Voting rights of Australian Aboriginals
- Voting rights of Australian Aboriginals
Historically the voting rights of Australian Aboriginals had been restricted in Australian parliaments and local government bodies. Under Section 41 of the Australian Constitution Aboriginals always had the legal right to vote in Australian Commonwealth elections if their State granted them that right. From the time of Federation this meant that all Aborigines outside Queensland and Western Australia technically had a full legal right to vote. Point McLeay, a mission station near the mouth of the Murray River, got a polling station in the 1890s and Aboriginal men and women voted there in South Australian elections and voted for the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901.
However Sir Robert Garran, the first Solicitor-General, interpreted section 41 to give Commonwealth rights only to those who were already State voters in 1902. Garran’s interpretation of section 41 was first challenged in 1924 by an Indian who had recently been accepted to vote by Victoria but rejected by the Commonwealth. He won the court case. But the joint Commonwealth/State electoral rolls adopted in the 1920s typically included an ‘o’ next to the names of Aborigines which in practice meant they continued to be systematically (and illegally) denied the right to vote in Commonwealth elections. In 1949 the Chifley Labor government passed an Act to confirm that all those who could vote in their States could vote for the Commonwealth.
In 1962 Aborigines were given the vote in Commonwealth elections irrespective of their voting rights at the state level. Late in 1962 they were given the vote in Western Australian state elections and in 1965 they were granted that right in Queensland.
State Elections
"Western Australia"
Since the time of the 1856 New South Wales constitution officially Aboriginal people had the same rights as other citizens. However from 1902, because they were denied the right to vote in Commonwealth elections, they were often also illegally denied the right to vote in NSW state elections. [http://www.parliament.curriculum.edu.au/nsw.php3]
References
* http://fadar.aec.gov.au/_content/when/history/ab_vote.htm
* Pat Stretton and Christine Finnimore, ‘Black Fellow Citizens: Aborigines and the Commonwealth Franchise’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 25, no. 101, 1993, pp. 521-35
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