The University of Queensland

Image 3A: Faith Bandler

Led largely by non-Indigenous activists, FCAA coordinated the national struggles for constitutional reform throughout the 1960s. In 1962 it launched a new petition which again failed to move the Menzies Government, despite attracting approximately 100,000 signatories [view petition].

In FCAA's view, though, the campaign was a success because it kept indigenous issues in the public eye and broadened awareness of the inequity of legal discrimination against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

More tangible progress was being made in other areas. Probably the highpoint of the movement for legal equality prior to the 1967 referendum was the passing of legislation in 1962 providing all adult Aborigines with the right to vote in Commonwealth elections, albeit it on a voluntary basis.

The Australian Constitution had always provided for voting rights for adults with an entitlement to vote in State elections, which in some States included Aborigines. However, successive Commonwealth governments had failed to inform Aborigines of these existing rights or to ensure they were enrolled. The 1949 Commonwealth Electoral Act acknowledged this neglect by explicitly giving the vote to every:

aboriginal native of Australia ...[who] is entitled under the law of the State in which he resides to be enrolled as an elector of the State and, upon enrolment, to vote at elections for the more numerous House of Parliament of that State ...

Over coming years the Commonwealth government held firm to this position despite changes to the law.

Indeed, as Attwood and Markus attest,

"the legislative changes in this period were premised not upon a re-evaluation of the worth of Aboriginal culture but on a grudging acceptance of the view that a path to a superior world of white Australia should be created for Aboriginal people willing to abandon their own way of life." ⁴

For FCAA activists, therefore, the challenge was not only to achieve legal reform but to shift public consciousness towards respect for Aboriginal identity and non-racist ways of understanding Aboriginal society.

Image 3P: W.C. Wentworth, J. Morgan, Kath Walker, Gordon Bryant and Faith Bandler confer during the campaign in 1967

Image 3W: Manfred Cross

In this context, the referendum took on a symbolic significance that was at least as important as its legal consequences. For young Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins, it was a "moment of truth ­ whether the white people really are interested in our welfare or rights." <sup>5 Some in FCAATSI (as the Council was renamed in 1964) saw it as an opportunity to reshape the very basis of the assimilationist framework.

In 1964 the Federal Council's Sub-Committee on Legislative Reform outlined a vision of a "new deal" for Aborigines, "based upon the principle that the Aborigines are a national group who should have the right to maintain their separate identity while advancing culturally and economically." 6 In time, this vision would become known as integration. 7 As FCAATSI supporter and Federal Labor Member for Brisbane Manfred Cross explained:

"Integration means respect for Aboriginal communities... It means that the Aboriginal school child shall be taught his cultural background so that he may take pride in his racial origin. It means the Aborigine should have an effective choice available to him of remaining with his own people, or assimilating into the wider Australian community."

This early version of what became known as self-determination was a significant departure from the official policy of complete assimilation and it won few supporters within the conservative Liberal-Country party governments of Sir Robert Menzies and Harold Holt.

Calls for policy change continually fell on deaf ears.</sup>