The vote that changed my life

TV journalist and Wiradjuri man Stan Grant on the referendum’s impact.

In 1967, I was a boy of four years old and I was living in a country that didn’t fully recognise who I was.

My ancestors had been on this land for tens of thousands of years. My people had been forced onto the margins of a new world as our land was taken. We were looking for a way to belong here. My grandfather had fought for this country in World War II. We were Australians, but still something else, something different.

In 1967, an overwhelming majority of Australians voted to amend the Constitution, delivering the message that we belonged among them. Now Indigenous people could be counted among other Australians and, like other Australians, could be the subject of Commonwealth law. In no small way, this changed my life.

Programs started providing financial help that made it easier for me to finish school. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs was set up and funding was set aside that allowed my parents to buy our first home. That bit of assistance and my parents’ hard work and sacrifice, allowed me to close the gap. I have pursued a career beyond my wildest dreams. My children have a future unthinkable in their grandparents’ day.

Yet still, we are a nation unfinished. Last year. I had the opportunity to stand in our National Archives, hold our Constitution and feel its pull. In my hands was my country: imperfect, incomplete, indissoluble. Queen Victoria’s fading signature is a faint reminder that it required an act of the British Parliament to make Australia a nation.

The Constitution spoke to me of the enduring strength of Australia’s foundation, it spoke to me too of the ongoing suffering of many Indigenous people. Thirty steps from the Constitution rests a petition by the Larrakia people of the Northern Territory. In one room, the Australian Constitution, in the other, a potent example of the power to change it. This petition gathered more than a thousand signatures from Aboriginal people across Australia and was delivered to the Queen in 1972. It is torn and frayed, but it speaks to me with a power still undiminished:

“The British settlers took our land. No treaties were signed with the tribes. Today we are REFUGEES. Refugees in the country of our ancestors. We live in REFUGEE CAMPS without land, without employment, without justice.”

Indigenous people die at least 10 years younger than other Australians and have the worst health, housing, education outcomes. Too many First Australians languish in prison. That doesn’t tell the story of all of us. Many Aboriginal people are enormously successful. Yet, all Australians can feel sadness that in a country as great as this, we still fail too many of those who have paid the biggest price for our prosperity.

Fifty years after the 1967 referendum, I am proud that our country can still ask: how can we be better? I am proud of everyone who cast that “Yes” vote and changed my life. But I remember the struggle of those who have come before us, the fight for justice, and I know the job is not yet finished.