What Marcia Langton could learn from the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal rights

The fact that Yes cause campaigner Marcia Langton branded the No cause as ‘racist’ has highlighted the stark difference from the 1967 referendum, which passed with 91 percent support.

At the time, Faith Bandler was the leading campaigner for the Yes cause to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and to lift the bans on them being counted in the Census.

This May 1967 referendum was passed overwhelmingly with 90.77 percent support, the strongest ever support for a constitutional change since Federation in 1901.

This victory demonstrated the need for bipartisan support, which the upcoming Voice referendum lacks, along with a unifying message of equality.

Only eight of the 44 referendums to change the Constitution have been passed since the first vote in 1906, and multiple opinion polls have shown that a majority of voters were against Voting Labor in Parliament before the October 14 referendum.

Ms Bandler, a descendant of South Sea Islanders who died in February 2015 aged 96, advocated change in 1967 by uniting Australians and advocating for equal treatment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

At the time, she was holding a sign that read, “Count us together, make us one people.”

Her daughter Lilon Bandler, now an associate professor at the University of Melbourne, remembers standing next to her mother with that sign in Sydney’s Martin Place as a girl in the 1960s.

“The 1967 referendum had that huge majority, which is incredibly unusual in Australian referendums, that reflected that time,” she said in an Oxfam video in 2013.

“It had to reflect what our Australian community cared about and that was the removal of discriminatory clauses.”

Lilon Bandler said her mother made the Yes case relevant to ordinary Australians.

“It was about raising awareness and taking the time to explain to people why this is important, why you should care about it, what it means to you and why you should care about this in the first place,” she said .

‘Before Faith, she talked to everyone: she talked to people on the street, people on the train, she talked to prime ministers, but she also did the day-to-day work of talking to anyone who would listen to her.

“If you’re not having conversations about whatever change you want to bring up, then you’re not going to have the groundswell that supports change.”

The successful referendum was the culmination of years of campaigning that began in 1957.

“Understanding how long a campaign should last and how it should be grassroots and day-to-day comes when you think about my mother’s work on that 1967 referendum, and it was years and years before anyone had ever heard the word referendum . said Lilon Bandler.

Faith Bandler’s unifying advocacy was in stark contrast to Professor Langton, who told a forum in Bunbury, Western Australia, this month that the No campaign was racist.

“Every time the No case puts forward their arguments, when you start to pick it apart you end up with basic racism – I’m sorry to say that’s where it ends up – or sheer stupidity,” she said.

Professor Langton later retracted that comment, suggesting the No campaign was using racist tactics, and denying she had suggested No voters were racist.

“I’m not a racist, and I don’t believe the majority of Australians are racist. “I do believe the No campaigners are using racist tactics,” she said.

But in July last year, the co-author of the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process, questioned whether critics of the Voice, including within the Opposition Liberal Party, “can read and write” during an interview with Radio National broadcaster Patricia Karvelas.

“I view this demand for more details as just creating mischief and confusion,” she said.

“I wonder if some of them can write and read, but still.”

Faith Bandler, co-founder of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, had quietly lobbied Liberal Prime Ministers Robert Menzies and Harold Holt for a referendum to achieve racial equality when the White Australia policy was still law.

Ten years after that referendum, Ms Bandler recalled how she and fellow activist Kath Walker, later known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, sat down with Sir Robert, who offered them a drink.

“There were six of us, and we hit him for about an hour or two, and then it was over and he said, ‘Come have a drink,'” she told This Is Your Life host Roger Climpson in 1978.

‘And Kath said, ‘Mr Prime Minister, you could get jail time if you buy me a drink where I come from.’

‘And he got very indignant and remembered saying, “I’m the boss here”, and so Kath had a drink and we got the referendum.’