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... as Paul Hasluck, Robert Menzies’ long-serving minister for territories, told the state premiers in 1961, the government’s overriding objective was for Aboriginal people to be “members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights, privileges and obligations as other Australians”.Australians expected parliament’s new power to be used to further the process of integration: any “special laws”, Hasluck had explained, were to be “temporary measures” designed to “assist (Aborigines) to make the transition” into Australian society.There was, however, nothing that restricted the amended provision to temporary measures or specified the goal it was to serve. As a result, when prime minister William McMahon suddenly announced on Australia Day 1972 that he was jettisoning the policy of integration.......Quite what that objective was remained entirely unclear; matters were not helped when the Whitlam government dubbed it “self-determination”, as if the outcome being sought for Indigenous Australians resembled the process then under way in Papua New Guinea. What was clear, however, was that the new approach involved a torrent of special measures...All that was sure to make many Australians deeply uncomfortable. After all, if modern Australia has an ideal, it is that of a country that is “one and free”, in which all citizens have – to repeat Hasluck’s words – “the same rights, privileges and obligations”. Moreover, although there are undeniable flaws in our national history, Australians are typically proud of their country, admire its record in widening the circle of citizenship and of inclusion, and resent the relentless rubbishing of its achievements.
... as Paul Hasluck, Robert Menzies’ long-serving minister for territories, told the state premiers in 1961, the government’s overriding objective was for Aboriginal people to be “members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights, privileges and obligations as other Australians”.
Australians expected parliament’s new power to be used to further the process of integration: any “special laws”, Hasluck had explained, were to be “temporary measures” designed to “assist (Aborigines) to make the transition” into Australian society.
There was, however, nothing that restricted the amended provision to temporary measures or specified the goal it was to serve. As a result, when prime minister William McMahon suddenly announced on Australia Day 1972 that he was jettisoning the policy of integration....
...Quite what that objective was remained entirely unclear; matters were not helped when the Whitlam government dubbed it “self-determination”, as if the outcome being sought for Indigenous Australians resembled the process then under way in Papua New Guinea. What was clear, however, was that the new approach involved a torrent of special measures...
All that was sure to make many Australians deeply uncomfortable. After all, if modern Australia has an ideal, it is that of a country that is “one and free”, in which all citizens have – to repeat Hasluck’s words – “the same rights, privileges and obligations”. Moreover, although there are undeniable flaws in our national history, Australians are typically proud of their country, admire its record in widening the circle of citizenship and of inclusion, and resent the relentless rubbishing of its achievements.
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