Aboriginal rights After Federation

Before Federation some Australian states allowed Aborigines to vote. So what POD would get there to be a Federation that includes all the OTL states (thought you can add more :D) to allow Aboriginal people the vote from the start. What effect would this have later on Australia? Would Australia avoid the White Australia policy?

The POD must be after 1850.
 
That first Commonwealth Parliament was elected by State voters but when it met it had to decide who should be entitled to vote for it in future. Three groups attracted debate. Women had votes in some States but not in others, so had Aborigines. And there were some Chinese, Indian and other non-white people who had become permanent residents before the introduction of the White Australia immigration policy.

The debates reflected the racist temper of the times with references to savages, slaves, cannibals, idolaters and Aboriginal 'lubras' and 'gins'. The Senate voted to let Aborigines vote but the House of Representatives defeated them. 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.

Section 41 said that anyone with a State vote must be allowed a Commonwealth vote. South Australia got that clause into the Constitution to ensure that South Australian women would have Commonwealth votes whether or not the Commonwealth Parliament decided to enfranchise all Australian women. 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.

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. So no new Aboriginal voters could ever be enrolled and, in due course, the existing ones would die out. 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.

I guess the easiest way would be to have a more liberal 1st Solicitor-General who rules differently on section 41.
 
Well, the Aboriginal population isn't really big enough to make a massive dent in policy, but to have the POD you're talking about would mean a change in general opinion of the black population at the time of Federation.
 
Well, the Aboriginal population isn't really big enough to make a massive dent in policy, but to have the POD you're talking about would mean a change in general opinion of the black population at the time of Federation.
Who said anything about black people? We're talking about Aborigines.

Edit: Never mind. I looked it up, and found that Aborigines are sometimes referred to as "black" in Australia. I'm American, so I didn't know what you meant. Mea culpa.
 
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I doubt the opinion would change much. Unfortunately, their small size and marginalised status makes them very easy to victimise by successive Australian authorities. Australia still has a very pervasive underlying racist culture.
 
Who said anything about black people? We're talking about Aborigines.

Edit: Never mind. I looked it up, and found that Aborigines are sometimes referred to as "black" in Australia. I'm American, so I didn't know what you meant. Mea culpa.

No problem.

Aboriginal people often refer to themselves as 'blackfellas'. It's not a racist term.

"Hey, you black fellas have some really great musicians" would not be an unexpected thing to be heard in a country music festival. Probably less so these days.

Aboriginal people refer to "black fella law" and "white fella law", not in the sense of Government Laws being applied differently between blacks and whites (even thought it is) but more about their own tribal laws being different to Government laws.
 
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