AUSTRALIA yesterday announced it would hold a referendum on recognising the country’s Aborigines in its constitution.
Prime minister Julia Gillard said the government was establishing an expert panel to examine the issue and report back by the end of next year.
The referendum, which would form part of a process to improve conditions of chronic disadvantage suffered by Aborigines, would take place in 2012 or 2013.
Three years after former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s historic apology to indigenous Australians, Ms Gillard said the country had a “once in 50-year opportunity” to pass a referendum with cross-party parliamentary support and widespread public backing.
“We came to government knowing that change was needed on an emotional level as well as a practical level,” she said.
“The recognition of indigenous Australians – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – in the Australian constitution is the next step in that journey.”
Indigenous Australians make up about 470,000 out of a population of 22 million, and suffer far higher than average rates of unemployment, imprisonment and ill-health. The life expectancy for Aboriginal men is 11.5 years shorter than the national average. Aboriginal women die 9.7 years earlier than non-Aboriginal women.
Larissa Behrendt, a prominent Aboriginal lawyer, said the most difficult part of the referendum will be to convince people of its importance. “I think what is going to be the challenge is getting the hearts and minds support . . . to ensure that the majority of Australians in the majority of states vote Yes,” she told ABC television.
“The focus does need to be on that selling of why this is important to the community; otherwise I think that we’re going to see what has been an important moment with parties coming together, won’t actually find its way into the community.” Ms Behrendt said there needed to be deep consideration of the changes to be proposed in the referendum.
“There are lots of complex issues in this debate. I would think that just because there’s already agreement across political parties about the fact that we should have constitution recognition doesn’t at all settle what the form of words will be,” she said.
“I think we can expect to see quite a range of views come from the Aboriginal community, the broader community and certainly a lot of human rights groups.”
When Australia was first settled by Europeans it was decreed terra nullius – land belonging to no one. This was overturned by a 1992 high court decision.
Referendums are rarely held in Australia and when they are, they usually fail. In 44 of them since independence in 1901, only eight have passed. The last one, in 1999, was about whether the country should become a republic. It was soundly defeated.
One referendum which was resoundingly successful, however, was the 1967 one that gave Aborigines citizenship and a vote. It was passed with 90.8 per cent of the vote, the highest ever recorded.