Truth-telling processes are progressing in the states and territories across Australia at various rates with some having begun their own formal processes towards truth.
Senator Dorinda Cox, Yamatji Noongar womanTruth-telling is an opportunity for First Nations people to share their stories, experiences and truth. It’s also an opportunity for non-First Nations people to enrich their understanding of our shared history. Truth-telling can be a unifying, healing and positive force for our whole community.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission was established in March 2021 and is Australia’s first formal truth-telling process. The Yoorrook Justice Commission is an investigatory body revealing historical and ongoing injustices faced by First Nations peoples in Victoria since colonisation. The commission works independently of both the Victorian Government and the First People’s Assembly and is focused on making recommendations for reform.
Queensland’s Path to Treaty Act 2023, passed by the Queensland Government in May 2023, established the legal framework for the Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry as part of the Treaty process. As of 28 November 2024, the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry has been cancelled after a repeal of the Path to Treaty Act was passed by the Queensland Government.
In 2018 the Northern Territory Government, Northern Land Council, Central Land Council, Anindilyakwa Land Council and Tiwi Land Council agreed to The Barunga Agreement as a Memorandum of Understanding to provide for the development of a framework for negotiating a Treaty with the First Nations Peoples of the Northern Territory.
The Agreement is designed to ensure the Northern Territory Government funds a process for treaty – or treaties – and acknowledges that the process of treaty-making “starts with ‘truth telling’ which involves hearing about, acknowledging and understanding the consequences of the Northern Territory’s history.”
In 2019 the three year Treaty Commission began and in 2021 the Northern Territory Treaty Commission’s Final Report was given to the Minister for Treaty and Local Decision Making, which confirmed the NT’s commitment to explore truth-telling. The Treaty Commission recommended a framework for negotiation, an overarching NT-wide treaty and individual treaties with First Nations peoples, a process towards self-government, and a truth telling process. The Report listed truth-telling as an imperative step on the Northern Territory’s treaty journey and an integral part of any treaty-making process.
In 2019 the three year Treaty Commission began and in 2021 the Final Report was given to the Minister for Treaty and Local Decision Making, who confirmed the NT’s commitment to explore truth-telling. The Treaty Commission recommended a framework for negotiation, an overarching NT-wide treaty and individual treaties with Indigenous peoples, a process towards self-government, and a truth telling process. In their response to the Final Report in December 2022, the NT Government committed to working with Aboriginal Land Councils “to establish First Nations Forums through which Aboriginal Territorians can participate in development of a Territory-wide treaty and truth telling process, including truth-telling itself.”
In December 2022, the independent Treaty Commission was abolished, angering some First Nations leaders who accused the NT government of intentionally delaying a treaty. A new Treaty Unit has since been established within the Department of the Chief Minister’s Office of Aboriginal Affairs with its mandate to undergo a new series of consultations over the next 18 months to ‘test’ whether First Nations Territorians agree with the Commission’s recommendations or not.
Aboriginal Affairs Minister Selena Uibo says the NT Government was unable to keep funding the Commission – which had previously received $4 million in funding -– and needed to consult further as a next step, also saying the NT remains committed to a treaty. Northern Territory Indigenous leader, Yolgnu man Yingiya Guyula, disagreed, stating that the NT Government was “just going around and around and around in circles”, with “no commitment to making real change”.
As of early 2023, the NT Government announced its plans to start a truth telling process by getting its Aboriginal Interpreter Service to start recording peoples’ stories.
In 2024, the NT Government began offering grants to support truth-telling activities and initiatives through its Truth, Healing and Reconciliation Grant Program. Tthe first round of the NT Government grants closed in April 2024, with 17 successful recipients. The second round of grants totaling $300,000 is scheduled to begin in 2025.
Following on from the August 2024 NT Election, the Country Liberal Party (CLP) – who won the election with a majority – have not yet commented on their position with respect to previous truth-telling policies implemented by the former Labor Government. In September 2024, the CLP announced that their new cabinet will no longer have a minister for suicide prevention, treaty, local decision-making, parks and rangers, nor a minister for women or remote housing and homelands.
In July 2021, former governor Kate Warner and law professor Tim McCormack started consultations with First Nations peoples in Tasmania to map out a pathway to treaty and truth-telling. An Aboriginal Advisory Group to guide the process was announced in December 2021 and its inaugural meeting was held in 2023.
