Faith Bandler - Community Activism

Community Activism

During World War II, Bandler and her sister Kath served in the Australian Women's Land Army, working on fruit farms. Bandler and Indigenous workers received less pay than white workers, and after being discharged in 1945, she started to campaign for equal pay for Indigenous workers. After the war, Bandler moved to the Sydney suburb of Kings Cross. In 1952, she married Hans Bandler, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, Austria and lived in Frenchs Forest. During the war, Hans had been interred in the Nazi labor camps. The couple had a daughter, Lilon, born in 1954, and a fostered Aboriginal Australian son, Peter (Manual Armstrong). Hans died in 2009.

In 1956, Bandler became a full-time activist, becoming involved in the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), which was formed in 1957. During this period, Bandler worked with her mentors Pearl Gibbs and Jessie Street. As general secretary of FCAATSI, Bandler led the campaign for a constitutional referendum to remove discriminatory provisions from the Constitution of Australia. The campaign, which included several massive petitions and hundreds of public meetings arranged by Bandler, resulted in the 1967 referendum being put to the people by the Holt government. The referendum succeeded in all six states, attracting nearly 91 percent support across the country, the highest amount of support for any referendum before or since.{http://www.aec.gov.au/elections/referendums/Referendum_Dates_and_Results.htm}