The Fair Go: Winning the 1967 Referendum
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The Fair Go tells the story of the 10 year campaign to change Australia’s constitution waged by FCAATSI — the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The aim was to explore the interaction of institutional processes and grass-roots participation. In 2007 The Fair Go was ‘re-hung’ for the exhibition installation 'Old Ways, New Ways: The Human Story Shining the Light on Referendum Victory' and was on view at the Queensland Museum from 27/05/07- 16/05/08. Research Significance: While The Fair Go reaffirms the understanding that acceptance of the technical changes to the nation’s Constitution were fundamentally about recognising Indigenous civil rights, there is a tension in the film reflected, for example, when the Aboriginal leader and spokesperson Charles Perkins says that the referendum was the only time ‘the fair go’ meant something in Australia. This registers the distance between the hopes associated with the marking of a new era in Indigenous history and policy and the continued ‘struggle for socio-economic advancement and equality’ (Pearson 2007: pp. 272, 282). No immediate changes in laws and policies followed the referendum and the ‘success story’ recounted in The Fair Go is designed to make an ethical appeal to maintain in the public domain what Pearson (p. 282) sees as necessary ideals capable of securing change only ‘through close attention to reality’. Pearson, N. ‘White Guilt Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical Centre’ in D.Modjeska (ed.) The Best Australian Essays 2007 Melbourne: Black Inc.
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In Australia in 1967 members of the oldest civilisation in the world were not counted as citizens in their own land; but the times were a-changin’. Since Federation, Section 127 of the Australian Constitution had expressly denied indigenous Australians the right to be counted in a national census and Section 51(26) had given State Governments not the Commonwealth the power to make laws concerning them. But on May 27,1967 something unprecedented in Australian history happened. A referendum to change our constitution won a 90.77% ‘Yes’ vote. Narrated by AFI Award winner Deborah Mailman, The Fair Go: Winning the 1967 Referendum is a 57- minute oral history interview and archival compilation documentary analysing the 10year campaign to change Australia’s constitution waged by FCAATSI — the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. (A brief summary of the Project) In 2007 The Fair Go: Winning the 1967 Referendum a 57 minute broadcast documentary was ‘re-hung’ for the exhibition installation 'Old Ways, New Ways: The Human Story Shining the Light on Referendum Victory' and was on view at the Queensland Museum from 27/05/07- 16/05/08. The documentary, originally broadcast on ABC TV Inside Story 2/11/99, documents the ultimately successful campaign for the 1967 Referendum. Liaison with a range of participants in the campaign for the ‘Yes’ vote yielded new interviews, which were combined with footage of previous interviews and testimony to form an oral history of the campaign and the social exclusions motivating it. Archival materials on the political processes and the logistics of the campaign were incorporated to create a story with a cautiously positive outcome.
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Australian History (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History)
Film and Television
Constitutional Law