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Period: to
1902
The Senate voted to let Aborigines vote but the House of Representatives defeated them. Section 41 said that anyone with a State vote must be allowed a Commonwealth vote. -
Period: to
1902
The Commonwealth did enfranchise all women so they did not need section 41. But that section did seem to guarantee that, except in Queensland and Western Australia, Aborigines would be able to vote for the Commonwealth because of their State rights. -
Period: to
1902
So no new Aboriginal voters could ever be enrolled and, in due course, the existing ones would die out. -
Period: to
Women and Aboriginal Rights
The 1902 Franchise Act gave women a Commonwealth vote but Aborigines and other 'coloured' people were excluded unless entitled under section 41 of the Constitution. But did it mean that? The first Solicitor-General, Sir Robert Garran, interpreted it to give Commonwealth rights only to people who were already State voters in 1902. -
Period: to
1920
The joint Commonwealth/State electoral rolls adopted in the 1920s give some idea of the number of Aborigines who voted for their State parliaments but were barred by the Commonwealth. The symbol 'o' by a name meant 'not entitled to vote for the Commonwealth' and almost always indicated an Aborigine. -
Period: to
1924
Garran's interpretation of section 41 was first challenged in 1924, not by an Aborigine but by an Indian who had recently been accepted to vote by Victoria but rejected by the Commonwealth. He went to court and won. The magistrate ruled that section 41 meant that people who acquired State votes at any date were entitled to a Commonwealth vote. -
Period: to
1924
Some of the Commonwealth officials got even tougher. They came to believe that no Aborigines had Commonwealth voting rights. Besides refusing new enrolments they began, illegally, to take away the rights of people who had been enrolled since the first election in 1901. -
Period: to
1940
But not much was done to publicise the change and most Aborigines, told for so long that they couldn't vote, continued to believe it. -
Period: to
1940
It was not until the 1940s that anyone began to battle for Aborigines' political rights. Various lobby groups took up their cause and in 1949 the Chifley Labor government passed an Act to confirm that all those who could vote in their States could vote for the Commonwealth. The symbol 'o' disappeared from the electoral rolls. -
Period: to
1960
In the 1960s moral outrage at the way countries like South Africa and the United States treated their black populations stirred Australians to look at their own behaviour. Many changes in Aboriginal rights and treatment followed, including at long last full voting rights. -
Period: to
1962
The Menzies Liberal and Country Party government gave the Commonwealth vote to all Aborigines in 1962. Western Australia gave them State votes in the same year. Queensland followed in 1965. With that, all Aborigines had full and equal rights. In 1971 the Liberal Party nominated Neville Bonner to fill a vacant seat in the Senate. He was the first Aborigine to sit in any Australian Parliament.