What do people think the 1967 referendum was about? Among other things, it deleted these words from Section 51:

(xxvi) The people of any race, 𝚘̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚛̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚊̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚊̶𝚋̶𝚘̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚐̶𝚒̶𝚗̶𝚊̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚛̶𝚊̶𝚌̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚊̶𝚗̶𝚢̶ ̶𝚂̶𝚝̶𝚊̶𝚝̶𝚎̶, ...

Section 51, recall, is the bit that gives the federal government most of its powers: to levee taxes, run a defence force, build lighthouses...

"The Parliament shall ... have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: ..."

Including:

"(ix) quarantine;"

So why would you delete "other than the aboriginal race in any State" from part 51(xxvi), seventeen sub-sections further down?

Reason is that Section 51 does not just give the federal government power to "make laws"; it also gives it the power to override state laws in the listed areas of responsibility. That's because *commonwealth law overrides state law* (to the extent they conflict)...

That's in this section:

"109. When a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth, the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid."

When the 1967 referendum made this change, it gave the Commonwealth power to override state 'aboriginal protection' laws

"(xxvi) the people of any race, 𝚘̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚛̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚊̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚊̶𝚋̶𝚘̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚐̶𝚒̶𝚗̶𝚊̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚛̶𝚊̶𝚌̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚊̶𝚗̶𝚢̶ ̶𝚂̶𝚝̶𝚊̶𝚝̶𝚎̶..."

...State laws that had, for example, allowed Western Australia to put traditional Aboriginal men in neck chains and march them off to a death camp on Rottnest Island. That's what the 1967 referendum was about.

https://www.oric.gov.au/publications/spotlight/waking-wadjemup

So please do not try to tell us that the Commonwealth does not have power over quarantine, including over how the states run quarantine. I'm old enough to remember.

Story does not end there. Whilst, in 1967, by huge majority, Australians gave the Commonwealth the power to override racist state 'aboriginal protection' legislation*, it did not immediately exercise that.

(*Leaving its own power to make racist laws intact ...unfortunately.)

...Not until the Whitlam government's Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. In the meantime, Bjelke-Petersen continued to incarcerate Aboriginal people in a gulag of concentration camps, like Palm Island. You can read about it in the 1997 enquiry report:

https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997

YIK, the story isn't quite that simple. Queensland had already repealed the worst of its racist legislation, in 1965, under pressure from Menzies. But the Whitlam government still needed its 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Queensland Discriminatory Laws) Act 1975'...

"An Act to make Provision with respect to the Peoples of the Aboriginal race of Australia, and the race to which Torres Strait Islanders belong, for the purpose of preventing Discrimination in certain respects against those Peoples under laws of Queensland..."

What a time it was.