The proposed referendum to change the Australian Constitution to recognize that aborigines settled in Australia first and acknowledging the need to secure the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, is inherently flawed.

Suggesting that aborigines are more in need of advancement than other people seems to imply that they are not as advanced as everyone else. If section 51 (xxvi) now provides for race specific laws, it seems to be illogical to remove one race law and replace it with another one.

Any change to the Constitution raises the question of what purpose should be served by a Constitution. If the prevailing view is that anything in the Constitution which does not represent current thinking should be removed, then you would I suppose need to remove everything contrary to the present social ideas.

State governments and some of their employees don't think that jury trials are necessary or good. The Constitution (in relation to indictable Commonwealth crimes) thinks otherwise. Change that? Constitutions are meant to be durable documents which change far less frequently than Acts of Parliament. The people who created Australia thought that their ideas were valid. Now we, who follow them, think our views are the only valid ones.

An American lawyer once suggested that the lack of individual rights enshrined in the Australian Constitution was a result of original fears by the creators of the Constitution that such laws might be used to give non whites equal rights with whites. Others have asserted that Australia was created because of fears of invasion and the need to have a single defence force to protect the colonies. The Constitution is badly in need of some clearly defined personal rights, but probably doesn't need tinkering of the type suggested.