Yoorrook delivers final report and urges Victorian government to implement recommendations

Victoria’s first truth-telling inquiry into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples has delivered its final reports, with its chair calling on the state government to implement its 100 recommendations in full.

Yoorrook Justice Commission chair Eleanor Bourke. Picture: Tricia Rivera

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Victoria’s first truth-telling inquiry into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples has delivered its final reports, with its chair calling on the state government to implement its 100 recommendations in full.

Following an extensive four-year inquiry – which included 67 days of hearings and engagement with more than 9000 First Peoples – the Yoorrook Justice Commission on Wednesday delivered its two final reports to the Gov­ernor of Victoria and the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria.

The contents of the reports – one comprising five volumes ­containing 100 recommendations and another an official public record of the history of Victoria since the start of colonisation as told by First Peoples – will be made public when they are tabled in parliament by the government, which must occur within 30 days.

Yoorrook chair Eleanor Bourke, who previously criticised the Allan Labor government for its lack of support in relation to ­interim Yoorrook recommendations, urged the government to implement all the final recommendations.

“Yoorrook’s final report makes 100 recommendations for change based on the lived ex­perience of First Peoples and other Victorians,” Professor Bourke said.

“These recommendations provide a road map to create a better future, not just for our ­people but for every Victorian. Ultimately they must be implemented in full.”

Professor Bourke said truth-telling should continue. “Yoorrook remains the only formal truth-telling process in this country. It should not be the last,” she said.

“After four years of truth-telling, more Victorians now have a better understanding of our shared history and how this history connects with the present.

“Together we are walking towards a shared future based on truth, understanding and transformation.”

Professor Bourke’s comments came after she warned in May of collateral damage from the Allan government’s bail reforms, and questioned the meaning of apologies given by Labor ministers and officials to the state’s Indigenous communities.

“(The state government’s) apologies were important, they are important, historic even. But without action, what do they actually mean?” she said at the May Melbourne Press Club event.

“In March, the government repealed bail laws which had only come into effect a year earlier, laws that were the culmination of decades of relentless advocacy, coronial inquests and Aboriginal deaths in custody.”

In the same speech, Professor Bourke indicated the final reports may recommend changes to Victorian school curriculums, including the teaching of history.