The second question of the 1967 Australian referendum of 27 May 1967, called by the Holt government, related to Indigenous Australians. Voters were asked whether to give the Federal Government the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians in states, and whether Indigenous Australians should be included in official population counts for constitutional purposes. The term "the Aboriginal Race" was used in the question.
Technically the referendum question was a vote on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) Bill 1967 that would amend section 51(xxvi) and repeal section 127.
The amendments to the Constitution were overwhelmingly endorsed, winning 90.77% of votes cast and having majority support in all six states. The Bill became an Act of Parliament on 10 August 1967.
Background
In 1901, the attorney-general, Alfred Deakin, provided a legal opinion on the meaning of section 127 of the Constitution of Australia. Section 127 excluded "aboriginal natives" from being counted when reckoning the numbers of the people of the commonwealth or a state. His legal advice was that "half-castes" were not "aboriginal natives".
Prior to 1967, censuses asked a question about Aboriginal race to establish numbers of "half-castes" and "full-bloods". "Full-bloods" were then subtracted from the official population figure in accordance with the legal advice from the attorney-general.
Strong activism by individuals and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups greatly aided the success of the 1967 referendum in the years leading up to the vote. Calls for Aboriginal issues to be dealt with at the federal level began as early as 1910. Despite a failed attempt in the 1944 referendum, minimal changes were instigated for Aboriginal rights until the 1960s, where the Bark Petition in 1963 and the ensuing Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd and Commonwealth of Australia (Gove Land Rights Case), and Gurindji Strike highlighted the negative treatment of Indigenous workers in the Northern Territory. From here, the overall plight of Aboriginal Australians became a fundamental political issue.
On 7 April 1965, the Menzies Cabinet decided that it would seek to repeal section 127 of the Constitution at the same time as it sought to amend the nexus provision, but made no firm plans or timetable for such action. In August 1965, attorney-general Billy Snedden proposed to Cabinet that abolition of section 127 was inappropriate unless section 51(xxvi) was simultaneously amended to remove the words "other than the aboriginal race in any state". He was rebuffed, but gained agreement when he made a similar submission to the Holt Cabinet in 1966. In the meantime, his Liberal colleague Billy Wentworth had introduced a private member's bill proposing inter alia to amend section 51(xxvi).
In 1964, the Leader of the Opposition, Arthur Calwell, had proposed such a change and pledged that his party, the Australian Labor Party, would back any referendum to that effect.
In 1967 the Australian Parliament was unanimous in voting for the alteration bill.
The Australian Board of Missions, the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, the Australian Aborigines League, the Australian Council of Churches, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) and spokespeople such as Ruby Hammond, Bill Onus and Faith Bandler were some of the many groups and individuals who effectively utilised the media and their influential platforms to generate the momentum needed to achieve a landslide Yes vote.
Amendments to the Constitution
Voters were asked to approve, together, changes to two provisions in the Constitution section 51(xxvi) and section 127.
Section 51 begins:
And the extraordinary clauses that follow (ordinarily referred to as heads of power) list most of the legislative powers of the federal parliament. The amendment deleted the text in bold from subsection xxvi (known as the "race" or "races" power):
