Voting Right: Government Policy on Abirigin and Community Participation in Australia

Since the arrival of the British to Australia, there have been various forms of discrimination against Aboriginal people. This discrimination occurs in various aspects, such as social discrimination, politics, or economics. However, after the Australian federalization in 1901, the federal government began gradually implementing policies against Aboriginal people. One of the policies issued by the Government is giving federal voting rights to Aboriginal people in 1962. Nevertheless, based on existing statistics, it is known that the participation of Aboriginal people is still quite low in the election that held by the government until now. Therefore, the study attempts to examine the causes of the lack of participation of Aboriginal in voting rights in Australia. To help the analysis, this study covers various problems that arise from the beginning of the application of the right of vote until now. The various data that have been found often reveal that the problem that caused the low level of Aboriginal patronage is a socio-cultural complexity that can not be seen only by looking at the present context, but rather a combination of past and present phenomena. From the results of research using historical method, it is known that the factors of the past, namely discrimination in various aspects they received, the low level of education, cultural problems and geographical factors of Australia itself is the cause of low participation of Aboriginal people in granting the right to vote either at state level or federal government level.