The Queensland Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry was established by the Path to Treaty Act as a body to facilitate truth-telling by the First Nations peoples of the state.
Queensland’s Path to Treaty Act 2023, passed by the Queensland Government in May 2023, established the legal framework for a Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry (The Inquiry) as part of the Treaty process, as well as the establishment of a Treaty Institute. The Inquiry was to be led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and tasked with recording the historical and ongoing effects of colonisation that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to experience.
The Queensland truth-telling model was designed to revolve around three stages:
Notably, when the Path to Treaty Bill was introduced earlier this year, the Queensland Police Service were exempt from the Truth-telling Inquiry. This decision was later withdrawn due to acknowledgement of the central role of the Queensland police in the brutal colonisation of First Nation peoples who are still facing its ongoing impacts. The Qld police department participated in the government department’s truth-telling session held on the 24th of September 2024 where submissions were made about their involvement in and responsibility for the processes of colonisation. During this session the police commissioner Steve Gollscewski admitted to “160 years of failure” against First Nations people, including up to 24,000 First Nations people killed by paramilitary mounted police forces.
Inquiry Chairperson, Joshua CreamerThe willingness to participate and support the inquiry really goes along to the basis that those departments, or those representatives, really see value in the inquiry and how it will shape the relationship with the community and government going forward…this might be the first opportunity then to create a level of accountability.
In May 2024, the Terms of Reference for Queensland’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry were released. The terms were formulated in order to guide the objectives, scope and outcomes of the Inquiry and included the following:
Queensland’s Path to Treaty should be seized as a unique opportunity to build a better, fairer and stronger Queensland, not just for First Nations peoples but all Queenslanders.
Aaron Fa’aoso
After the loss of the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum, the Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) announced it would withdraw its support for the Path to Treaty, with LNP leader David Crisafulli calling the Path to Treaty “not the right way forward” for Queensland and claiming it would create further division.
On October 31st 2024, following LNP’s success in the Qld state election, Mr Crisafulli stated “My strong advice to people running that process [Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry] is the new government has been very clear that we are not embarking on that process”.
On 28 November 2024, the newly elected LNP Queensland Government rushed to pass legislation to repeal the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry on its first day in Parliament; sneaking in the legislation to repeal the Path to Treaty Act on the back of a Bill to amend the Brisbane Olympic Games Act. The Government passed the repeal as an urgent motion – despite Labor opposition – to force the legislation through without a committee inquiry, which would have opened the legislation up to important scrutiny from communities, organisations and experts.
The Inquiry chairperson, Joshua Creamer, stated that he was given no notice of the decision and was informed by email shortly after the legislation was introduced on Thursday. Creamer has called out the Queensland Government’s decision to repeal this act, declaring that “as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, we deserve better. We deserve the best and equal to what everyone else receives.” Creamer also shared that the decision would “set back the relationship for a very long time.”
Many First Nations peoples have spoken out about their profound disappointment surrounding the decision:
We’re our world’s oldest living culture and to understand about our past, it needs to be told.
Aunty MaryThe basic human rights are being quietened again, we are being controlled because of a political game I guess.
Bruce SimpsonFor many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, there is a deep hurt that a government in its first days would be so opposed to even just telling the truth.
Leanne Enoch
Non-Indigenous people are also speaking out against the Queensland Governments’ decision to cancel the Inquiry:
The Crisafulli government has continued to show its absolute disrespect to Queensland’s First Nations Peoples and communities in using the first day in Parliament to repeal this important process.
Terry Burke, Independent Education Union Qld and NT Branch SecretaryAs their first order of business, they’re going to come out and completely trash whatever progress we’ve made in recent years? It’s utterly disgraceful.
Michael Berkman, Greens MP
While the LNP’s decision to cancel the Inquiry is devastating and shameful, First Nations communities are doing what they have always done in the face of a settler colonial system that attempts to silence and disappear them: resist. Several First Nations communities, including those on Stradbroke Island, have decided to go ahead with community-led information sessions despite the Inquiry’s official end, determined to share their stories and engage in community truth-telling. The Cherbourg community reclaimed their truth-telling process in the wake of Crisafulli’s announcement, with one Elder claiming that the Government needed to ‘get out of the way’.
Mayor Bruce Simpson, a Wakka Wakka and Wangan man, said that while the Inquiry’s end renewed mistrust of the government, communities would go ahead with truth-telling under the theme of “Our history, our stories, our voices”.
No, this is our truth. These are our stories. We want to tell our history for Cherbourg…We want to make it self-determining, and politics doesn’t govern our truth.
Bruce Simpson
