Faith Bandler  -  the feminist, social activist and Aboriginal rights campaigner who died aged 96 this month - was honoured with a state funeral on Tuesday, but officialdom did not always take such a benign view of her activities.

Dr Anne Summers told mourners at Sydney University's Great Hall that archived ASIO files reveal the domestic security agency kept Ms Bandler under surveillance for more than 30 years,  right up until the mid-70's.

Initially perplexed as to whether she was of Aboriginal, Polynesian or "Negro" descent, the agency reached the conclusion, in 1952, that Ms Bandler was "not a full-blooded white" and that the "colour of her skin caused her to swing towards the peace movement."

In fact, as Dr Summers pointed out, the lifelong activist was  "the daughter of a slave", and in later life she "was married to a Holocaust survivor."

Born in 1918 on the north NSW coast, Ms Bandler was the child of Wacvie Mussingkon, who'd been taken as a boy from a village in Vanuatu  as part of the notorious "blackbirding" raids which brought cheap labour from the Pacific islands to Queensland sugar farms.

Her father eventually broke free from servitude, becoming a lay pastor and marrying Faith's mother, Ida, a woman of Indian-Scottish descent.

Growing up during the Depression, Ms Bandler witnessed the terrible economic devastation of that time.  It deeply shaped her politics, as did her father's and family's experiences of racial discrimination.

During the Second World War, she and one of her sisters joined the Australian Women's Land Army, where she noted the lack of equal pay for women, and the even lower pay rates for those of Aboriginal descent.

She became a passionate campaigner for peace  and racial equality, her crowning achievement being  the 10-year campaign she waged for the inclusion of Aboriginal Australians in the national census, and for Canberra to gain the right to legislate for indigenous people.

That campaign produced the historic "yes" vote in the 1967 referendum which finally led to Aboriginal Australians gaining full recognition as citizens.

NSW deputy Opposition Leader Linda Burney - a protege of Ms Bandler's -  told mourners that the 1967 referendum  "changed the Australian story.... [and] for many of us, gave us a chance to step into the light."

Ms Bandler was "an extraordinary humanitarian" who displayed grace "at all times and in all circumstances",  Ms Burney added.

Former Labor minister John Faulkner, another of her many friends in politics, praised her ability to forge "powerful coalitions .. across boundaries of  race, class, politics and opinion in pursuit of her great aims".

Other speakers recalled that one of her great allies in the early years had been the feminist and labour activist Jessie Street, who taught her how to play the "long game" in campaigns for social justice.

Dr Summers said Ms Bandler's lifelong feminism - she had been an early joiner of the Women's Electoral Lobby in the early 1970's - was also "intrinsic to who she was."

Ms Bandler's daughter, Dr Lilon Bandler , said her mother had never forgotten the lessons of thrift which she'd learnt during the Depression. She'd made her own smart suits, and always saved some cloth for the milliner to run up a matching hat.

She had a lifelong habit of always turning off switches, sometimes with the result that "toast remained bread."

Ms Bandler met her husband Hans, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, in 1950 and they bonded over a love of music and a shared commitment to the cause of peace, Dr Bandler said. Both  had felt that it was  "possible to put the world to rights".

No doubt the over-vigilant ASIO officers of yesteryear would have been astounded to learn that Tuesday's funeral was attended by state governor David Hurley, former governor, Marie Bashir, as well as representatives of the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader and the state government.

Her casket was carried from the university's great hall, at the end of the service,  to the strains of US civil rights hero  Paul Robeson singing "Going Home."