‘Patently fair’ idea will win: Howard

John Howard backs changing Constitution’s preamble to provide indigenous recognition ‘because it asserts ­fact’.

Former prime minister John Howard in his MLC tower office in Sydney. Picture: Adam Ward

John Howard has backed changing the Constitution’s preamble to provide indigenous recognition “because it asserts an ­indisputable fact” — that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were the first occupants of Australia.

The former prime minister believes the greatest chance of successful constitutional recognition for indigenous people lies in the approach used in the 1967 referendum.

“My sense is that such a proposal would attract strong support at a referendum because it asserts an indisputable fact, just as the referendum question in 1967 put forward a patently fair proposition, namely that ­indigenous people should be counted as Australians in any census,” he told The Weekend Australian.

The federal government hopes to put a recognition proposal to a referendum in May 2017, the 50th anniversary of the 1967 vote. More than 90 per cent of Australians then supported ­allowing the commonwealth to pass laws for Aborigines and to include them in the census.

“As I indicated in 2007, I would support a change to the preamble to the Constitution which recognised that the first occupants of our nation were the Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander peoples,’’ Mr Howard said yesterday. “Until I know the substance of any government proposition, it is difficult to comment further.’’

Mr Howard has shown no ­enthusiasm for alternative recognition models, such as that put forward by lawyer Noel Pearson.

Mr Pearson has called for symbolic recognition for Aborigines in a declaration, outside the Constitution. He has also called for an indigenous advisory and consultative body to give Aborigines a voice in the parliamentary process.

Mr Howard’s entry into the debate comes as conservative opponents of constitutional recognition, including The Australian’s Greg Sheridan and News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt, have praised Warren Mundine for arguing against the Pearson model.

“Warren Mundine has destroyed the chances of a race-based parliament. Praise him,’’ Bolt wrote on Thursday. On the same day, Sheridan wrote that Mundine “has surely ensured’’ the Pearson option is “dead’’ by describing it as “the most radical ever proposed for a referendum, as very dangerous and as entering bizarre territory’’.

Mr Mundine, while opposed to the Pearson plan, backs constitutional recognition. “To me it’s simple,’’ he wrote last year. The Constitution acknowledged the six British colonies that were united to form the Australian nation. “Why not the preceding societies?’’