The passage 50 years ago of the Racial Discrimination Act, Australia’s first substantial piece of human rights legislation, laid the basis for the recognition of native title in the common law in the 1990s.
But for Whitlam’s use of the external affairs power, there would have been no Racial Discrimination Act and without this Act, the Mabo judgment of 1992 would have been impossible. The RDA thus remains, at 51, one of the most consequential legislative achievements of the Whitlam Government.
The Racial Discrimination Act at 50. By David Lee, Pearls & Irritations