'Vote Yes for Aborigines' Jennifer Clark discusses some of the intricacies of the 1967 referendum Australians form a traditionally conservative electorate, usually voting ‘no’ at a referendum. Of the 24 referenda questions asked before 1967 only four were passed in 1906, 1910, 1928 and 1946. On 27 May 1967, Australians went to the polls to vote on two more referenda questions. This time they overwhelmingly voted ‘yes’ on one of these questions, with 90.77 per cent following the advertising posters to ‘Vote Yes for Aborigines’. But what were they voting for and did it matter? Australian Aborigines were specifically mentioned twice in the Australian Constitution. Under Section 51 there were 39 clauses that identified separate areas of federal power and control, including trade and tax. Clause 127 stated that the Commonwealth Government could make laws for ‘The people of any race, other than the aboriginal people in any State, for whom it is necessary to make special laws’. The purpose of this clause was to allow the Commonwealth Government to make labour laws covering the Kanakas in Queensland. Australian Aborigines were excluded as a means of protection but the result was to disempower the Federal Government from legislating for Aboriginal people outside territories under its specific control. Later in the Constitution, Aboriginal people were mentioned under Clause 127: ‘In 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.’ Here the effect was to omit Australian Aborigines from the census. The first attempts to change the constitution occurred some 10 years after its ratification, but the real push came in the late 1950s. The papers of Jessie Street, held in the Manuscript Collection of the National Library, reveal the genesis of successful constitutional reform. Jessie Street was well known as a reformer with interests in women’s rights, peace, left-wing politics and Aboriginal issues.
She was also a member of the British Anti- Slavery Society. In March 1957, she wrote to Thomas Fox-Pitt, secretary of the Society, to tell him that Australia had reached an opportune moment in its history when it would be possible to achieve positive change for Australian Aborigines. She believed that they should have the rights of citizens and be equal with white Australians. Importantly, she told him:‘This, of course, would require an amendment to the constitution which specifically excludes aborigines from the enjoyment of the rights and the application of laws and regulations which apply to other Australians.’ The following day she wrote to Brian Fitzpatrick, General Secretary of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, and described to him the offending sections of the Constitution, one of which ‘precludes aborigines from citizenship in Australia and the other I think which vests control of the aborigines in the individual States’. These are important documents for two reasons. They are the first inklings that a referendum was in the air but, perhaps more importantly for subsequent events, they indicate a real misunderstanding about what a referendum could achieve. The Constitution did not specifically grant or deny citizenship. Australian citizenship was conferred on all who were born in Australia by an Act of parliament in 1948, which came into effect on Australia Day in 1949, but the Act did not identify specific rights and privileges of citizenship in the same way as the American Bill of Rights.
What Australian Aborigines experienced, however, were the prejudicial effects of various pieces of state legislation. In Western Australia, for example, until 1971, the Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944 made Aboriginal people apply for citizenship after meeting certain conditions. In Queensland until 1966, Aboriginal people could be held on reserves against their will. Under some state legislation Aboriginal people could not travel from place to place, could not control their own money, could not drink alcohol and could not marry without permission. When Street called for changes to the Constitution, she was attempting to work around these restrictions by ensuring that the Federal Government could legislate for Australian Aborigines as a countering force to the power of the states. Theoretically citizenship was never in doubt, but in practice the discriminatory application of state law meant the denial of citizenship. The petition for constitutional change initiated by Street was called ‘Towards Equal Citizenship for Aborigines’. What records in the National Library show is that Australian Aborigines and their white supporters found enormous appeal in the idea of constitutional change, embracing it wholeheartedly. Campaign committees were established with local organisers across the country poised to reach ‘ordinary’ voters and press the ‘yes’ case. The first aim was to collect signatures on a petition to present to parliament in order to convince the government to sponsor the referendum. Member of the House of Representatives, Gordon Bryant, was the national campaign organiser. He proposed that one way to collect signatures systematically was to operate across federal electorates, with Barry Christophers in charge. The Christophers Collection, held in the National Library, shows that many answered the call and were prepared to distribute petitions, collect signatures on Saturday mornings outside the local shops, and write to prominent identities seeking their support. In 1962, Shirley Andrews, a member of the Council for Aboriginal Rights, reported that the Victorian committee had already distributed 10 000 petitions, and a Wollongong man was applauded for single-handedly collecting 2500 signatures.
