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The “Flora and Fauna Act” myth is a belief often repeated in public debate that Indigenous Australians were classified as fauna by legislation, specifically under a “Flora and Fauna Act”, and managed as such by the Australian and State Governments, and that the legislation and practice was overturned by a change to the Australian Constitution implemented by the 1967 referendum about Aboriginal affairs.

A fact check conducted by ABC News in 2018 found “Aboriginal people in Australia have never been covered by a flora and fauna act, either under federal or state law”.[1] Law professor Helen Irving has identified the “Flora and Fauna Act” myth as part of a series of myths about the 1967 referendum and the evolution of Aboriginal civil rights in general.[2]

Notable incidents

In 2003, Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Australian House of Representatives, incorrectly claimed in her maiden speech that she had spent the first ten years of her life under the Flora and Fauna Act.[1] Burney’s comments led to the increased proliferation of the “Flora and Fauna Act” myth.[3][4]

In 2018, actress Shareena Clanton claimed that her mother “was not considered a human being until the referendum came through from the Flora and Fauna Act in 1967”.[5] In July 2020, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published an interview with Victor Bartley, a Wiradjuri man, in which he claimed that he had “received a letter back stating I was exempt from national service because I was Indigenous under the National Flora and Fauna Act … to this day I still don’t know if I’m a kangaroo or a flower”.[6]

In 2023, as part of the Indigenous Voice referendum Yes campaign, Adam Goodes stated his mother was part of the Flora and Fauna Act.[7]

Origin

Academic and indigenous rights activist Marcia Langton, in speaking to the ABC, said she first heard the term “Flora and Fauna Act” mentioned by filmmaker Lester Bostock at a council meeting in Canberra in the 1970s. Langton stated that she believed Bostock meant it in a metaphorical sense and she “had no idea that this would grow into the urban myth that it is today”. She went on to say “We were not classified under the ‘flora and fauna act’ but we were treated as animals.”[1]

According to the Western Australian Museum, the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 and similar acts in other states may have encouraged the development of the myth, as they included Aboriginal heritage sites in their purview. Before the creation of separate indigenous affairs departments, some states administered the area through combined departments that also dealt with wildlife. For example, Western Australia had a Department of Aborigines and Fisheries (1909–1920) and the federal government had a Department of the Environment, Aborigines and the Arts (1971–1972).[8]

Alternative interpretations

Some writers have argued that the persistence of the “Flora and Fauna Act” belief reflects broader historical experiences rather than a specific statute. In this view, late-nineteenth-century administrative practice often grouped Aboriginal affairs with areas such as land management, wildlife, and conservation, which may have contributed to later symbolic interpretations of how Aboriginal people were treated by governments.[9]

Parliamentary debates in Victoria during the 1890s illustrate this administrative overlap. For example, an 1892 report in The Argus described legislative discussions concerning Tower Hill, a culturally significant landscape in the Western District, in which issues of conservation, land use, and moral responsibility toward Aboriginal communities were raised in the same context.[10]

Some commentators have suggested that the introduction of the phrase “water for conservation purposes” into Section 100 of the Australian Constitution at the 1898 Melbourne Convention may reflect this broader intellectual environment. They note that several Victorian legislators involved in early conservation efforts also participated in the constitutional debates, and that the term “conservation” in the 1890s carried moral and political connotations related to stewardship of land and water.[11][12]

Within this interpretation, the “Flora and Fauna Act” myth is understood not as a claim about formal legal classification, but as a symbolic expression of historical memory — reflecting both the exclusion of Aboriginal people from political power and the belief that environmental stewardship, particularly water management, could serve as a basis for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.[13]

These perspectives remain contested and are not part of mainstream constitutional scholarship, but they illustrate how the myth may encode broader historical experiences of dispossession, conservation policy, and debates about Aboriginal rights.


See also

Conservation history & Victorian political culture Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. UNSW Press, 2007. Garden, Don. Victoria: A History. Thomas Nelson Australia, 1984. Gaynor, Andrea. Harvest of the Suburbs: An Environmental History of Growing Food in Australian Cities. UWA Press, 2006.

James Dawson, Tower Hill, and Aboriginal advocacy Clark, Ian D. Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1995. Clark, Ian D. The Aboriginal People of the Western District of Victoria, 1800–1900. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1990. Barwick, Diane. “Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835–1904.” Aboriginal History 8 (1984): 100–131.

Constitutional drafting & Section 100 Irving, Helen. To Constitute a Nation: A Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution. Cambridge University Press, 1997. La Nauze, J.A. The Making of the Australian Constitution. Melbourne University Press, 1972. Williams, John. The Australian Constitution: A Documentary History. Melbourne University Press, 2005.

Flora and Fauna Act myth scholarship Attwood, Bain. Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History. Allen & Unwin, 2005. Western Australian Museum. “Dispelling Myths About Aboriginal History.” ABC Fact Check. “Did Aboriginal People Fall Under a Flora and Fauna Act?” AAP FactCheck. “No Evidence of a Flora and Fauna Act.”

Primary source The Argus, 22 July 1892. “A Humorous Kind of Mortgage.” Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173678236

References

  1. ^ a b c “Fact check: Were Indigenous Australians classified under a flora and fauna act until the 1967 referendum?”. ABC News. 12 July 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  2. ^ Irving, Helen (9 June 2015). “Indigenous recognition and constitutional myths”. Constitutional Reform Unit – Sydney Law School. Archived from the original on 17 March 2019. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  3. ^ Gordon, Brian (22 October 2020). “Fact check: Australia never counted Aboriginal people as animals under ‘Flora and Fauna Act’“. USA Today. Retrieved 21 July 2021.
  4. ^ Byrnand, Samuel. (2015). Reconfiguring History: The ‘Flora and Fauna Act’ and other myths of Australian legislation. 10.13140/RG.2.1.4460.2722.
  5. ^ Byrnand, Samuel (22 March 2018). “Shareena Clanton is, like many of us, a victim of the Flora and Fauna Act myth”. National Indigenous Television. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  6. ^ “Vietnam War gave Wiradjuri man Victor Bartley his first experience of life without racism”. ABC Western Plains: Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 19 July 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  7. ^ “Flora and Fauna myth”. ABC News. 2023-08-18. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  8. ^ “Dispelling myths”. Western Australian Museum. 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  9. ^ Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. UNSW Press, 2007.
  10. ^ “A Humorous Kind of Mortgage”. The Argus. 22 July 1892.
  11. ^ Irving, Helen. To Constitute a Nation: A Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  12. ^ Garden, Don. Victoria: A History. Thomas Nelson Australia, 1984.
  13. ^ Attwood, Bain. Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History. Allen & Unwin, 2005.