A landmark truth-telling inquiry’s push to compensate Indigenous Victorians for historical injustices has not been ruled out by the Premier despite warnings it could bankrupt the state.
After a four-year truth-telling inquiry, The Yoorrook Justice Commission delivered its final report to the Victoria state parliament on Tuesday.
The Australian-first Indigenous truth-telling body calls on the Victorian government to provide redress for injustices.
Among the proposals is a statewide redress scheme, including financial compensation for Indigenous Victorians.
The report also suggests recognising Indigenous groups as sovereign nations, exempting them from taxes and rates, and granting them access to revenue from natural resources and Crown land.
The report also calls for the state government to offer a formal apology and to acknowledge its responsibility for the wrongs of its predecessors.
The apology would also see the state acknowledge that Aboriginal soldiers who served during the world wars were excluded from a scheme that gave veterans land when they returned home.
Some controversial recommendations included a significant overhaul of the education system, which would exclude Indigenous children from attendance requirements, suspension and expulsion, as well as avenues for more appropriate cultural training.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan (pictured) has not ruled out a push to pay compensation to Indigenous people in Victoria
The Yoorrook Justice Commission submitted its final report to parliament, which included 100 recommendations aimed at making amends for the injustice that ‘occurred during and as a result of the colonial invasion’
The report also pushed for the Treaty to be pursued and permanent funding streams to be instituted to help future generations of Indigenous people.
It also called for a permanent First Peoples’ Assembly – a move which would create a Victorian version of the Voice to Parliament, which was overwhelmingly rejected at the federal level following a referendum.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Premier Jacinta Allan refused to rule out any of the recommendations.
‘I’m just not going to rule things in or out through a press conference,’ Allan said.
‘I think we can understand the need… for government to take time to consider the recommendations.’
The report has given the Victorian government a two-year window to respond to its findings.
Yoorrook held 67 days of public hearings, gathering the testimony of Stolen Generations survivors, elders, historians, experts and non-Indigenous advocates.
It found there were at least 50 massacres across Victoria by the end of the 1860s, with eight colonists killed compared to 978 First Nations people.
The mass killings, combined with disease, sexual violence, exclusion, eradication of language, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation, brought about the ‘near-complete physical destruction’ of Aboriginal people in Victoria.
Some of the recommendations include a public formal apology, recognising Indigenous groups as separate nations and for Indigenous people to be be exempt from taxes, rates, levies and be given access to revenue from natural resources and Crown land
The ‘decimation’ of the population by 1901 was the result of ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups’.
‘This was genocide,’ one of the documents read.
Ms Allan said the findings made for ‘tough reading’ because they ‘tell the truth’ about how the state was colonised.
The recommendations will inform treaty talks between the state government and the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, with enabling legislation expected to be introduced later in 2025.
The report received a mixed response, with some critics labelling the extensive list of recommendations as a ‘disaster’.
‘[The list] read like demands that would send the state broke if they agreed to all of them,’ one Indigenous critic told the Herald Sun.
‘At a time when we are negotiating treaty and getting the Victorian people on board, it’s just a disaster.’
Others supported the report, claiming it was time for the state to start ‘making things right’.
Ms Allan encouraged Victorians to look at the report.
‘I’m focused on getting better outcomes, because when you improve outcomes for Indigenous kids in schools, Indigenous kids in family settings, Indigenous men and women getting access to the health care that they need, that’s better for all of us.’
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe called on the federal government to press on with national truth and treaty processes
First Peoples’ Assembly member Nerita Waight warned Ms Allan not to let Yoorrook’s work go ignored, as politicians have done with previous major Aboriginal-related inquiries.
‘The truth has been told and now the government has an obligation to act,’ the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive said.
Yoorrook Justice Commission chairperson Professor Eleanor Bourke said the final report outlined recommendations that would be advanced through a treaty process while others needed to ‘begin now’ with urgent action and ‘reforms’.
‘These recommendations take the voices, lived experience and evidence of First Peoples into the places where decisions are made and where change must happen,’ Ms Bourke said.
‘To Premier Allan and the Victorian Government, I urge you all to implement the Yoorrook for Transformation recommendations with courage and commitment.’
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe called on the federal government to press on with national truth and treaty processes.
‘Genocide has not just occurred in Victoria, but has been perpetrated against all First Peoples of this continent,’ she said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to set up a ‘Makarrata Commission to oversee a national process for treaty and truth-telling’ in 2021.
His government allocated $5.8 million to commence work on establishing the independent commission, but it has not materialised after the failed Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.
