Counting Aboriginals in the national census

Another part of the referendum question covered Section 127 (the “census” issue).

When the Constitution was first agreed to, Section 127 said

In reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.

From time to time various governments or other parties had made estimates of the numbers of Aboriginals in one place or another, but there was no nationwide, inclusive census until the 1967 Referendum result changed Section 127.

The census question was not about seeing if the Aboriginal population was in decline, or growing; in many states numbers were already counted by Protectors.

The underlying intention of the clause, in 1901, was to provide a formula for calculating the distribution of funds to the states, and the apportionment of parliamentary seats to the states, based on the size of a state's population.

The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders suggested

“This clause (in Section 127) made ‘the original Australians’ feel they were ‘a race apart in the land of their birth’ and it insulted them by implying they were not worth counting, indeed the national census enumerated the number of sheep and cattle but not the number of Aboriginal people.”

To be fair, it is difficult to imagine how it would have been possible to conduct an accurate census in 1901, given the nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles of some Aboriginals, and the enormous distances that would need to be covered – at best by horse or camel.

Many Aboriginals were still living as nomads. The last ‘first-contact’ nomads were located in 1964, when a handful of Aboriginals, who were still living a traditional lifestyle, were seen in a rocket test area. They managed to elude whitefellas for quite some time before being coaxed away and out of danger.

The difficulties of counting Aboriginals in 1901 notwithstanding, so many Aboriginal people were on reserves or in missions, or otherwise living in one place, that there is really no excuse for failing to count some Aboriginals in the census.