Indigenous Representation in Australian Society

This article explores the issue of inadequate political and social representation of Indigenous people in Australia and how it has contributed to their marginalization in society. The author analyzes the historical context of discriminatory policies and administrative practices that have excluded Indigenous people from citizenship rights, entitlements, and social welfare measures. The article concludes that significant efforts must be made on the part of the Australian administration to make the Indigenous people believe that they form an intrinsic part of Australian social and political life.

Running Head: INDIGENOUS REPRESENTATION IN AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY
Indigenous Representation in Australian Society
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people in Australia is one
that has been traditionally characterized by pain, antagonism, hostility, inequality and
resistance. Indigenous people in Australia do not feel adequately represented. They are more
often than not, treated as inferior to their white counterparts and their identity in Australian
society is that of a marginalized group of people. Based on the lectures I have attended in
class, I will analyze how the issue of inadequate political and social representation has
contributed to Australian aboriginal identity being so incongruous with white Australian
social identity until now. I conclude that significant efforts must be made on the part of the
Australian administration to make the indigenous people believe that they form an intrinsic
part of Australian social and political life.
Indigenous people in Australia were systematically excluded from citizenship rights
as well as entitlements from as early as the 1900’s right up to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s
through an extensive range of administrative practices and legislative provisions. Even the
passing of the landmark Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1948 which created legal status
for Australian citizens for the very first time, I believe, had little or no impact on the effect of
practices and legislations that discriminated against the aborigines. The constitutional
changes that were brought about by the 1967 referendum gave the Australian Commonwealth
the power to not only to create laws for the advantage of indigenous Australians but also for
their disadvantage (Ozdowski 2013). It was only after Australia signed the UN Convention
on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that a Racial Discrimination Act was introduced
by the Australian Federation in the year 1975 (Short 2016). Aborigines had to fight inequality
in wages until1965, when a process began, to introduce equal pay for the Australian
aboriginal workers under the Queensland Station Hand’s Award, Cattle Station Industry
Award in the Northern Territory and the Pastoral Industry Award offered by the Federal
government. It was declared under these awards that aborigines would be paid the exact same

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rates as those paid to all non-aboriginal workers. It took yet another three years until 1968,
for several discriminatory ordinances and awards to be amended thus bringing about an end
to the struggle for equal pay (Keen 2013).
Although male aborigines in Australia enjoyed the right to vote in colonial times, the
Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 specifically denied voting rights for aboriginal natives
of the country (Samson 2015). This was hugely ironical in my opinion, given the fact that the
act was meant to extend federal franchise not only to women but to the aborigines as well.
Aborigines lost the right to vote accordingly, in the years between 1920 and 1930 and even
those who had enrolled in the Australian electoral process prior to 1902 had their right to vote
snatched from them. This, I believe was a gross violation of the aborigine’s right to
representation in Australian politics, and it was not until the passage of the Commonwealth
Electoral Act of 1962 that aborigines fully won back their right to vote (Galligan and Morton
2017).
Social security and social welfare measures have also been frequently denied to the
aboriginal people of Australia in the course of the country’s history. The aborigines in
Australia were not considered to be people who were eligible for benefits that were made
available under the renowned Commonwealth Widows Pensions Act that was passed in 1942.
They were entitled only to receive such benefits as were provided under legislations like the
Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act, which was introduced in 1944 (Murphy 2013).
They could enjoy rights under this act only if the Australian Director General of Social
Services was convinced that based upon the character of the applicant as well as the standard
of his or her development and intelligence, that it was reasonable for him or her to be entitled
to or eligible for such rights. Although many of these discriminatory provisions and
exclusions were repealed under the Social Services Amendment Act of 1978, it produced a

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sense of inferiority among the aboriginal people, making it clear to them that they were not
entitled to the same rights and benefits as their white superior counterparts.
Thus, aborigines in Australia have always been at the receiving end of discriminatory
policies and administrative practices, something that in my view has contributed significantly
to them feeling marginalized and excluded in Australian society today. The fact that they are
numerically inferior to white Australians and are a colored race on top of that, do little to
make them feel accepted by the white Australian majority. A substantive number of
governmental measures that guarantee sufficient representation for the indigenous population
in Australian political and social life must always be in place, in addition to a more
welcoming mindset towards them on the part of the white Australian population. Only then,
in my view, can the indigenous people at least relate or identify in some ways with the
Australian mainstream.

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References
Galligan, B. and Morton, F.T., 2017. Australian exceptionalism: Rights protection without a
bill of rights. In Protecting Rights Without a Bill of Rights (pp. 27-50). Routledge.
Keen, I., 2013. Indigenous participation in Australian economies: historical and
anthropological perspectives (p. 195). ANU Press
Murphy, J., 2013. Conditional inclusion: Aborigines and welfare rights in Australia, 1900–
47. Australian Historical Studies, 44(2), pp.206-226.
Ozdowski, S., 2013. Australian multiculturalism. The roots of its success. Promoting changes
in times of transition and crisis: Reflections on human rights education. Krakow: Ksiegarnia
Akademicka. Retrieved from: http://www. akademicka. pl.
Samson, J., 2015. Race and empire. Routledge.
Short, D., 2016. Reconciliation and colonial power: Indigenous rights in Australia.
Routledge.