Aboriginal Law Bulletin --- "Editorial" [1996] AboriginalLawB 51; (1996) 3(83) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 2

• Editorial

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Editorial

In 1967, the Australian public overwhelmingly supported the referendum to change the Constitution, so that the Commonwealth Government would from that time on have the power to legislate for the Indigenous peoples of Australia.

The Constitutional change had a number of important consequences. One was that it has allowed the passage of pieces of legislation which have had significant impacts on the lives of Indigenous Australians, such as the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), the Land Rights (NT) Act 1976 (Cth), and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). Another is that it caused Indigenous Australians to be counted on the Census for the first time. This of course had the effect of ensuring that Indigenous people were able to exercise the right to vote in all Australian elections.

It is not strictly true to say that Indigenous people were disbarred from voting in Australia before the 1967 referendum. However the net effect of not being counted on the Census had effectively disbarred Indigenous people from exercising the franchise in their own land.

On 21 August 1996, the Federal Government announced cancellation of funding to a $2 million program run by the Australian Electoral Commission, which assisted Indigenous Australians to participate in the electoral process at all levels of government This cut, part of the 1996 Federal Budget, is additional to across-the-board cuts to Federal Government departments and instrumentalities. The program had been initiated in 1979 by the Fraser Government, and was widely admired in overseas countries, where it was considered by many to be an effective model for delivering civic education to Indigenous peoples. The program particularly concentrated on assisting Indigenous people in remote regions of Australia to understand their electoral rights and obligations.

The Liberal Party was elected to government in March with the campaign slogan 'For All Of Us'. However, while in a democracy the franchise is indeed 'for all of us', it seems that the process of again effectively disbarring Indigenous Australians from exercising the right to vote has commenced.