In the lead up to the 2011 Census on Tuesday 9 August, the ABS has released a fascinating set of notes on the history of Australia’s Census (Reflecting a Nation). The notes reveal that a possible motivation for our founding fathers excluding Aboriginals from the Census was to limit Queensland’s political power:

The Constitution included a clause specifying that ‘aboriginal natives’ were not to be included in official population counts. This may have been partly because some states did not wish Queensland and Western Australia to gain seats in parliament on the strength of their larger Indigenous populations.

Originally Torres Strait Islanders were excluded, too, but as the article notes:

From 1947, Torres Strait Islander people were included in official Australian population totals from the Census, after lobbying by the Queensland State Government. They successfully argued that Torres Strait Islander peoples were not specifically listed for exclusion from population counts in the Constitution, which referred to ‘aboriginal natives’.

It was not until after the 1967 equal rights referendum, however, that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were to be counted in the Census.