 Hi, my name's Benjamin Jones from the School of History here at the ANU. 27 May is going to mark the 50 year anniversary of the 1967 referendum. The first question failed and has faded from history, but the second question passed with over 90%. It was the most successful referendum in Australian history, yet it's widely misunderstood. In 2016, Stan Grant gave a very important and very powerful speech, but he did make the claim that in 1963, when he was born, he was counted among the flora and fauna, not the citizens of the country. And technically both of those statements are incorrect, although in some states Aboriginal affairs were dealt with in the same department as flora and fauna, they certainly weren't considered the same thing. And similarly, citizenship was granted to all Australian-British subjects in 1948, which included Aborigines. But perhaps the most persistent myth about 1967 is that it gave Aborigines voting rights in Australia. Voting rights were staggered among the states. In South Australia, Aboriginal women and men could vote in the 19th century, and then 70 years later, the slowest state to grant voting rights was Queensland in 1965, still a couple of years before the referendum. I'm joined by my colleague in the School of History, Professor Anne McGrath and also Joe Chivers, who wears many hats, but one of which is the chairperson of NAIDOC in Canberra. And if I could start with you, why do you think the 1967 referendum is so poorly understood and what actually did happen in 1967? Well, I think the Australian Constitution is poorly understood, and I think Australian history is poorly understood. So I guess that's part of the explanation. But there was a very, very long campaign, of course, spearheaded by many Aboriginal leaders. And they actually had a 10-year wonderfully organised, sustained petition campaign. They kept putting this petition to parliament with tens of thousands of signatures. And this, of course, is the days before emails, and the amount of legwork involved in that was just incredible. So what happened was that the Australian public started to learn that Aboriginal people didn't have the same human rights and citizenship access. So this got to be seen as very much about the vote and about human rights. Fantastic. And Joe, what do you feel the 67 referendum meant to the Aboriginal community and is it something that's still important to the Aboriginal community today? I think what it actually meant for Aboriginal people at the time was the fact, you know, that they would now be counted in the census, which meant that, you know, in relation to programs and policies that there would be better information to help form those. But not only that, I think talking to a lot of people that were adults at that time, I guess they kind of felt that they were being accepted by the non-Indigenous population, and as has already been mentioned, the fact that the non-Indigenous population had started to, like, recognise, I guess, the injustices of the past, but not only that, wanted to hold the government accountable. And, you know, I guess almost wanted to write some of those injustices as well and hoped that that's what the actual 1967 referendum would achieve. The 67 referendum obviously has legal implications, but I wonder about the social implications. Do you think society changed as a result of 67? Well, just to go back to part of the question, you probably don't want me to answer about the legal implications. I mean, I think it's important to sort of understand them a little bit better, and that is basically after this that the Commonwealth had the right to make legislation for Aboriginal people. Before that, it couldn't, and it was in state hands, and I think a lot of that was because the state still had control of land and they wanted to keep control of Aboriginal affairs and under the Aboriginal Protection Acts. Aboriginal people just did not have basic human rights. They didn't have the right of movement, they didn't have the right to marry without permission, they didn't have equal wages, they couldn't even keep their own money if they got high wages, and, you know, so as you said, so many non-Aboriginal people started to realise this because Aboriginal people were segregated on reserves. Some non-Aboriginal people hardly ever met an Aboriginal person and they didn't really know what was happening, so through this very sustained, amazing campaign which was seen by parliamentarians, more Australians got to realise what was happening to Aboriginal people who were often segregated on reserves. Absolutely. So, Joe, do you think society changed as a result? Absolutely, and I think one of the other things that happened as well, you know, that there was obviously things like land rights legislation and all of that that, you know, perhaps might not have come about without the 1967 referendum as well, and then I guess like the social implications from that was that, you know, when people became connected to their land through that land rights legislation, you know, the impact on things like Indigenous employment and health and housing and all of that as well. So I think that it was very important that, you know, it led to, I guess, those kinds of Commonwealth legislation. And it's often compared as a watershed moment like the 2008 Apology, although the Apology is sometimes criticised as being merely symbolic. Do you think these symbolic moments are important or do they become meaningless unless they're accompanied by some sort of practical action? Knowing a lot of people that are actually members of the stolen generation, you know, I think that the actual symbolicness of the apology was just as important as the practicalities