Rights and Freedom: Australia

Australia is the only Commonwealth country never to make a treaty with its indigenous peoples. Why has it proven so difficult? Kathy Marks looks at the vast challenges in Victoria alone - a state that is working towards a national first.

"Land rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples refers to the ongoing struggle to gain legal and moral recognition of ownership of lands and waters they called home prior to colonisation of Australia in 1788. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ laws and customs and ways of knowing and being in the world are intimately connected to the land and waters. Connection to land is therefore essential to the continued cultural survival of Indigenous Australians as well as their economic and social development." (AIATSIS, n.d.)

The article reports that three years have passed since the expert panel set up by the former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard government made proposed amendment to provide recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It reveals that the amendments would recognise continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginals and provide them place in the constitution.

The article discusses the lack of priority for social issues faced by Aboriginal people in Australia during elections. It mentions the author's views on securing properly funded government initiatives for the community before undertaking amendments to the constitution over the rights of Aboriginal people. Topics discussed include the government policies that undermined Aboriginal rights, and political promises made to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Aboriginal affairs has always been a sore point in Australia. Ever since the first Governor attempted to put in place the Colonial Office's instructions to treat the inhabitants with 'amity and kindness' the exercise has been fraught. There is a text-book version of the changing policy landscape and rote school lessons on the gradual acquisition of Aboriginal rights and freedoms. These go some way to conveying the contested ground, political conflict and personal anguish on which this history was built. Yet, they give the impression of evolution and progress. At the same time, the history wars magnified the fractiousness without carving a pathway through. In this paper I recover an important part of the history, which often goes unremarked. I reflect on the role of humanitarian intervention in this politics. Not only has it been critical to the policy landscape - for good and ill - but there are also historical connections and lineages between then and now, which deserve attention. Closely aligned to a history of human rights in Australia, recovering this history seems more pertinent than ever.

There has been limited sustained analysis of the lived reality of citizenship amongst Indigenous Australians exempted from protectionist legislation last century. Through examining the diaries of Daisy Smith, this paper explores how her household, exempted from such legislation in Queensland, experienced citizenship during the 1940s and early 1950s. The diaries show that Daisy Smith and her family exercised civil, political and social rights of citizenship, enjoyed meaningful lives and had a sense of belonging to the Australian nation. However, they also show that Daisy Smith constantly worked hard to uphold the conditions of exemption and protect her family's exempted Aboriginal status. These conditions required the Smith family to deny and relinquish all connection with their Indigenous heritage and embrace the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture or risk losing exemption. In this way, their inclusion in the Australian nation and enjoyment of citizenship rights were conditional upon them being manifestly normative Anglo-Celtic citizens. Their experience of citizenship was by its nature restrictive and coercive.