Grant Women to Vote: Laws of Australia
The introduction of the constitution in 1901 had a negative impact on aboriginals, while still having a positive impact on women. The constitution dehumanises aboriginals and gave more rights to white women at the time of its introduction. This attitude has changed over the years, however, and an important part of Australian history is recognized.
South and Western Australian women were able to vote, but most other colonies reject women's right to vote. South Australian women were able to vote in federal. Society believed that women were not able to understand politics or be able to voice their opinions on this matter (used in trivial matters).
Nevertheless, it was not until 1908 that all states allowed women to vote in state elections as the Federal Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act, which allowed women to vote. The Constitution (section 41) states that those who had rights before the constitution should be able to vote in federal elections. Many Indigenous people had the right to vote but were not aware of their rights. It was the state government's duty to have them treated differently in each state twice in the constitution, both in negative ways (sections 41 & 25). It is here that it notes that they were not included in the census because they were classified as flora and fauna before 1967, therefore they did not have the right to vote.
Under Section 14 of the Australian law, native Australians usually had the statutory right to vote in Australian State elections if their government gave them correctly. This meant that all native peoples outside Queensland and Western Australia got the legitimate right to a state. Thus the position of native ex-service to the state was affirmed in 1949 and all native Australians earned the unqualified right to vote at national elections in 1962. Unlike other Australians, However, a vote was not created as mandatory of native people.
Australia was the second nation in the world, after New Zealand in 1893, to grant women to vote. The Commonwealth became the first nation in 1903 in which women were granted the right to vote for parliament at the same time. It was this integration of the right to vote and equal rights that made Australian women the 'most challenged' in the country. As many historians have shown, women questioned the terms of the political citizenship imposed on male colonists in the 1850s after Britain bestowed responsible government the mechanism under which the colonies were granted charge of their domestic affairs by popularly elected parliaments.
The first and a half centuries of British-Aboriginal relations in Australia can be described as a period of dispossession, physical ill-treatment, social chaos, demographic decline, economic injustice, segregation, and cultural destruction. The national citizenship given to the Aboriginal people at the beginning of the British settlement in Australia was all but gone by the end of it, and as if to reinforce the point, the law specifically required Aboriginal children in each nation to be removed from their parents. It was a period of dispossession for the indigenous people from their homelands followed by dispossession of homes, culture, and life as they knew it.
Many of the states – Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia have also changed their Constitutions to officially recognize Australian Aboriginals and/or Torres Strait as the first citizens and nations in their jurisdictions. It is time for the birth certificate of our nation, the Australian Constitution, to be amended to recognize this country's first citizens and their continuing planning
As a result of the points raised above, It is now clear that none of these policies has actually made the condition of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people any better than it was prior to the invasion. Similarly, it is clear that although women's rights have come along way woman in society are still discriminated against and the gap between woman and men are still greater apart.
