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Australia’s referenda history—were in favour of the proposed constitutional
amendments. …the outcome was a clear sign of changing attitudes, and of
Australia’s concern with international opinion…As far as the Northern Territory was
concerned, the Federal Government had been responsible for Aboriginal Welfare for
56 years. (Stewart, 1986, pp. 200-201)
Generally textbooks during this and other eras do not openly criticize government actions or
policies, with negative consequences not attributed to government policies (see, for example,
the narratives of the Tasmanian Frontier Conflicts in Chapter 6: Black Movement in Australia
1964-1975). Instead, they are mitigated through a discourse of inevitability. Here though, the
case study takes a clear swipe at the conservative government of the day by highlighting that
the 1967 Referendum should not have played any part in the government decision not to
intervene quickly in the issue, as land rights in the Northern Territory were already within the
legislative control of the Commonwealth government. It was, the textbook asserts, the public
demand for Indigenous Australians to be treated with greater equity that motivated the
government to adopt a more proactive approach (see, for example, Source 7.44).
Source 7.44. 1967 Referendum extract from Case studies in Australian history
(Stewart, 1986, p. 201).
The case study, whilst containing a number of criticisms of the then conservative Liberal
Party government, does not then offer the same critique of Labor’s Gough Whitlam in
relation to land rights once he became Prime Minister, demonstrating party politicking in this
textbook. At the time of the 1967 Referendum, Whitlam was Leader of the Opposition, and is
reported as stating the following pessimistic statement: “…the referendum result indicated, as
Gough Whitlam, then leader of the Labor Opposition had it: ‘a change of bookkeeping, not of
policy’ ” (Stewart, 1986, pp. 200-201). Yet when Whitlam became Prime Minister he
reneged on his promise to grant land rights to all Indigenous Australians across all States and
Territories, instead creating a very limited opportunity for land rights claims to be made by
Territory Indigenous peoples only. By omitting this information, students are not presented
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