Page 20 - Indiginous Australians

Mary Alp
1967 saw the Referendum where 90.7% of all Australians vote YES to count Indigenous people in the census. The commonwealth government became more
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1971 Neville Bonner becomes the first Indigenous member of Parliament -senate vacancy.
1972 tent Embassy established outside Parliament House. Aboriginal protest over successive governments handling of Aboriginal issues. Raising the Aboriginal flag.
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1973 Whitlam government’s creation of the DAA (Department of Aboriginal Affairs) where policies of self -determination over policies of assimilation & integration were favoured. However, this model’s Aboriginal involvement was lessened by subsequent governments. Funding was cut by the Fraser government in 1976. It was abandoned in 1990 by the Hawke government – it was later amalgamated & became the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission -
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government is still unclear.
1975 Racial Discrimination Act passed by the Whitlam government promoting equality for all people before the law regardless of race, colour or national or
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1984 The granting of full compulsory voting rights for Australian Aboriginals.
76 Indigenous Rights movement Ibid
77 Indigenous Rights Movement Ibid
78 Wikipedia, ’Department of Aboriginal Affairs’; Wikipedia, ‘ATSIC Abandoned’.
79 Canberra Times 2019, ‘National Congress of Australian first Peoples’ closure a step back for Aboriginal people’’; The Guardian, June 2019, ‘Government fails to guarantee funding for key Indigenous body’; ABC News ‘Budget 2014: $534 million cut to Indigenous programs’.
80Human rights .gov.au ‘Legislation/Australian Human Rights commission’.
81 Abc.net.au ‘The right to vote’
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involved in Australian Indigenous affair.
The White Australia policy was abolished.
ATSIC
National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples’. This body failed in 2019 as had the others because of lack of autonomy & the result of Abbott’s 2014 funding cuts. The future of Indigenous Australian representative body in the commonwealth
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. In 2009 ATSIC was replaced by the Indigenous initiated body ‘The
ethnic origin. Racial discrimination made unlawful.
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