Making the case for constitutional reform

Abstract

Recent discussions on whether or not to amend the Australian Constitution to ‘recognise’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are important and long overdue for many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Federation in 1901 meant the loss of rights and freedoms for Indigenous Australians when the Constitution was made. Today, even after the changes brought about by the 1967 referendum, Australia is still the only democratic nation in the world with a Constitution with clauses that authorise discrimination on the basis of race (Davis & William 2015). Indeed, sub-section 51 of the Constitution allows the Commonwealth to make laws for the people of any race for whom they deem necessary, and section 25 allows the Commonwealth to disqualify individuals from voting because of their race. These disgraceful aspects of the Constitution have allowed such negative and damaging interferences in Indigenous Communities as the Howard government’s ‘Northern Territory Intervention’. Like Davis, I believe it is unacceptable for Australia as a modern liberal democracy to have a ‘race power’ in the Constitution (Davis 2008, p. 8), and so to eradicate that inequity, there must be a Constitutional amendment as well as a treaty put in place.