Story of Australia’s aboriginal ‘First Peoples’, for whom a national referendum could bring Constitutional recognition

‘Aboriginal’ refers to the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia — people who lived on the continental mainland and surrounding islands for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of the first Europeans in the early 17th century. The Torres Strait Islands is an archipelago of small islands in the Torres Strait, a narrow body of water between the northern tip of the state of Queensland and the large island of Papua New Guinea.

The proposal for a referendum is part of a larger effort by the country to reconcile with its colonial past. Australian governments for years followed policies targeted at the assimilation of Indigenous groups, sometimes through controversial means such as separating children from their parents to “resettle” them with white families.

On the proposed referendum, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said, “We will all stand with a clean heart and a clean conscience and we will know our country is on the path to a better direction.”

The referendum and Australia’s Indigenous people

If the Bill allowing the referendum to be held is passed, it would be on whether Indigenous Australians are to be recognised in the country’s Constitution, and whether a body called the Indigenous “Voice to Parliament” shall be set up to advise lawmakers on matters impacting their lives.

Aboriginal people make up about 3.2 per cent of Australia’s population, and track below national averages on most socio-economic measures, Reuters reported. They are not mentioned in the nation’s 122-year-old Constitution.

Australia’s Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said the advisory body’s purpose would be to ensure a voice for the original inhabitants of the continent. “It’s about drawing a line on the poor outcomes from the long legacy of failed programmes and broken policies, and listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” a report in The Guardian quoted her as saying.

Ancient rock carvings suggest humans inhabited Australia some 45,000 years ago. According to a post on the website of the National Library of Australia, the first documented landing of a European was by the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, who arrived on the western side of Cape York peninsula in 1606. The Europeans were aware at the time of a land mass in the southern hemisphere that they called Terra Australia Incognita, meaning Unknown South Land, but there is no confirmed evidence of claimed landings earlier.

Captain James Cook’s famous voyages took place in the second half of the 18th century, and the early British settlers on the continent were criminals and convicts who were sent there to serve their prison sentences. Between 1788 and 1868, more than 162,000 convicts in crimes committed in Britain and Ireland were transported to Australia, according to the National Museum of Australia.

Laws and policies made by the colonial settlers over time contributed to the marginalisation of Indigenous communities, who fared increasingly worse than their non-native counterparts on indicators like education and life expectancy.

Under the Infants Welfare Act of 1935, Indigenous children on Cape Barren Island were removed from their families based on claims of child neglect by authorities. These laws were applied to thousands of children for many decades, and those children are now referred to as “The Stolen Generation”. The government’s website states, “Affecting anywhere from 1 in 10 to 1 in 3 children, there is not a single Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community who has not been forever changed.”

In recent years, legislation to improve the status of Indigenous Australians has been introduced. Voting rights were granted in 1962, and in 1992 Australia’s apex court decided that native title exists over particular kinds of lands — unalienated Crown Lands, national parks and reserves — and that Australia was never terra nullius or empty land.

In 1997, a national inquiry was set up on tracking the Stolen Generation, resulting in the “Bringing Them Home” report. Australia’s Parliament and all provincial governments issued statements recognising and publicly apologising to those generations.

Prospects for the Bill and referendum

The government, led by the Australian Labour Party, has introduced the Bill to be referred to a joint select committee for consideration. Opposition parties like the Liberal party have not yet decided if they would support the proposed constitutional amendments, but Labour’s junior coalition partner, the rural-based National Party, has said it would oppose them.

The bill will be assessed by a parliamentary committee. Once approved, it will be sent to the Governor General, the local representative of the British monarch, who issues a writ for a referendum.

Should that be done, for the change to be secured in the nationwide voting, more than 50 per cent of voters must vote in favour nationally, plus the majority of voters in the majority of states. As is the case with elections held otherwise in Australia, voting is compulsory for all adults.

Any constitutional alterations in Australia require a national referendum. There have been 44 proposals for constitutional change and only eight of these proposals have been approved. In a 1967 referendum, over 90 per cent of Australian voters agreed to change the Constitution to give the federal parliament the power to make laws in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for their inclusion in the census.

Although at times changes have come about even without referendums, based on consensus.

A postal survey was held in 2017 on whether same-sex marriage should be legalised, after attempts at holding a referendum failed. Based on the result which supported doing so, a Bill was introduced to that effect in Parliament, and it was passed in the same year.