Victoria’s treaty ‘a road map for others to follow’

Victoria's decade-long journey toward Indigenous treaty has created unprecedented momentum for change, as other states watch closely and begin following suit.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan gives evidence before the Yoorrook Justice Commission last year Picture: NCA NewsWire

Victoria’s slow and steady steps towards treaty have set a road map for other states and territories, according to the National Native Title Council.

As NSW’s three treaty commissioners consult Aboriginal people on the south coast this week about whether they want a formal agreement with the state and what should be in it, Victoria’s parliament is preparing to pass a treaty bill that creates an Indigenous voice to government with funding guaranteed by law.

The advisory body, to be known as Gellung Warl, is the result of almost a decade of formal collaboration between the Aboriginal people of Victoria and their government – and the National Native Title Council is among Indigenous organisations applauding a careful process that included the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s truth-telling hearings from 2022 to 2024.

“Victorian traditional owners have been calling for treaty for generations. This historic moment is the result of decades of hard work and advocacy by First Nations communities to realise ambitions for self-determination,” National Native Title Council chief executive Jamie Lowe said.

Indigenous groups hold a dawn service on Australia Day in Melbourne Picture: Getty Images

“Victoria’s truth-telling and treaty process set a road map for other states and territories when it comes to shifting the relationship between First Nations people and governments.”

Gellung Warl is effectively a renamed and expanded version of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, the elected body established six years ago to work with the Andrews and then Allan governments towards treaty.

If the treaty bill passes, Gellung Warl will advise the state government on legislation affecting the state’s Aboriginal people. That advice is not binding.

The bill also says Gellung Warl will work with Victoria’s education authorities to develop truth-telling curriculum materials for students from prep to Year 10. They will draw on the Truth be Told report, a sweeping Aboriginal commentary of the state’s ­history since colonisation that chronicles dispossession, massacres and the stolen generations as well as stories of resistance and hope for a new chapter.

The Victorian education minister will have the final say on what is and is not added to the ­existing curriculum.

Researcher Harry Hobbs from the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of NSW says it is no surprise that the treaty bill is explicit about the supremacy of parliament. This is because modern treaties must “operate within the framework of the state that is already established”.

Dr Hobbs, who has been researching modern treaties in Canada, told The Australian that earlier colonial-era treaties in North America were about two communities meeting for the first time and reaching an agreement in the interests of peace and ­mutual benefit.

“But modern treaties are very different. In the case of the Victorian treaty bill, it sits under the Australian Constitution, commonwealth law and state law,” Dr Hobbs said.

“So it becomes about doing something meaningful within the existing legal framework. The challenge is to create a process that Indigenous people can trust because there is a power imbalance. That has been done well.

“From a government’s point of view, the idea of a representative body is supposed to make governance better and easier. They know who to go to when they need to discuss policy or law.

“This is how it happens in other portfolios: the minister would go to the peak body – for example the agriculture minister would go to the Victorian Farming Federation to talk about farming policy … I am not suggesting First Nations people are a lobby group but governments do seek out organisations that can speak to them with knowledge.”

The NSW treaty process entered its first stage of consultations in August when the state’s treaty commissioners went to the state’s far west for one week. In Broken Hill and other communities, they asked Aboriginal people what they would want from a formal agreement with the government or if they wanted one at all.

The commissioners this week consulted Aboriginal people on the south coast. They are set to continue their consultations for a year and then report the findings.