because, you know, a lot of the people that I know just wanted it to be acknowledged and to hear the word sorry as well. So I think, you know, that symbolism was just as important as the practicalities. But, you know, that there are still people as well that, you know, I guess do want things like, you know, whether it to be, you know, to be reiterated for the fact that, you know, they've been taken from their land, their culture, their families and the impact of that as well. So I think, like, it's actually, I think both are actually quite important. For me personally, I was born in 1971. But, you know, my parents have lived in a de facto relationship for about four or five years. But in Tasmania, if you identified as being Aboriginal when you were single or, you know, unmarried, you had to give up your child. But you could be non-indigenous and, you know, have as many children out of wedlock as you wanted to. So my parents actually got married a month before I was born. And so I think for me personally, it was, you know, just as important to kind of hear the apology and have it acknowledged that even in the 1970s that there were still some states where, you know, children were being removed from Aboriginal mothers, for example. So for me, that symbolism was incredibly important. And you mentioned how successful the campaign was. If you could be the campaign manager for the recognised movement, arguably that is the next step. In 1901, the Constitution included Aborigines only to exclude them, and the 67 referendum went some way to addressing that. And arguably the next step now is to have recognition in the Constitution. But the campaign seems to have flatlined somewhat. Do you think there are lessons from a campaign point of view? Obviously, 67 was very emotive. This is one of the iconic posters from there. Are there lessons from 67 for the modern recognised movement, do you think? Well, I'd like to sort of put that in the historical context of the day. I mean, this was after the assimilation policy. It was after World War II, where racism had become somewhat discredited after what Hitler did and so forth. And here you have a beautiful little Aboriginal child. And this pricked people's conscience because they thought, why doesn't this child have the same opportunities as other children? So this, to me, was about opportunities. Whereas the Apology, which was another 10-year build-up campaign, the Prime Minister of the day would not say sorry, so there was a great build-up to that. And that was a moment of national inclusion. They were both very important moments of national inclusion. You know, you're citizens of the nation, Australia, and you've got every right to have the same opportunities and every right for people to care about your suffering. To me, the Apology was about caring about historic suffering. And the Recognised Campaign needs to actually acknowledge something different. To me, it's not about equal opportunity in human rights. It should be about recognising Indigenous sovereignty. And I think the movements for the Treaty are really quite exciting because in the past, many governments have avoided that, like the Plague. And Prime Minister Bob Hawke actually said he was going to do a Treaty after the Barunga Statement was delivered to him on a bark. And he didn't because of pressure from mining companies quite clearly. And the Labor Party ever since has been very nervous, Commonwealth level, about a Treaty. And it's very interesting to see that instead of this being the Commonwealth being doing more for Aboriginal people after the 1967 referendum, it now looks like the states are going to be doing more for Aboriginal people because they're making moves towards consultation and setting up representative bodies to enable treaties to proceed. Well, just to conclude, can I ask, is simply 50 years on does the 67 referendum still matter, Jo? I'm not really sure. I think a lot of people saw it as being an opportunity. But I think what people kind of see even currently is, you know, that we have like a coalition government, for example, and a lot of older white males who seem to make decisions on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people without actually any consultation or negotiation with those peoples. I guess a recent example would be the decision around reducing the funding for Aboriginal legal services, for example. You know, so I think, like, that people still think that there is an opportunity, but the government really needs to grasp it. Does the 67 referendum still matter? Well, I think what it reveals is how patient Aboriginal Australians have been with the nation, which was imposed upon them, where, as other Australians learnt in 1967, they weren't even counted as citizens. So I think that it's a reminder, this is very recent. This is very recent that Aboriginal people were finally included in the nation as citizens. And I think that the only way we're going to go forward is not just to include them into some pre-existing body, but to recognise the fact that they already had governance, they already had nations, and they cared for this land for probably 60,000 years, according to the latest figures. And that should be respected in a way which goes beyond inclusion. And I think we've really got to think about that as a nation. Well, thank you to my guests. 27 May will mark the 50-year anniversary of the 1967 referendum. There are going to be events marking this occasion at the ANU and also around the country, and I encourage you to take part, or at the very least to take a few moments to pause and reflect on the long struggle for equal rights and what a truly reconciled nation may mean. Thank you for watching.