Treaty call by First Peoples Assembly of Victoria to seek minister’s powers

The organisation tasked with negotiating a statewide treaty for Victoria wants the powers of the state’s First Peoples Minister to be handed to an elected Indigenous representative.

First Peoples Assembly co-chair Rueben Berg. Picture NewsWire / Aaron Francis

The organisation tasked with negotiating a statewide treaty for Victoria wants the powers of the state’s First Peoples Minister to be handed to an elected Indigenous representative and key recommendations from a truth-telling body to be implemented.

First Peoples Assembly of Victoria co-chair Rueben Berg said some of the likely priorities of a treaty would be to ensure decisions impacting Indigenous people will be made by them, to expand the role and responsibility of the assembly to provide advice and hold government to account, to enact Yoorrook Justice Commission recommendations and to celebrate Aboriginal language and culture.

In a keynote speech to the Castan Centre Human Rights law conference, Mr Berg said treaty negotiations would begin in November and he hoped the first agreement would be struck by April.

He flagged that traditional owners will also negotiate local deals and that there was an intention to “have multiple treaties across a significant time period”.

“We think that when there are decisions being made by government that are directly about First Peoples, they shouldn’t be made by an elected group of non-Aboriginal people up in Spring Street. Those decisions should be made by an elected group of First Peoples chosen by their community,” Mr Berg said on Friday.

“We’re looking to see what those decision-making powers are and what is the structure that needs to exist to enable First Peoples to make decisions instead of the government.

“At the moment we do have a Minister for First Peoples (Natalie Hutchins) ... she shouldn’t have that role, all her powers should come across to a future assembly, that’s what we’re striving for.”

Asked by an audience member why the state government had not implemented solutions to barriers faced by First Peoples, Mr Berg said red tape made it “almost impossible”.

“These local communities ... know what the solutions are, know how to achieve it, but can’t disentangle that from the web of government,” he said.

“We see this process of treaty, through the establishment of this future assembly, to be able to short-circuit all of that and say we’ll take on the risk.

“The state’s not willing to truly hand over control because they have responsibilities, they have some burden of risk they have to still manage ... we want to establish the assembly in such a way that absolves the state of that risk. We’re going to take the responsibility for it.”

Mr Berg said the organisation should be able to give direct advice to the government, which could take the form of addressing parliament and speaking to the premier and cabinet.

The Gunditjmara man reflected on the defeat of the voice to parliament referendum and revealed the assembly intentionally kept a low profile after the vote. “After the referendum, we saw, sadly, some of that toxic negativity that was out there. We didn’t want it to find a new home with the treaty process here in Victoria,” he said.

Mr Berg encouraged “allies” to state their support for a treaty when giving acknowledgements to country.

“Post the Premier’s appearance in Yoorrook, we’ve really made a concerted effort to start pumping the awareness again,” he said.

“I’d love to see around the place, like we had with ‘Yes’ posters, some treaty posters to actually visibly see that support out there for treaty.”

After losing bipartisan support for the treaty process in January, there is now a race to guarantee an agreement and have it running before the state election in 2026.