As the above advice of Attorney-General Garfield Barwick made clear, the 1948 citizenship legislation gave no new citizenship rights to Aborigines. The legislation theoretically made Aborigines Australian citizens, but they were citizens who had no right to vote in Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory or federally, and their access to social security was extremely limited. Even if the new legislation had given new rights to Aborigines, Australia's federal system of government still rendered a person's citizenship status dependent upon the rights accorded to him or her at State level. Barwick himself at one stage made reference to there being ‘nine different “citizenships” in Australia’. The power to determine a person's citizenship status did not rest with the Commonwealth alone.

So when political support was given to the idea that Aborigines should in a meaningful sense become Australian citizens, this in practice required changes on a number of fronts.