Constitutional change needed to stop Australia’s discrimination against Aborigines

There are two provisions that are still considered to have racist connotations: one that allows states to disqualify people of “all persons of any race” from voting at elections; and another that authorizes parliament to make “special laws” for “the people of any race.”

Australian panel to recommend changing constitution to recognize Aborigines, By Jethro Mullen, CNN, January 18, 2012 – A panel of Australian citizens is expected to set the tone Thursday for a planned constitutional referendum to better recognize the indigenous population that inhabited the vast continent long before Europeans settled there.

The diverse group includes Aboriginal leaders, business executives, legal experts and members of the main political parties. It spent the past year crisscrossing Australia to gather opinions in order to provide recommendations to the government.
“At the moment, the Constitution denies that there was a prior presence of Aboriginal people in Australia,” said Mark McKenna, an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney. “They’re pretty much invisible.”…
There are two provisions that are still considered to have racist connotations: one that allows states to disqualify people of “all persons of any race” from voting at elections; and another that authorizes parliament to make “special laws” for “the people of any race.”
The panel is expected to recommend that removal of those two
provisions, a move likely to receive broad political support.
The delicate issue will be how to go about inserting a positive
recognition of indigenous people’s status into the document.
Some commentators and politicians fear that any new provision in the
Constitution that actively asserts indigenous Australians’ rights to
advancement could result in too much power for the courts….
if the proposed changes are too slight, they may disappoint Aboriginal
leaders and other advocates of more significant measures.
“Positive words and symbolic change will not be enough,” Williams said
in the Sydney Morning Herald.
All sides recognize, though, that a lack of bipartisan support will
prevent the referendum from succeeding. …
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/18/world/asia/australia-constitution-panel/index.html