1959-1963 - FCAA and the petitions campaign

By 1959 constitutional change was on the political agenda. In 1959 a Parliamentary Joint Committee report on the review of the Constitution recommended the repeal of S. 127 and in the same year the Australian Labor Party adopted repeal of S. 127 and amendment of S 51(xxvi) as policy. Gordon Bryant and Kim Beazley Snr raised the issue in Parliament.1

After a Select Committee on Voting Rights for Aborigines report in 1961 recommended that Indigenous peoples be able to vote in Commonwealth elections, the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended in 1962 to allow this. Voting for Indigenous Australians was not compulsory. Legislative discrimination was starting to be removed. Indigenous voters in Queensland however, could not vote in state elections until 1965.

FCAATSI Flyer - Public meeting to launch a national petition for a federal referendum deleting two clauses from the Commonwealth Constitution