Perspective: A High Court judgment this week is really important, but has been vastly overlooked in the flurry of the week's media.
For years the political class has been debating whether to grant constitutional recognition of the unique place of Indigenous Australians. There was even a campaign – "Recognise". This week the High Court just did it.
The Morrison government said that Aboriginality was irrelevant. It ordered that two men, claiming to be Aboriginal but born overseas and lacking Australian citizenship, be deported for failing to meet the test of good character. Both were convicted criminals. How so? "I thought, there goes the Voice to Parliament, there goes anything in the form of constitutional recognition through a referendum."
He emphasises that Aboriginal sovereignty was never ceded. Other British offspring, such as the US and NZ, have always recognised two distinct groups by striking early treaties between the colonists and the Indigenous peoples. However flawed those treaties, they established clarity of at least some sovereign rights for their first peoples.
And some of the detail and composition of the judgment troubles Twomey and Brennan alike. Twomey points out that the four judges in the majority each wrote a separate judgment: "They got to the same place but through quite different ways. We have no idea what is going to pulled out of this in future cases."
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