What was the Impact of federation on Aboriginal Australians?

The impact of federation on Aboriginal Australians was overwhelmingly negative, consolidating and extending the systems of dispossession, exclusion, and control that had operated in the colonies and creating new federal discrimination at the level of the constitution itself. Federation in 1901 entrenched Aboriginal exclusion from Australian citizenship in specific ways that took most of the twentieth century to address.

Several specific constitutional provisions excluded Aboriginal people from the new Commonwealth. Section 127 of the original Constitution said that 'in reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted', specifically excluding Aboriginal Australians from the census. Section 51(xxvi) of the original Constitution gave the Commonwealth Parliament power to make laws for 'the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws', excluding Aboriginal people from federal lawmaking. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 denied the federal vote to 'aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Islands of the Pacific' (except New Zealand).

Federation also coordinated and extended state-level Aboriginal policies. The various state Aborigines Protection Acts (in NSW from 1909, in Victoria from 1869, in Queensland from 1897, and in other states from various dates) operated alongside the federal exclusion. The 1937 Aboriginal Welfare Conference of Commonwealth and State authorities adopted assimilation as the national policy framework, with the Stolen Generations removal practices operating across the country from 1910 to 1970.

The 1967 referendum was the decisive change. Carried with 90.77 per cent Yes (the highest Yes vote of any Australian referendum), it removed section 127 (so Aboriginal people were counted in the census) and amended section 51(xxvi) (so the federal Parliament could make laws specifically for Aboriginal people). The referendum did not give Aboriginal people the federal vote (which had come in stages from 1949 to 1962) or grant any specific rights, but symbolically and practically it ended the constitutional exclusion. Subsequent reforms including the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, the Mabo decision of 1992, the Native Title Act 1993, the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, the 2008 National Apology, and the 2023 Voice referendum (defeated nationally) have continued the work of addressing federation's legacy. Aboriginal Australians today are fully recognised citizens and counted in the census, but the gaps in life expectancy, education, employment, and incarceration tracked through the Closing the Gap framework demonstrate the continuing consequences of federation's exclusions.