in Australian history.</p>
<p>The referendum attracted more than 90% of voters in favour of deleting the two references to Aborigines in Australia’s Constitution. Campaigners for a “Yes” vote successfully argued those references were discriminatory and debarred Aboriginal people from citizenship.</p>
<p>Ever since, and as we approach the 1967 referendum’s 50th anniversary, it has been popularly remembered as the moment when Aboriginal people won equal rights – even the right to vote. In fact, the referendum did not secure those outcomes. </p>
<p>By 1967, all Aboriginal adults already held the right to vote in federal, state and territory elections. Racial discriminations had been removed from the statute books at the federal level and in all states and territories except Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. And even those three laggards were moving toward legal equality.</p>
<h2>So what was achieved?</h2>
<p>Constitutionally, the 1967 referendum secured the amendment of <a href="http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/amendment-amid-17.html">Section 51 (xxvi)</a> and the deletion of <a href="https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/573143/08_Taylor-1.pdf">Section 127</a>. </p>
<p>The former section specified the federal parliament could make laws with respect to the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The words “other than the Aboriginal race in any state” were deleted.</p>
<p>The latter section stipulated that in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a state or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Neither section prevented Aboriginal people from exercising the same legal rights as other Australians. The rights of Aborigines were abridged <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/22219771?selectedversion=NBD24378636">not by the Constitution</a>, but by laws enacted by federal and state parliaments. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168878/original/file-20170511-21596-13863c9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two days before the referendum, the Sydney Morning Herald published this photograph.
above the caption: ‘Racial discrimination – what’s that?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney Morning Herald</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How was the campaign run?</h2>
<p>Campaigners for a “Yes” vote, however, told a different story. They insisted constitutional change was a necessary precondition for Aboriginal equality.</p>
<p>Yet the campaigners’ ambitions went beyond legal equality. They sought the <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/indifferent-inclusion-aboriginal-people-and-australian-nation/ebook">inclusion of Aboriginal people</a> as respected members of the national community. This had been a principal goal of Aboriginal and pro-Aboriginal activists since the early 20th century. </p>
<p>The 1967 referendum was the culmination of a long struggle for rights and respect, for social esteem as well as equality before the law.</p>
<p>Accordingly, publicity material for the “Yes” campaign did not focus narrowly on the legal implications of constitutional change. More often, it exhorted Australians to welcome Aboriginal people into the fellowship of the nation. As the opening line of a popular campaign song ran: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Vote “Yes” for Aborigines, they want to be Australians too.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Effectively, the proponents of a Yes vote transformed what could have been a dry, legalistic tinkering with the Constitution into a plebiscite on Australian nationhood.</p>
<p>In achieving this transformation, the campaigners held an unusual advantage. Uniquely among Australian referendums, for the 1967 question on Aborigines there was <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2104/ha080044">no campaign for a “No” vote</a>. And even the government broke with convention by providing, in the official advice to voters, only the case for “Yes”. Consequently, campaigners could talk up the importance of the changes they advocated virtually unrestrained.</p>
<p>New South Wales campaign director Faith Bandler told voters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you write Yes in the lower square of your ballot paper you are holding out the hand of friendship and wiping out nearly 200 years of injustice and inhumanity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hyperbole of this kind is not unusual in political campaigns. What was unusual is that there was no organised opposition to contest the claims of the Yes campaigners, or to counter them with equally extravagant rhetoric for the negative.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1349&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168879/original/file-20170511-21620-1p1n23h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1349&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Much of the publicity material for a Yes vote was couched in broad terms of rectifying past wrongs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gordon Bryant Papers/NLA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lack of a “No” campaign undoubtedly boosted the “Yes” vote. It was equally important in shaping remembrance of the referendum.</p>
