Is "unequal treatment" in the past

a reason for preferential treatment now?

I am working on the proposed blog posts about the Voice Referendum. Please give me a bit of time. I want them to explain, not exhort.

Yesterday the former Premier of another state, Peter Gutwein, took issue with me on Twitter and tried to suggest that the reason a Voice was needed now was because, and I quote, "It's a statement of fact that they were denied equal treatment under our electoral laws until the 1980's...why? Answer that honestly and you'll confirm the need for the voice." 

Is this really true? The answer to that is both "yes" and "no". 

First of all we need to recognise that voting occurs in this country on three levels - at local level (councils or shires), at state level, and at federal level. We are one of the most over-governed countries in the world and could be rid of at least one level of government without any great harm occurring.  That also means that state governments had the capacity to make laws about the voting rights of aboriginals. 

In this state aboriginal men had the right to vote from the late 1800's. That extended to all women, including aboriginal women, in 1895. We were the first jurisdiction in the world to do this. It is something to be proud of perhaps. There were other arrangements in other states, some were notably slower than others. 

Then, in May 1962, the "Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962" gave all aboriginal and Torres Strait island people the right to vote. That was the purpose of that act. It gave equal voting rights to everyone in the country. 

So were people, as Peter Gutwein would have it, "denied equal treatment under our electoral laws"?  This is more difficult. What the 1962 Act did not do was make it compulsory for aboriginals to enrol to vote. If they did enrol then they were, like everyone else, required to attend the ballot box. Whether this was a denial of equal treatment is something I believe can, at very least, be debated. In part it will depend on whether you believe that people should be compelled to attend the ballot box. (I use that phrase advisedly as nobody can be compelled to mark the ballot paper in a way that causes it to be a valid vote.) 

It was the "Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Act 1983" which compelled aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people to enrol to vote and thus attend the ballot box. Until that point then their right to vote was absolute from 1962 onward but not compulsory until 1983. 

 Proponents of the "Voice" will use this as an argument to suggest that aboriginal people were denied a voice in the past and that they are somehow still denied a voice today. I wonder however how someone like Mr Gutwein would respond to the fact that my maternal great-grandfather arranged a mass enrolment of all adult aboriginal people on the mission station he was minister of in the very early 1900s? How would he respond to the fact that my paternal great-grandmother ensured that the local aboriginal population along the river were enrolled to vote and actually did vote?

I have no doubt that there were instances, far too many instances, of aboriginal people not voting out of ignorance or apathy but the idea that they were denied a vote or even an equal right to vote until the 1983 Act is surely debatable?