Leadership and community

• Centenary of suffrage
  • Great Queensland women from our past
  • History
    • Key players
    • Support and opposition
    • Timeline of suffrage
    • What the legislation said
  • Indigenous rights
    • The Act
    • Fighting for rights
  • Resources for schools
• National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Gathering (NATSIWG)
• International Women's Day
• Seminars
  • Community leadership seminar series
  • Indigenous Women's Mentoring Workshops
  • Previous seminars
• Women into local government
  • Resources
• Women on Boards
  • For organisations
  • For women
  • Register of nominees

The Act

"The Act" that denied Indigenous Queenslanders voting rights

Non-Europeans - male or female - were generally barred from having any say in the running of the State in the 1800s.

The Queensland's Elections Act 1885 denied 'aboriginal natives' the vote - unless they were 'freeholders and male'.

The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 entitled the local Protector - usually a police officer - to have a lot of say about the lives of Indigenous people.

The local Protector could determine where they lived, who they married, what work they did, and what pay they received. He could break up families and move them from one end of Queensland to the other.

He also could determine 'degree of aboriginality' according to blood line and lifestyle. A 'half caste' (born of an Aboriginal mother and a father 'other than aboriginal native of Queensland') could enrol to vote. But if that person married an 'aboriginal' woman or spent time with members of his Indigenous community, the right to vote could be revoked.

The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Acts Amendment Act 1934 broadened the definition of 'aboriginal' to include:

• an aboriginal inhabitant of Queensland, an aboriginal native of any other State or any Territory of the Commonwealth resident in Queensland ; or
• a half-caste living with an aboriginal as husband or wife; or
• a half-caste habitually living or associating (otherwise than as husband or wife) with aboriginals; or
• a half-caste who in the opinion of the Minister has not sufficient intelligence to manage his own affairs; or
• a half-caste who in the opinion of the Protector is not of the full age of twenty-one years.

- (Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act's Amendment Act of 1934, Part 11 Section 4 (b), Queensland Parliament, 1934)

This caused many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to be struck off the electoral roll.

It was replaced by the Queensland's Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act 1939 and the Torres Strait Islander Act 1939.