Constitution

It is a little known fact that our Australian Aboriginal trackers saved the lives of many people, with their unfathomable skills. Our Founding Fathers of Australia were in awe of them.

Anyone who believes their intentions were in bad faith towards them does not know what they are talking about.

Blackbirding

These people have never read the Federation or Constitution Debates and heard the words and understand the intent of our own Founding Fathers.

It was well known to Australia’s Founding Fathers and the Colonialists that the native races throughout the Pacific Ocean were being captured by the Dutch, Portuguese, French and other nations as part of the slave trade. The British Empire had long prohibited this practice throughout the Empire and no native slaves from South Pacific Islands were brought to Australia.

However, that was not binding on other Nations who continued the practice in the Pacific Ocean.

There were some English minor Royals who were gifted large tracts of what later became Northern Queensland. Hoping to become the new “Lords of the Land” as existed in Great Britain, they attempted to bring in dark skinned slaves from the Pacific Islands into Australia to work on sugar cane plantations and other industries in the practice known as “blackbirding”.

Pacific Ocean Slavery 

Many Australians do not understand, this was the reason behind the call for a separation between the Brisbane Colony and separate proposed new self governing Colony in Northern Queensland. The English minor Royals wanted a “sovereign” Northern Queensland Colony to allow the Pacific Island slave trade a route into Australia.

One of the Founding Fathers was thought to have vested interests in this nefarious industry ( John Murtagh Macrossan ) he was widely despised and thwarted repeatedly.

He was no match at all for the brilliant Founding Father Samuel Walter Griffith who stood guard over Queensland and was unanimously supported by all other Founding Fathers.

Blackbirding was more difficult to prevent. It was difficult to tell which of the dark skinned Islanders had been tricked and coerced into signing work “contracts” and the like. The goal of these “privateers” , was to trick and coerce dark skinned people from the Pacific Islands and lure them into Australia as workers.

Their plan was to interbreed these foreign races, so called “aliens” with our Australian Aboriginal women, and effectively breed a race of slaves on Australian soil.

It would have been the beginning of an end to our “unique native people” as a race.

Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the intentions of these evil slave traders.

No one could ever prove that the Australian Aboriginal women were not willing “wives”, and the children would be used as slave labour as had happened in the United States of America.

One Australian People from Federation 

As far as all reliable historical records go, there were few if any Pacific Island slaves successfully brought into Australia. We simply do not know, because if they were brought in as slaves by foreign privateers, they did so without detection in remote parts of the coastline.

That is not to say that the practice of “Blackbirding” did not occur, because there were reliable reports of “privateers” ships being off loaded away from the watchful eye of those at the Colonial ports. The rumours of “Blackbirding” in Colonial Australian times were often not able to be proved or disproved.

Again, this is highly more likely because Australian Colonialists were on alert for any risk of slavery in Australia. Yet faced with an apparently willing worker who made no complaint and as a Pacific Islander presented as a willing immigrant, the issue became substantially more difficult to detect than slavery.

On 31 March 1891 it was in this context during the Constitution Debates our Founding Father Samuel Griffith observed on the question of future immigration :

“. . . the question of black labour . . . insisted upon the necessity of that power being given to the legislature of the Commonwealth of Australia, and not to the legislature of any particular state, because the introduction of an alien race in considerable numbers into any part of the commonwealth is a danger to the whole of the commonwealth, and upon that matter the commonwealth should speak, and the commonwealth alone.”

In a different context, though still showing early signs of a common Australian identity between our Australian Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders and Indigenous (born here) and those who migrated. Our Founding Father Mr. Marmion during the Constitution Debates stated on 1st April 1891:

“We are all either native-born Australians or we have chosen Australia as the land of our adoption, and when we visit other lands we speak of Australia as our home.”