Tony Abbott fights the good fight for aborigines’ rights

The status of aborigines in Australia has, to be frank, hardly crossed my radar until now. But that was before I met Tanya Hosch, a representative of the community who’s over here right now campaigning for them to get an honourable mention in the Australian constitution. ‘We just want to be acknowledged in the country’s foundational document,’ she says. ‘It really would make a difference to the way we feel that others see us.’

Australians, it seems, regard their constitution as a bit of a workhorse, clarifying various aspects of life without any of the grander aspirations of the US constitution. Most of them aren’t really aware that aborigines are absent from the constitution in the first place. Tanya is too polite to say baldly that they were there first but given this obvious reality, it seems odd, to say the least, that there’s no mention of them. In New Zealand, by contrast, there is a treaty between Maoris and the rest which allows for the subject to be endlessly debated.