The petitions were regularly tabled in parliament and the government considered its response. Prime Minister Robert Menzies agreed to put Clause 127 on a referendum paper in an attempt to remove overt discrimination. He admitted that not counting Aboriginal people was out of step with modern Australian attitudes and so it was responsible to amend the Constitution to reflect that condition. However, he believed Section 51 of the Constitution protected Aboriginal people and so he initially saw no value in repeal. In 1965, Menzies held no positive vision for Australian Aborigines in Australia and so he did not recognise that those who pushed for repeal of Section 51 were less interested in the intricacies of constitutional law than they were in the broader questions of tangible social justice. Advocates for the change believed that if the Federal Government could legislate for Aboriginal people, then it should be pressured to introduce legislation that would have a positive effect on the everyday lives of Australian Aborigines. Aboriginal groups made all kinds of suggestions about possible directions and potential areas of reform the government could pursue with its new powers. In this sense the referendum was seen as a gateway between the past and the future. As a result of intense pressure, Menzies’ successor, Harold Holt, agreed to put the two contentious parts of the Constitution into one referendum question. While Holt retained the view that Section 51 was not discriminatory, he admitted that others thought it was, and so bowed to popular opinion. The Attorney-General, Billy Sneddon, reported to Cabinet that the inclusion of Section 51 would be harmless, and even if the government had new powers after the referendum it would not be obliged to implement them.
Once the government agreed to hold a referendum the campaign focus shifted to promoting the ‘yes’ vote. Once again, networks were established to cover the ground. Convenors wrote letters to groups and individuals to help distribute literature and to hand out flyers at the polling booths. The argument was very simply put in promotional posters and handbills—‘Vote Yes for Aborigines May 27’. The word ‘yes’ had to be written on the referendum paper and one poster was quite explicit—‘Write Yes for Aborigines in the lower square May 27th’. Some campaigners were fearful that voters might simply tick the box by mistake, or think they had to vote consistently on both the Aboriginal and the less popular ‘nexus question’, so the promotion emphasised writing ‘yes’. What voters were actually saying ‘yes’ to was less clear. Many did not really understand what they were voting for, and even today a residual belief exists that the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people the vote. That was already achieved by 1962. At the same time ‘yes’ was a great word of affirmation, and Australian Aborigines and their supporters saw the referendum as an opportunity for Australians to affirm Aboriginal people in both a literal and figurative way. A ‘yes’ vote came to represent much more than the mere desire for constitutional change, rather it carried the symbolic approval of Aboriginal advancement—vague, general, but hopeful. Voters responded to their sense of justice rather than any knowledge of state or federal law. In 1967, Australia was described as modern and progressive. Australian Aborigines and their supporters hoped to capitalise on that belief but, although the referendum promised so much, in reality it delivered so very little. Herein lies the tragedy of the referendum. Inherent government reluctance for the referendum meant it was unwilling and poorly prepared to act dynamically and pro-actively in the post referendum years.
On the other hand, because campaigners placed so much importance on constitutional reform and invested such emotional energy they had high expectations for change. In the wake of a ‘yes’ vote they were destined to be disappointed. When the promotional literature carried the innocent face of an Aboriginal child together with the pleas to vote ‘Yes’ for Aborigines’ it was with the hope that new federal powers would open doors for Aboriginal advancement. However, the referendum only allowed Australian Aborigines to be counted, and for the Federal Government to have powers; it did not mean the government would necessarily take any initiatives. In the world of popular understanding, constitutional change was equated with justice, however erroneous that belief may have been. Jennifer Clark is a member of the School of Classics, History and Religion at the University of New England
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