Joe Hildebrand: Will Victoria’s Indigenous treaty help those most in need?

Victoria's historic Indigenous treaty has become Australia's first, but Joe Hildebrand is a “tad sceptical” about whether the landmark move will deliver real change.

The Victorian parliament has enacted the first treaty of any Australian state or territory with its Indigenous people.

During the four-year interregnum that was the Biden administration, as US liberal elites crowed that Donald Trump could never get re-elected as president at the same time as trying to put him in jail, a well-placed friend of mine took a different view.

“America needs to get Donald Trump out of its system,” he said.

Not to literally expel him, but to scratch the itch. Trump was burning America up and they needed to lance the boil, give him one last go and see what he could do.

As is usually the case, my friend was right. The US hurtled towards a second Trump presidency with an almost cosmic inevitability. The Right did everything it could to make him president while the Left did the same without even realising it.

And now, whatever the final scorecard of Trump 2.0, nobody will die wondering. Whether he achieves all the miraculous results he and his acolytes promised or is the unmitigated disaster his critics predicted, we will know the results of the experiment.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, a similar experiment is happening in Victoria, whose parliament has just enacted Australia’s first ever treaty with our – or specifically their – Indigenous people. I am, of course, no stranger to this sort of stuff and was a strong supporter of – and active campaigner for – the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

This was intended to be a practical and positive solution to Indigenous disadvantage, a scythe through the red tape of countless government agencies, and a clarion call above the noise of countless competing groups.

The Voice to Parliament was intended to be a practical and positive solution to Indigenous disadvantage. Picture: NewsWire/Andrew Henshaw

But I then watched with horror and despair as the campaign descended from a clear and constructive model for closing the gap into the usual cries of racism and colonial grievance.

This drove mainstream Australians into the No camp literally by the millions. Support for the Voice went from 60 per cent in favour to a final result that left 60 per cent against – with voters in the most ethnically diverse communities the most opposed.

So much for racism.

After the result, many Voice campaigners turned away from the fluttering red flags of their own failings and instead placed the blame entirely on Peter Dutton – a conclusion so lazily predictable that it underscored in crimson why the whole thing went so tits up in the first place.

As the last election shows, beating Peter Dutton is not exactly impossible. All you have to do is not join a virtue-signalling circle jerk with an ever-diminishing circumference.

All of this is a long way of saying that, when it comes to the prospect of success for the treaty in improving the lives of Indigenous Victorians, I am a tad sceptical. For one thing, it is in the wrong place.

First Nations people are horrendously disadvantaged in this country and are literally paying for it with their lives, which are around a decade shorter than non-Indigenous Australians. Few Australians would disagree that this is unacceptable and something must be done. The only real question is what.

If a treaty is the answer to the “what”, then how is it going to fix it and where should it do it?

Hundreds took to streets of Alice Springs to march against domestic violence last December. The five most disadvantaged Indigenous areas are all in the Northern Territory. Picture: Gera Kazakov

Melbourne is, as it was in On the Beach, the last place on Earth.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has produced a wealth of information on the harrowing state of Indigenous disadvantage, much of which is studiously ignored by activists.

This includes the eye-watering rates of domestic violence in Indigenous communities that was highlighted by Marcia Langton, Josephine Cashman and Jacinta Price at the National Press Club almost a decade ago and promptly forgotten. That is 30 times higher than non-Indigenous Australians. Try not to forget that.

A more recent AIHW report revealed the five most disadvantaged Indigenous areas were all in the Northern Territory. By contrast Victoria was the only state in which most Indigenous people lived in the most advantaged areas – almost 52 per cent. The rest of the country had a quarter or less.

Ironically the ACT, the only state or territory which voted in favour of the Voice, had 100 per cent of its minuscule number of Indigenous people living in that most advantaged capital district – a statistic that speaks for itself.

Of course Indigenous people in these areas are still more likely to be worse off than their non-Indigenous neighbours but in Victoria they are at least better off than the rest.

Passing strange then that Victoria should be the first to think a treaty is a solution to Indigenous inequality.

But still, let them have their experiment and see where it leads. And seeing is the key, because the most important thing is that we must all watch with open eyes to discover whether this panacea will do anything to deliver Aboriginal people the true equality they deserve.