AP News, May 27th, 2007
Australia on Sunday marked 40 years since a historic referendum granted Aborigines citizenship, but celebrations were muted by stark reminders of the hardships facing the continent's original inhabitants.
An overwhelming 91 percent of Australians voted in favor of reforms in the 1967 referendum that gave the federal government the power to make laws covering Aborigines and to count them in the official census for the first time.
Before then, Aborigines' legal rights varied from state to state, with some jurisdictions including them in laws covering wildlife and plants.
Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday that many of the improvements in Aborigines' lives that supporters of the referendum had hoped for had not occurred.
"The right of an Aboriginal Australian to live on remote communal land and to speak an indigenous language is no right at all if it is accompanied by grinding poverty, overcrowding, poor health, community violence and isolation from mainstream Australian society," Howard told a function in Canberra to mark the anniversary.
"There has to be an assumption of responsibility by Aboriginal communities as well as an offer of support from the government and the rest of the community," he said.
Howard is unpopular with many Aborigines, and one guest at Sunday's function yelled out at the end of the leader's speech, accusing his government of genocidal policies to widespread applause.
For decades, authorities took many Aboriginal children away from their parents _ often by force _ in a now-discredited attempt to assimilate them into mainstream society.
Members of the so-called "stolen generations" have consistently criticized Howard for refusing to apologize on behalf of the government for the separation policies, and others that have hurt Aborigines since European colonizers arrived in 1788.
A minority of about 400,000 among a population of 21 million, Australia's Aborigines today suffer problems more common to people living in developing countries.
On average, they die almost 20 years earlier than other Australians and suffer much higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse, diabetes and heart disease. Many live in slums in or on the fringes of cities, or in poverty in tiny, remote Outback communities.
Howard's conservative government plans to increase spending on programs for Aborigines to about $2.86 billion a year, but many indigenous leaders accuse him of trampling their hopes for special land rights that could give them an economic share of mining and farming developments.
Aboriginal activist Richard Frankland said true reconciliation would never occur while Howard is leader.
"He is living in the past. We need a more humane government and we need far more humane leaders," Frankland said at a rally in Melbourne.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough on Sunday again ruled out an apology to Aborigines, saying: "It's not what you say, it's what you do."
But he conceded many government policies were still failing indigenous people. In some Aboriginal communities, health standards were worse now than before the referendum four decades ago, he said.
