by Prof George Williams
Symbols matter. They define who we are and can be a powerful way of redressing injustice and building social cohesion around shared goals and values, writes Professor George Williams.
Prime Minister John Howard always understood this and during his leadership Anzac Day and Australia Day gained new significance.
After many years disputing the value of symbolic reform in indigenous affairs, he told the Sydney Institute in October 2007: “I announce that, if re-elected, I will put to the Australian people within 18 months a referendum to formally recognize indigenous Australians in our Constitution − their history as the first inhabitants of our country, their unique heritage of culture and languages, and their special (though not separate) place within a reconciled, indivisible nation.”
He declared that his “goal is to see a new statement of reconciliation incorporated into the preamble of the Australian Constitution”.
Howard was right, it is long past time that Aboriginal people were recognized in the Constitution.
The other major symbolic agenda is the Australian republic.
The Constitution is at odds with the reality of Australia’s political and legal independence and its contemporary values.
It is more than incongruous that Australia’s head of state is the monarch of a foreign nation born to a position, according to a 1701 British statute, that ranks men over women and rules Catholics ineligible.
Sexism and religious discrimination are unacceptable tests for office in modern Australia and should not determine who is eligible to be the country’s head of state.
Section 2 of the Constitution suggests Australia is not an independent nation and establishes the governor-general as the Queen’s representative: “A governor-general appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen’s pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.”
The now obsolete section 59 even grants the Queen power to “disallow any law” passed by federal Parliament.
The Constitution is only reprinted in Australia as part of the UK Parliament’s Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, the implication being that it is the source of the power and authority of Australian laws.
Despite the failure of the 1999 republic referendum, Australia is in fact politically and legally independent.
The legal shift was finally resolved by the Australia Acts of 1986, which removed any right of appeal to the Privy Council.
The symbolic conflict between the text of the Constitution and actual Australian independence remains unresolved, and both undermines a sense of identity and distorts perceptions within and outside the country.
Symbolism is an important value in our system, and the Australian Constitution ought to be amended to reflect this and establish a republic with an Australian head of state appointed without reference to London.
(Professor George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert & Tobin Centre of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales. He is also an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow. Edwina MacDonald assisted with research for this article, which was originally published, in a slightly different form in Republican Roundup in 2008.)
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I’m skeptical about Ms Gillard’s proposed referendum. There’s only 30,000 full blooded aborigines left and counting.
Ultimately is it going to end up as another defunct reference in a constitution that already has many obsolete and spent clauses?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/more-aborigines-entering-mixed-marriages/story-e6freuzr-1225696982117
Who cares if aborigines are entering into “mixed” marriages. This doesn’t mean their culture has disappeared.
It will be kept alive in museums I’m sure.
Aborigines sue columnist Andrew Bolt
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/9088008/aborigines-sue-columnist-andrew-bolt/
By Jeff Turnbull, AAP March 28, 2011, 3:27 pm
She is fair skinned, of English, Jewish and Wathaurung descent, but Melbourne artist Bindi Cole insists she should be regarded as an Aborigine.
Ms Cole is one of nine Aborigines bringing a class action against News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt for racial vilification over articles and blogs he wrote in 2009.
They claim he wrote gratuitous and denigrating articles about them being fair skinned and applying for government grants as Aborigines.
One blog was headlined “White is the new black” and the articles were headlined “It’s so hip to be black” and “White fellas in the black”.
Ms Cole told the Federal Court that after her mother died when she was eight years old she spent four years living with her paternal grandmother “who was very dark”.
She said her grandmother had traced their Aboriginality and discovered they belonged to the Wathaurung tribe from central Victoria.
“It isn’t for Bolt to say that I am not Aboriginal,” Ms Cole said.
“It’s the Aboriginal community acceptance that’s important to me – it’s not something that I go in and out of as I please.”
Ron Merkel SC told the court that Bolt’s idea of an Aborigine was a man standing on a hill with a spear.
He said Bolt’s articles had trivialised them, were gratuitous and stereotyped a group of Aborigines who had fair skin.
He said the articles had questioned their Aboriginality and their right to receive taxpayer-funded grants.
“What he says is that if you don’t look Aboriginal, then you don’t have to be,” Mr Merkel said.
“He is living in a mindset frozen in history, frozen in a period of time.
“There is not the slightest doubt that it is a head-on assault on a large number of highly successful and high-achieving Aboriginal people.”
Aboriginal activist Pat Eatock said she remembers as a five year-old growing up in Ingham and being put into a playground with white children.
When the school learnt her father was Aboriginal she was moved across the fence into the black children’s playground.
She said it was experiences like this that made her accept her Aboriginality and declare it whenever she got a job as an adult.
In one article, Bolt said she first declared her Aboriginality at a political rally when she was 19 but Ms Eatock said she began telling people outside her family about her heritage at the age of 14.
“Aboriginality has nothing to do with skin colour – Aboriginality is in your heart,” she said.
“Once the public identifies you as Aboriginal, there is no going back, you have no choice.”
The nine, including former ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark, are demanding an apology from Bolt and to stop the articles from being reproduced.
The case before Justice Mordecai Bromberg is continuing.
A better system is the one in Canada where you need a DNA test to establish aboriginality – if you fall below 25% you are no longer an aborigine. The people most in favour of this in Australia are some of the remaining 30,000 full bloods themselves.
Then again, in Canada aboriginal status means more, as they have “First Nations” treaties and parliaments. The sort of separatism and “self determination” that is alien here.
And an even better system is where you move to Canada…permanently.
LOL.
And, because most remote aboriginal communities are not viable and there’s no future there, the other thing we could do is re-introduce cash resettlement grants and a sponsored migration program for these people to give them the option of urbanisation and participation in the economy and living a modern, western lifestyle.