Australian Constitution Speech

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Museum of Australian Democracy's Youth Convention. Recently, the parliament has been debating over how changes to the Constitution will most adequately recognise the previous ownership of Australia by Indigenous peoples. Today, I will be giving you a better understanding of how the colonial experiences in the 18th and 19th centuries, ultimately led to the lack of desire of the British men to include the Aborigines in the Australian Constitution, because recognising them meant acknowledging the original owners of the land. A couple of colonial experiences were how the Aborigines' land was dispossessed as a result of the original Englishmen claiming the land as terra nullius and examples of frontier violence such as the Myall Creek massacre. Coming into effect in 1901, the constitution states the powers and crucial responsibilities in the federal Parliament. Furthermore, the constitution clarifies particular rights that all Australian citizens must follow. The development of this Constitution included a series of referendums, which is the gathering of Australian citizens to vote for a proposed or passed law or bill. No
The Myall Creek Massacre was, in fact, more well-known for what happened to the perpetrators. For the first time in Australian history, seven of the eleven white men were convicted of murder, and consequently, sentenced to death. In one of the accused men's defence statements, it is evident that the white population was completely oblivious to the fact that crime against Indigenous people was illegal. "We were not aware that in killing blacks we were violating the law as it had so frequently been done before," they said. Thus, the Englishmen marginalised the Aborigines in the Australian Constitution because this would acknowledge their violent nature towards the Indigenous