The exclusion of Aborigines from citizenship was by no means a constitutionally ordained necessity, but rather a deliberate product of Commonwealth and State government legislation and administration. The exclusionary category of ‘aboriginal native’ was central to the institutional definition and development of Australian citizenship, and was created by the legislature, defended to a certain extent by the judiciary, and most importantly, developed, nurtured and administered by the bureaucracy for over sixty years. Far from being a product of a rigid constitution, conceived and endorsed by nineteenth-century colonial racists, the long exclusion of Aboriginal Australians from Australian citizenship was implemented and routinely administered by Australian governments and bureaucracy until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

This chapter covers virtually the first half-century of Australian government, from the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901 to the 1948 Nationality and Citizenship Act, which recognised Australian citizenship in law for the first time. For purposes of exposition, the period is divided roughly into two halves, separated by a brief transitional period in the early to mid-1920s. The first period covers the early decades of federation, 1901 to 1920, when the Commonwealth's legislative and administrative regime, or regimes, were set in place and the first attempts made to define ‘aboriginal native’. The transitional phase, from 1920 to 1926, was typified by confusion and compromise as the Commonwealth came to terms with the implications of its citizenship activity and modified its approach under both domestic and international political pressures.