Aborigines’ Sorry Plight Stirs Aust. Conscience

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 17

Aborigines’ Sorry Plight Stirs Aust. Conscience

(from DAVID BARBER, special eorrespandent N.Z.PAJ

SYDNEY March 31.

The “houses” are made of discarded rusted sheets of corrugated iron, ham-mered-out petrol tins and splintering packing cases. Their roofs are dead branches and pieces of sacking.

The furniture is a fruit box, an upturned oil drum, a log. The occupants sleep on the dirt floor and cover themselves with bags and old rugs. There is no sewerage, no electricity, no gas and no water. The 100-odd people who live here are Aborigines. * Home for them is a rubbish tip at Dareton, 14 miles from Mildura on the New South Wales side of the mighty Murray river. Thousands of Australians were this week given this picture of Dareton—“the disgrace and shame of the nation.” “ Baby Cries ....” “At first you think it's just scattered heaps of rusty iron and junk dumped in the scrub. ‘Then you hear a baby cry . . . and you fed sick.” This is how one reporter described Dareton, after it had been thrust into the headlines at the annual conference of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines. The conference, which was held in Canberra, heard about Dareton, about conditions at other Aboriginal reserves in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and an impassioned plea by the council’s president, Mr J. McGinness: “Let us have a dignified way of life.” Observers said that the conference made it clear that young Aborigines were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their lot, and increasingly impatient over civil rights moves on their behalf. “Yes” Campaign In two important decisions, the conference agreed to launch an education programme designed to produce active civil rights leaders, and to organise a huge “Yes” campaign for the national referendum to be held on May 27. One part of the referendum is aimed at breaking the nexus between the House of Representatives and the Sen-

ate The other seeks amendments to the constitution to have Aborigines included in the census, and to allow the Federal Government to legislate for their special needs. The education programme will comprise a crash course on all aspects of Australian politics, designed to educate a hard core of leaders equipped to lead a militant civil rights programme. Pressure Groups

The decision followed suggestions that the Aborigines should band themselves into

pressure groups to use every possible method for advancement within the law.

The “Yes” campaign for the referendum will seek a massive affirmative vote for the removal of the constitutional clauses which discriminate against Aborigines. Majority Needed

To succeed, a majority of voters in a majority of states must vote “Yes.” This means four of the six states and about two and a half million electors must record a “Yes” vote.

The conference focussed national attention on the coming referendum and already many newspapers have urged massive “Yes” votes, to make it clear, as one said, to Aborigines and the rest of the world “that there is no second class dtlzensihip for Aborigines in Australia.” “The Age,” Melbourne, headlined its editorial simply: “Aborigines are human.” The shame of Dareton has made many Australians realise that they do not always recognise them as such.