AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND APPREHENDED BIAS: SKIRTING MAGNA CARTA PROTECTIONS?

Abstract

The significance of this paper is in discussion of the wholesale obliteration of religious and other rights among Australian Aboriginal people, constituting a subspecies of continuing genocide. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia states its directive on religion as follows.‘The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.’This constitutional section prohibits the making of laws, as stated, but does not prohibit administrative action imposing religious procedures. Neither does it prohibit official administrative action to restrain the free exercise of religion in Australia.