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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-05-30 Daily Xml
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Australian Referendum, 1967

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (14:36): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation. Can the minister advise the chamber on how the government has recognised the anniversary of the 1967 referendum?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (14:37): I thank the honourable member for her question and her ongoing interest in this area. There are a number of events throughout South Australia and indeed throughout Australia recognising what is a quite historic year for Australia, and particularly for Aboriginal Australia. It will be celebrated in a number of events in South Australia during Reconciliation Week (this week) and also later during NAIDOC Week and with the NAIDOC awards in July.

On Friday night there was a dinner recognising the 1967 referendum that was attended by a number of members of the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee in this chamber and many members of the Aboriginal community and that celebrated and recognised some of the historic milestones. The year of 2017 is a watershed year. It is the 20th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home Report, the 45th year since the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was erected on the lawns of Old Parliament House, importantly the 25th anniversary of the Mabo decision and, of course, the 50th anniversary, just in the last couple of days, of the 1967 referendum.

It has only been in the last 60 years that we have seen some historic and dramatic changes in some of these policies in Australia. The 1967 referendum—particularly from talking to people like Shirley Peisley who were campaigners at the time during that referendum—was a historic moment. It changed our constitution to do a couple of different things. It allowed the government of the day specifically to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but it also, for the first time, counted Aboriginal people in our census. This allowed for proper government policymaking based on evidence in terms of health care, education and other needs.

The symbolism was great at the time: the counting of Aboriginal people for the very first time ushered in a new era of hope that things would change. Although change in a lot of areas probably hasn't come fast enough, or certainly as fast as those campaigners for the '67 referendum would have hoped, we have seen change during that time. I think it's fair to say that community attitudes and things like the High Court decision in 1992 in Mabo and Others v State of Queensland (No. 2) probably wouldn't have occurred without the change in attitudes that occurred during the 1967 referendum.

In June we also celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Mabo High Court decision, which, again, was almost a line-in-the-sand moment. I remember being in my first year of law school at Adelaide Uni when the High Court handed down the decision. It confirmed what most Aboriginal Australians knew: that land had an ongoing and deep spiritual connection for Aboriginal people and that ownership of land had never been relinquished. It encouraged a lot of people to think about the connection Aboriginal people have with land as a result of the 1992 High Court decision.

Certainly, what followed from there—things like the then prime minister Paul Keating's Redfern speech that talked about, really publicly for first time by a political leader, issues of dispossession—and the consequences these things had were a flow-on effect of that decision. So, it is a very important couple of weeks in celebrating milestones in Aboriginal Affairs policy in Australia. There are a number of events during Reconciliation Week and also in July during NAIDOC Week to commemorate these events.

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