Aboriginal people have been nothing if not patient waiting for an Australian government – any government – to sit down and treat with them over the terms of white settlement.

So it is perhaps fitting that when the upper house of the Victorian parliament finally voted to enact a statewide treaty with its First Peoples, a long day of debate had stretched well into the night.

When the votes were tallied, the public gallery of the Legislative Council fell quiet.

First Peoples’ Assembly co-chairs Ngarra Murray and Rueben Berg were there, along with Aboriginal elders Belinda Briggs and Esme Bamblett, Alister Thorpe, Lowana Moore and Gary Murray and other members of the assembly.

From the balcony, Victorian Treaty Authority chair Jidah Clark looked down, and at the back of the chamber, Yoorrook Justice Commission member Travis Lovett, having led a long walk to parliament, sat still.

When it was announced the bill had passed without amendment, the quiet was shattered. Whoops and hollers broke out, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags were unfurled and the Labor, Greens and crossbench MPs who voted for treaty turned to applaud those who had dreamt of it for decades.

Outside the chamber, in the expanse of the Queen’s Hall built nearly 150 years ago, they hugged, laughed and some cried. Ngarra Murray said she felt overwhelmed and ecstatic.

“I’m just excited for our future,” she said. “Really, this is just the beginning. We are ready to get to work.”

From here, the challenge before the First Peoples’ Assembly is to make good on the promise of treaty, through the unique, self-determinative governance structures it will establish, to meaningfully improve the lives of Aboriginal people in Victoria.

Earlier in the day, as the legislation underpinning treaty was being picked at and prodded by opposition MPs in the Legislative Council, Rueben Berg reflected that he was impatient not for the bill to pass, but to get on with what needs to come next.

Berg, a member of the negotiating team who spent nearly a year nutting out the details of this historic agreement with government officials and lawyers, understands the greatest test of treaty is not whether it would be accepted by parliament, but whether it will succeed.

The framework of treaty is by now familiar to readers of this masthead.

Gellung Warl, a Gunaikurnai term for “tip of the spear” is the name given to a new Aboriginal governance structure.

Within this, there will sit an ongoing First Peoples’ Assembly, a permanent truth-telling body and an accountability commission which will provide a rolling audit of government programs and policies designed to close the gap in socioeconomic outcomes between black and white Victorians.

It is a structure which gives Aboriginal people broad access to government decision makers and greater power to determine their own affairs, and requires parliament to consider and report against the implications for Aboriginal people of every bill that passes through this place.

Yet, it is designed to sit alongside, rather than disrupt, existing governance structures and constitutional arrangements.

The Andrews and Allan governments have been promising treaty for nearly 10 years.

This year, a slow march has become a gallop, as the findings of the Yoorrook Justice Commission put the case for radical change in the state’s relationship with Aboriginal people and treaty negotiations quickly established consensus over what this should look like.

The Coalition does not support treaty and has vowed to repeal the legislation which underpins it within the first 100 days of forming government.

But for now, Aboriginal people have treaty and a long-awaited moment.

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