The most striking thing about the no campaign’s successful arguments is that they would have defeated the referendums that gave us federation and our constitution. We would still be six squabbling British colonies today if those arguments prevailed in the past. Let’s look at them in turn.
One of the arguments with the greatest cut-through was that we are all equal under the constitution and that no one can be given “special rights” or treated differently. A quick reading of the constitution would show that this is untrue. As former the chief justice Sir Gerard Brennan pointed out in the stolen generations case, the race power and the aliens power in the constitution permit inequality and “destroy the argument that all laws of the commonwealth must accord substantive equality to all people irrespective of race”.
