Changes to outdated public policy can only lead to better outcomes.
Today, Australians over the age of 18 will voting the federal election, but voting was not always a default right for all Australians. My Aboriginal grandparents and my mother were denied that right to vote in Queensland until the mid-1960’s.
From the first federal electoral Act in 1902 to 1965 when the last state changed its law, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were subject to regulations which prohibited them from voting at federal and state elections.
The first federal electoral Act, the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, granted men and women of all states the right to vote. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were excluded unless they already had the right to vote before 1901.
In Queensland, Aboriginal people had been disqualified from voting in state elections since the late 19th century. In 1930, the voting ban was extended to include Torres Strait Islander people.
In March 1949, Prime Minister Ben Chifley introduced an amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. This extended the right to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person to vote in federal elections to who had been a member of the defence force.
These laws and other discriminatory practices were vigorously opposed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists and their supporters. Political associations such as the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) coordinated the fight for political and other civil rights.
Their political fight was rewarded in 1961 when the Commonwealth Government introduced a Bill ‘to give to Aboriginal Natives of Australia the right to Enrol and to Vote as Electors of the Commonwealth’. Enacted in 1962, it granted all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. Enrolment was not compulsory for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, unlike other Australians. Once enrolled, however, voting was compulsory.
In 1984, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were finally treated like other voters and required to enrol and vote at federal elections.
Regardless of the result today, I never take for granted what others have fought for in the 1960’s so that my generation of Aboriginal people can vote in the State and Federal elections.
Remember, on our hardest days, positive change is possible if we are prepared.
NW