<p>Lacking an opposition, the “Yes” campaigners had a virtual monopoly on the narratives about what the referendum meant. Their expansive conception of the referendum as a plebiscite on nationhood prevailed.</p>
<h2>A symbolic win</h2>
<p>The triumph of the “Yes” vote was primarily a <a href="https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/7870/">symbolic victory</a>. It did not win rights for Aborigines, and the government of the day did not utilise the extension of Commonwealth powers secured by amendment of Section 51 (xxvi). Nor did Gough Whitlam’s government after it came to power in 1972. </p>
<p>Whitlam did, however, invoke the resounding “Yes” vote of 1967 as a moral mandate for change in Aboriginal affairs.</p>
<p>Symbolic victories are important. Shortly after hearing of the massive “Yes” majority, veteran Aboriginal activist Pastor Doug Nicholls proclaimed it was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… evidence that Australians recognise Aborigines are part of the nation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Nicholls knew from three decades of involvement in Aboriginal politics, recognition of his people as part of the nation was a hard-fought achievement.</p>
<p>Regardless of its slight legal consequences, the 1967 referendum was an important event in Australian history. It was a symbolic affirmation of Aboriginal people’s acceptance into the community of the nation. </p>
<p>Yet the referendum affirmed only the broad principle of national inclusion. On how that principle should be translated into practice – on the terms of inclusion – the referendum was silent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76512/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell McGregor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 1967 referendum was the culmination of a long struggle for both Aboriginal rights and respect, for social esteem as well as equality before the law.Russell McGregor, Adjunct Professor of History, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/767252017-05-21T20:11:47Z2017-05-21T20:11:47ZLessons of 1967 referendum still apply to debates on constitutional recognition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169444/original/file-20170516-11929-ynr5ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Painting the 1967 referendum as a 'success' in terms of effective reform for Aboriginal people is problematic.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Marianna Massey</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Saturday, May 27, marks the 50th anniversary of the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/1967-referendum-race-power-and-australian-constitution/paperback">1967 referendum</a>. As the date approaches, many are reflecting on a moment that is recalled as one of the great “successes” in the advancement of Indigenous Australians.</p>
<p>However, painting the referendum as a “success” in terms of effective reform for Aboriginal people is problematic. </p>
<p>Certainly, gaining more than 90% of voter support constituted an extraordinary electoral success. There was also an important symbolic success in the Australian people voting to recognise Aboriginal people as part of the nation.</p>
<p>But, more substantively, the referendum fell far short in giving people what they thought they were voting for, and in giving Aboriginal people what they wanted from it. This holds lessons for the <a href="http://www.recognise.org.au/about/what-is-recognise/">ongoing debate</a> on the best way to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the constitution.</p>
<h2>What were people voting for?</h2>
<p>There is a widespread myth that the referendum granted Aboriginal people “equality” before the law by way of voting and citizenship rights. The “Yes” campaign likely perpetuated this by relying on simple, positive messages about voting “for” Aboriginal people and voting to let Aboriginal people be Australians. </p>
<p>Others hoped they were voting for more substantive equality to be granted to Aboriginal people, to improve their lives and grant them rights previously denied. </p>
<p>From a legal perspective, the changes to the constitution did not reflect any of these voter aspirations.</p>
<p>The referendum made two technical changes to the constitution. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The first removed the provision that excluded Aboriginal people from the counting of the people of the Commonwealth.</p></li>
<li><p>The second was an amendment to remove an exclusion of Aboriginal people from the power to make special laws for people of any race. Prior to the referendum, the states had sole responsibility for making laws for Aboriginal people.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The second change held the most promise to achieve the type of substantive equality and progress many people thought they were voting for. The referendum provided a vehicle for change by empowering the Commonwealth to intervene in Aboriginal affairs and take responsibility away from the states, which had a terrible history of protectionism and assimilation.</p>
<p>However, the referendum did not necessarily guarantee such change. That would require ongoing political commitment.</p>
<h2>Relying on political commitment to change</h2>
<p>The constitutional changes did not carry any force of law that compelled action from the parliament or protected Aboriginal people from discriminatory policies. </p>
