‘Not enough to merely know history’: Premier fronts Indigenous truth-telling inquiry for first time

Premier Jacinta Allan has fronted Victoria’s Indigenous truth-telling enquiry for the archetypal time, wherever she said she wanted to nonstop “a wide unequivocal message” that her authorities is determined to enactment towards treaty.

Allan was warned by the Yoorrook Justice Commission to unrecorded up to her words connected Monday earlier she was questioned for astir 3 hours astir a scope of issues being examined by the inquiry, including the dispossession of Indigenous onshore and the exclusion of Aboriginal radical from authorities assets revenues.

Premier Jacinta Allan appeared earlier the Yoorrook Justice Commission connected Monday, becoming the archetypal person successful Australia to look a information and justness commission.Credit: Justin McManus/The Age

The Commission besides asked Allan – who is the archetypal premier to look earlier an Indigenous information and justness enquiry successful Australia – astir the implementation of self-determination principles successful authorities and embedding truth-telling into the authorities schoolhouse curriculum.

Yoorrook seat Eleanor Bourke said the premier’s grounds indispensable pb to existent change.

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“Your words volition unrecorded connected the nationalist grounds for generations to come,” she said.

“When you permission present today, I inquire you to unrecorded up to your words and actions. First Peoples person faced a agelong past of being fto down by successive governments and their leaders. Broken promises, unfulfilled commitments and apologies followed by inertia.”

In her opening statement, the premier said that the policies and practices of past governments had created the spread betwixt Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Victorians.

“There is an unbroken enactment betwixt the dispossession and unit of the past and the lives of First Peoples today,” she said.

“Whether ignorance oregon deliberate intent, we person driven that disparity...and that disparity continues to play retired successful the lives and beingness outcomes of Aboriginal people. Acknowledging that ongoing injustice demands an honorable designation that contempt efforts and intentions, we inactive person a agelong mode to go.”

Allan said the grounds of Victoria’s past was incomplete and that a greater knowing of the past would payment everyone.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission is examining injustices experienced by Indigenous Victorians.Credit: Justin McManus/The Age

“Truth matters to our past, our contiguous and to our future. Many Victorians’...education of Aboriginal peoples histories and experiences was limited. [...] that regulation was not an accident, an oversight, oregon absent-mindedness. It was portion of a deliberate and systematic effort to erase First Nations radical from our state’s history. The process of truth-telling is simply a refusal to taxable to that silence.

“The grounds this committee volition manus down volition mean astatine agelong last, the information of our state’s past is told. The murder, the massacres, the dispossession of civilization and Country. The onshore taken away, the mode of beingness destroyed, the children who ne'er came backmost home, and those who are inactive trying to find their mode back.

“It’s not capable to simply cognize this history. We bash request to larn from it, and we bash request to enactment connected it, too.… [T]hat past continues to unrecorded connected successful our present.”

Allan acknowledged that First Peoples’ sovereignty had ne'er been ceded to assemblage settlers oregon governments.

“[First Peoples’] ties to onshore and waters … tin ne'er beryllium extinguished,” she said.

Senior counsel assisting Tony McAvoy SC asked the premier if authorities agencies could marque the indispensable reforms to instrumentality the principles of existent self-determination required to execute a meaningful treaty.

Allan said that would necessitate heavy structural alteration wrong authorities and would situation the views of radical “in our authorities systems”.

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She besides repeated her comments from past week astir including the enactment of the truth-telling committee successful the authorities acquisition curriculum.

“[I]n shining a airy connected however our authorities was settled, we tin genuinely commencement to enactment towards amended outcomes and that is portion of the outcomes of treaty,” she said.

Following the commission’s 2nd interim study past year, the Victorian authorities accepted 28 of the commission’s 46 recommendations successful afloat oregon successful principle, but is inactive considering 15 much and has rejected 3 outright. The committee said astatine the clip that the government’s effect was disappointing.

Yoorrook is expected to present its last study by mid-2025.

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