Defending australia's reputation how indigenous Australians won civil rights part one

Abstract

The acquisition of civil rights by Indigenous people is, for a variety of reasons, a surprisingly little understood aspect of recent Australian history. This article, the first of two, examines the background to the legislative changes through which Indigenous people acquired two important civil rights at the Commonwealth level: the vote and access to social security. Two factors, the article argues, were crucial to understanding why these changes came about when they did: the pressure brought to bear on governments by activists within Australia; and the fear generated by a changing international environment which made Australia's continued and flagrant breach of international human rights instruments politically untenable.