Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Citizenship Divide in Colonial Victoria
- 2 Under the Law: Aborigines and Islanders in Colonial Queensland
- 3 Is the Constitution to Blame?
- 4 The Commonwealth Defines the Australian Citizen (in association with Tom Clarke)
- 5 The States Confine the Aboriginal Non-citizen
- 6 The Slow Path to Civil Rights
- 7 From Civil to Indigenous Rights
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Slow Path to Civil Rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Citizenship Divide in Colonial Victoria
- 2 Under the Law: Aborigines and Islanders in Colonial Queensland
- 3 Is the Constitution to Blame?
- 4 The Commonwealth Defines the Australian Citizen (in association with Tom Clarke)
- 5 The States Confine the Aboriginal Non-citizen
- 6 The Slow Path to Civil Rights
- 7 From Civil to Indigenous Rights
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The rights and disabilities of Australian citizens … are not to be found in the Nationality and Citizenship Act. Those rights and disabilities are to be found in the general law of Australia which is made up of the common law and Federal and State statutory laws …
Being born in Australia … the aborigine is an Australian citizen. But to ascertain what rights Australian citizens, including aborigines, have and to what disabilities they are subject, it is necessary to look to the general law.
Commonwealth Attorney-General Garfield Barwick, 1959As the above advice of Attorney-General Garfield Barwick made clear, the 1948 citizenship legislation gave no new citizenship rights to Aborigines. The legislation theoretically made Aborigines Australian citizens, but they were citizens who had no right to vote in Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory or federally, and their access to social security was extremely limited. Even if the new legislation had given new rights to Aborigines, Australia's federal system of government still rendered a person's citizenship status dependent upon the rights accorded to him or her at State level. Barwick himself at one stage made reference to there being ‘nine different “citizenships” in Australia’. The power to determine a person's citizenship status did not rest with the Commonwealth alone.
So when political support was given to the idea that Aborigines should in a meaningful sense become Australian citizens, this in practice required changes on a number of fronts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Citizens without RightsAborigines and Australian Citizenship, pp. 156 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997