Indigenous leader’s treaty plea to ‘get runs on the board’

An Indigenous leader has lashed out at the state government’s stalling on treaty and truth-telling, revealing a minister has sat on information from the interim body for more than seven months.

Indigenous leader Mick Gooda lashed out at the state government’s stalling on treaty and truth-telling, revealing the Treaty Minister has sat on information from the interim body for more than seven months.

The prominent First Nations figure lamented the delays to appoint leading roles for the truth-telling and healing inquiry as well as the treaty institute, fearing the process has missed out on a critical opportunity to prove its worth to Queenslanders ahead of the October state election.

Mr Gooda said the body provided information to Treaty Minister Leeanne Enoch in June, insisting the creation of the inquiry in October would have given the process 12 months to get valuable “runs on the board”.

But the state government is yet to significantly advance the process since the landmark Path to Treaty legislation was passed in May, with only an expressions of interest campaign for leaders of the inquiry and institute being launched in late November.

Following the failure of the Voice to Parliament vote, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli withdrew his support for treaty as the process became shrouded in negative sentiment due to the highly charged debate during the referendum.

Mr Gooda said the lingering uncertainty meant it was crucial the state government made appointments “as soon as possible”.

Indigenous leader Mick Gooda.

“The longer the institute and the inquiry’s running before the election … the harder it becomes to dismantle,” the prominent figure said during an address to the Aboriginal National Press Club.

“If the truth-telling and healing inquiry is out there and gathering lots of people and people are supporting it and seeing the benefit of it, it’s going to be pretty hard to abolish it.

“Similarly, if the treaty institute’s out there starting to identify treaty parties, and all of a sudden they started to come up with things that people might want, and even non-Indigenous people might want in that particular treaty area, it’s simply going to be hard to dismantle.”

Mr Gooda said “I don’t want to criticise people” but revealed the body handed over details to support the appointments process in June.

“And here we are, the middle of February, and we still don’t have it,” he said.

“If it was June and we did this in October, we would have had a year of work (done before the election).”

Ms Enoch said the Miles government was committed to the legislated Path to Treaty.

“The Path to Treaty has truth-telling and healing at its very core and commits our state to a path of reconciliation and dedicated effort to closing the gap in life outcomes of First Nations Queenslanders,” she said.

“A robust recruitment process is underway, with expressions of interests for Members of the Inquiry and the Institute closing just last month.”

If truth-telling sessions were held this year, Mr Gooda said it would allow Queenslanders to better understand the process.

He cited the example of relations between Anglo settlers and First Nations people in Woorabinda in Central Queensland as evidence of potentially positive stories that could emerge.

“There’s a family that’s been there for three generations and they insisted on paying Aboriginal stockman the award wage when government was going to punish them for paying over and above what government determined Aboriginal stockman would get,” Mr Gooda said.

“We have got to celebrate those people and we have got to give a signal that this (treaty and truth-telling) could be safe, this could be good.

“But there are some nasty stuff we got to talk about as well.”