Is Australia on Track to Establish Its First Indigenous Treaty Next Year?

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Although the federal government’s interest in a national treaty with Australia’s Indigenous communities has waned following the unsuccessful 2023 referendum, the Victorian government is striving to establish a state-level agreement by next June. Natalie Hutchins, Victoria’s Minister for Treaty and First Nations People, expressed to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee on Thursday her aspiration to implement new legislation this year and to finalize a treaty before the next financial year’s conclusion.

The history of Indigenous sovereignty recognition

Two hundred and fifty-seven years ago, as Captain James Cook prepared to set sail into the Pacific on his Endeavour voyage, he was given some ‘hints’ by the president of the Royal Society, James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton.

These hints related to how the people of the lands that Cook and his crew encountered should be treated.

“They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit,” Douglas wrote.

The dialogue in Victoria commenced in 2021, and formal negotiations with First Peoples began last November. However, the acknowledgment of Indigenous sovereignty and movement towards a formal treaty started long before the British claimed Aboriginal territories.

In 1832, after the ‘Black War’ had all but wiped the palawa peoples of Tasmania, Governor George Arthur concluded that: “It was a fatal error in the first settlement of Van Diemen’s Land that a treaty was not entered into with the Natives.”

In the 20th century, there was a renewed flourishing of advocacy for Treaty undertaken by emerging Aboriginal leaders and non-Indigenous Australians.

From the late 1970s onwards, high-profile Australians such as economist and public servant Herbert Cole ‘Nugget’ Coombs and poet Judith Wright were driving forces in the formation of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee (1979-83), whose aim was to promote Treaty amongst non-Indigenous Australians.

At Barunga in 1988, then-prime minister Bob Hawke famously promised a treaty “before the end of the life of this parliament”.

But the deadline passed, and Indigenous frustration was channelled into Yothu Yindi’s 1991 global hit single that demanded “Treaty now”.

More recently, treaty was one of the three key reforms called for in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, but in the wake of the failed referendum on a Voice to Parliament, Treaty and truth-telling at a national level face an uncertain future.

In the states and territories, however, it’s a different story — particularly, in Victoria, where the First Peoples’ treaty talks with the Victorian government continue, and look set to deliver a statewide treaty by June next year.

Speaking on NITV’s The Point, Ngarra Murray, a Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta, Dhudhuroa and Dja Dja Wurrung woman and co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said a statewide Treaty had been generations in the making.

“In the last 10 years, we’ve made significant progress towards treaty and those foundational pieces that we needed to set up treaty-making well into the future,” she said.

“For us, treaty is a movement. It’s about resetting relationships, new relationships around truth-telling and accountability.”

A woman with long black hair speaking, with others behind her.

Ngarra Murray said there had been significant progress towards Treaty in the last 10 years. Source: AAP / Diego Fedele

Nyangbal and Arakwal woman Naomi Moran is one of three recently appointed NSW Treaty Commissioners.

NSW opened the door for Treaty in 2023 and committed to a 12-month consultation process.

“We know that we’ve been tasked to go in and have conversations with our mob, with Aboriginal people throughout New South Wales around those two questions: do you want a treaty or other formal agreement-making processes, and what does that look like?” Moran said.

“I think what’s really important in the integrity and how we carry ourselves in this work is understanding that we’re also dealing with the behaviours of a wider community that for over 235 years just haven’t taken the time to understand who we are as Aboriginal people.”

In Queensland, a Path to Treaty process which began under Labor in 2019 was scrapped in 2024 by the incoming Liberal National Party.

“No European nation has any legitimate authority to occupy or settle in any part of their country without their explicit consent. Conquest does not provide a valid claim, as these people could not have been the aggressors.”

It was a major setback for Josh Creamer, the Waanyi and Kalkadoon barrister and former chair of the Queensland government’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry that was launched as the first step towards a formal agreement.