Wide Support For Aborigines

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31381, 29 May 1967, Page 13

Wide Support For Aborigines

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CANBERRA, May 28. Australians have voted overwhelmingly to remove from their Constitution two phrases which appeared to discriminate against Aborigines.

But they rejected a proposal which would have permitted an increase in the size of the House of Representatives in the Federal Parliament, without increasing the size of the Senat". The vote in favour of removing the only constitutional references to aborigines was the most sweeping recorded in an Australian constitution referendum. One reference which will be removed has excluded aborigines from the census count—an outmoded provision dating from the time when aborigines were mainly nomadic and difficult to count

The other clause permitted the Commonwealth to make special laws in relation to persons of any race “except aborigines.” The over-all vote in favour of these changes was almost 95 per cent Only one State voted in favour of the constitutional change which would have

made it easier to increase the size of the House of Representatives.

The New South Wales vote in favour—on about half the figures—was 56 per cent But in other States the poll against the change ranged from 55 per cent in Queensland to 77 per cent in Tasmania.

Constitutional changes require the consent of the majority of the people and also the consent of a majority in at least four of the six States.

Today’s vote means that only five of 26 attempts to amend the Constitution since 1901 have succeeded.