Freedom

Rights and Freedoms - Timeline

  • Japan becomes Australia’s largest overseas export market. Senator Dame Annabelle Rankin is the first woman to become a federal minister

  • Federal legislation allows Aboriginal peoples to vote in federal elections under certain conditions

  • ALP government is elected to office on 2 December, Gough Whitlam becomes prime minister

  • Melbourne hosts the Olympic games.

  • Oral contraceptives for women are commercially available

  • Aboriginal people are given the vote in federal elections

  • Referendum to count Aboriginal people in the census and to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for them; referendum has the highest majority ever

  • Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch is published

  • Anti-apartheid demonstrations are held during the South African Springbok rugby tour in Australia.

  • Woodward Royal Commission on Aboriginal land rights recommends limited land rights

  • Federal Racial Discrimination Act comes into operation.

  • Major growth in trade with Asian countries

  • Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

  • Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivers a general national apology to the Stolen Generations.

  • First atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima Japan on 6th August. End of World II