A Petition's Progress

We might wonder why it took ten years for the referendum campaign to finally achieve its goal.

Paul Hasluck, Minister for the Territories, pointed out to campaigners that Aboriginals "born in Australia are Australian citizens by virtue of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948-58". 
Between the lines of a letter to one of the campaign leaders, he implied that if Aboriginals were at a disadvantage in terms of what they could or could not do, it might be a state law that was the problem.

Prior to this, he had written to another petitioner saying "Most of the practical work which can be done to advance the welfare of [Aboriginals]... has to be done in the States by State Departments... ". 
His view was that state departments of Lands, Health, Agriculture, Child Welfare and so on would be in the best position to help advance Aboriginals. 
If the federal government got involved, they would have to use state departments to deliver services anyway.

The Nexus Question

Another 1967 referendum question – unrelated to Aboriginal issues – asked Australians to alter Section 24 of the constitution, which originally fixed the size of the House of Representatives at twice the size of the Senate. In other words, this question was designed to change the link or nexusbetween the size of the two houses of the Federal Parliament.

It's possible this “nexus” question was the main reason the government finally agreed to a referendum in the first place. It has been suggested the question relating to Aboriginals was something of an afterthought – perhaps in the hope that people voting yes to the Aboriginal rights question would be more likely to vote Yes to the nexus proposal as well.