<p>From the perspective of Aboriginal people waiting for their daily lives to be impacted, the measure of success would be determined by how the federal parliament would use its new powers to advance their cause and protect them from state policies.</p>
<p>The electoral success of the “Yes” vote created a sense of hope in the community that a wave of legislation to benefit Aboriginal people was just around the corner – and they would soon be free of the remaining discriminatory state-based laws. But the wait was far longer than expected. Whatever political commitment that existed following the referendum quickly waned. </p>
<p>In June 1967, <a href="http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/perkins-charles-nelson-charlie-810">Charlie Perkins</a>, a key Aboriginal leader supporting the “Yes” campaign, <a href="http://indigenousrights.net.au/resources/documents/letter_from_charles_perkins_to_harold_holt,_june_1967">wrote</a> to Prime Minister Harold Holt. He outlined suggestions for measures parliament could pass with the new power. </p>
<p>Perkins’ ideas drew heavily on programs already established in the US. They included: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the establishment of an Aboriginal Affairs Bureau with a minister and adequate funding to support the fulfilment of its programs;</p></li>
<li><p>tackling unemployment through the creation of training schemes and Aboriginal employment strategies;</p></li>
<li><p>Aboriginal education initiatives, including free education for Aboriginal people from preschool to tertiary levels, funding for institutions and the provision of accommodation for students;</p></li>
<li><p>resolving issues of land ownership, including compensation for land taken;</p></li>
<li><p>laws prohibiting racial discrimination; and</p></li>
<li><p>measures to improve the health of Aboriginal people.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Fifty years later, Perkins’ letter could easily be mistaken for a current list of demands from Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>Holt took no action in response to Perkins. Months later, however, he came under pressure from members of his own party to exercise the new power so as not to risk losing the support of Aboriginal voters in marginal seats in the north. </p>
<p>More than five months after the referendum, Holt announced the setting up of a Council for Aboriginal Affairs. This was an administrative measure and didn’t even use the new power. Nonetheless, it represented the first in a series of steps from consecutive governments toward a federal Aboriginal Affairs Bureau. </p>
<p>It was not until the end of 1972, under the Whitlam government, that the first minister for Aboriginal affairs supported by a department was sworn in. </p>
<h2>Lessons for a future referendum</h2>
<p>Reflections on the referendum’s success or otherwise come with an eye to the discussions of possible constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. In these debates, Aboriginal people have already <a href="https://antar.org.au/sites/default/files/187s1033.pdf">made clear</a> they are seeking substantive change that goes further than minimalistic symbolism.</p>
<p>The 1967 referendum was about laying a foundation. It gave the federal parliament the power to correct the injustices of the past that state governments had inflicted on Indigenous people. But it did not compel the parliament to do that. </p>
<p>It also provided no institutional voice for Aboriginal people. So, they remained reliant on politicians to choose when to exercise their new powers. </p>
<p>It is little wonder, then, that when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from across Australia <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/dialogues">are asked</a> what they want from constitutional recognition, they are demanding reforms that would give them a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/why-indigenous-australia-will-reject-a-minimalist-referendum-question-20170319-gv1iso.html">voice in the political institutions</a> established in the constitution. Or, they want reforms that are legally enforceable, such as the right to be <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/sites/default/files/2017-04/Referendum%20Council%20media%20release%20Ross%20River%20Regional%20Dialogue_0.pdf">protected against racial discrimination</a>.</p>
<p>They have already learnt the lessons from the shortfalls of 1967.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76725/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabrielle Appleby is working as a pro bono constitutional adviser to the Referendum Council regional dialogues and First Nations Constitutional Convention at Uluru (23-26 May 2017). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma McKinnon is working as a technical adviser to the Referendum Council regional dialogues and First Nations Constitutional Convention at Uluru (23-26 May 2017).</span></em></p>The 1967 referendum fell far short in giving people what they thought they were voting for, and in giving Aboriginal people what they wanted from it.Gabrielle Appleby, Associate Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW SydneyGemma McKinnon, Associate Lecturer, Law School, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.