In November 2021, the report prepared by Professor Kate Warner, Professor Tim McCormack and Ms Fauve Kurnadi was delivered and was inclusive of 24 recommendations from Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples, including four recommendations on the possible format, content and process of truth-telling. A summary of those four recommendations is as follows:
Importantly, the report also acknowledged that First Nations truth-telling has been underway for many years, particularly through the arts, academia and scholarship. Consultation with First Nations peoples in Tasmania revealed that an official State-wide truth-telling commission would add a formal lens over what is already being achieved.
Although the Tasmanian Government has agreed to the truth and treaty process, there has still not been a formal response or confirmed date of when it can be expected to begin.
In July 2024, protesters set up camp out the front of the Tasmanian Parliament to demand Premier Jeremy Rockcliff take action on treaty and truth-telling. There continues to be a lack of progress since the release of the report in 2021.
The Aboriginal Advisory Group, established to deliver strategic, authentic cultural advice to inform decisions in relation to truth-telling and treaty, will deliver its final report to the Government in mid-2025.
Since 2019, NSW Labor has promised to pursue a treaty process in consultation with First Nations Elders and leaders if elected. Following Labor’s election win in March 2023, David Harris was appointed Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Treaty.
Following his appointment, Minister Harris outlined that the treaty process would appoint three commissioners to oversee the process of a year-long treaty consultation with First Nations communities in NSW, a plan that has yet to be followed through on. In its first budget in a decade, released earlier this year, NSW Labor committed $5 million to undertake this consultation process, a bare minimum seed funding investment to explore treaty possibilities with Aboriginal peoples from across the State.
Following the loss of the Voice Referendum in October 2023, the Minns Labor Government walked back their support by saying a NSW treaty would only progress past consultation following the next election. Currently, NSW is the only State not to have formally begun a treaty process (including truth-telling). This is a deeply disappointing status for the State that is home to the largest population of First Nations people in the country.
Still, after the failure of the Voice Referendum, many are pushing harder for a State-wide truth-telling process, with the Greens committed to actioning treaty and truth-telling processes in NSW. As of 3 November 2023, the NSW Government was advertising for an Executive Director of ‘Truth and Healing’ to “focus on leading truth telling to embed healing and celebrate culture” and to develop future reform initiatives and program development, including Truth, Treaty, and Voice.
In September 2024, the Minn’s government announced the appointed of former senator Aden Ridgeway, academic Todd Fernando and Koori Mail newspaper CEO Naomi Moran as the three commissioners to lead a process with Aboriginal people and communities across NSW.
In 2016, the South Australian Labor Party implemented a treaty process for the State but lost the election in 2018 to the Liberals, who abandoned the idea. Labor was re-elected in 2022 in South Australia and has since legislated to implement the Uluru Statement in full, which includes Voice, Treaty and Truth.
On this basis, SA has become the first state to legislate a First Nations Voice to Parliament. South Australia’s First Nations peoples will be able to vote for their representatives in March 2024, twelve months after the passing of the The First Nations Voice Act 2023. Following on from the elections in March 2024, meet the elected representatives from the six local areas.
As far as what this means for a formal truth-telling process in SA, it remains too soon to tell.
Currently, there is no statewide truth-telling process in place in Western Australia. In January 2023, Yamatji-Noongar woman and Federal Greens Senator Dorina Cox and Dr Brad Pettitt MLC launched a campaign to petition the WA Premier to commit to a truth-telling commission.
It should be noted that the WA Government has been in partnership with the Whadjuk, Noongar and greater Aboriginal communities for the Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) Project, one of Australia’s first large-scale acts of truth-telling that is committed to acknowledging Wadjemup’s history of Aboriginal incarceration and forced child removal, and its role in the colonisation of WA.
As of February 2023, the ACT announced its plans to set up a First Nations advisory panel, to be named the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Eminent Panel for Community Engagement and Healing, to focus on healing, truth telling, provide advice to government on cultural recognition of First Peoples in the ACT and surrounding regions, and broader engagement with the diverse local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
The Panel is intended to be a culturally appropriate mechanism to develop pathways for healing and re-engagement, to develop recommendations to the ACT Government on how to re-design representation, governance and engagement mechanisms to support partnerships between the ACT Government, Traditional Custodians and the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to progress Voice, Truth and Treaty.
According to its website, funding has been allocated over two years and the first stage of the process is expected to take a few months. It is expected that the Panel itself will be established by the second half of 2023.
ACT will be going to the polls in October 2024, with potential updates on truth-telling to follow.
