Statewide Treaty Bill 2025

Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second reading
28 October 2025

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):

I want to recognise the many First Nations people who have come here to mark this historic occasion and also acknowledge that we are meeting today on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin nation and that sovereignty of these lands and waters has never been ceded. I would also like to thank Ms Watt for her extraordinary contribution. If that did not move you, I do not know what would.

We are all privileged to be parliamentarians. It is an honour to serve the people of Victoria to help shape the future of this state. It is a privilege that I never take for granted, I hope. I feel particularly fortunate and profoundly honoured today to be able to give my support to the nation’s first formally recognised treaty between a state and its First Peoples.

This is the beginning of a new era and a long-awaited day for the original custodians of this land. They will finally have a say over the policies and institutions that govern their lives. The process that has led to this piece of legislation began nearly a decade ago, but anyone who is cognisant of our state’s history – of the devastation wrought by colonisation and the brutal care of the state, of the ongoing harms and injustices borne by our First Peoples – knows that this day has been a very, very long time coming.

This land is home to the oldest surviving culture on earth – a people that have been here since time immemorial, that have lived through two ice ages, that have survived the ravages of colonisation. Yet it is only recently, as a nation, that we have begun to acknowledge this ancient heritage. Only recently have we seen any sort of recognition that this land is the ancestral home of a sovereign people and that their sovereignty was never ceded. Within my relatively short lifetime I have witnessed a shift in our historical narrative.

I am old enough to remember when the lie of terra nullius was broadly unquestioned – back when world maps were divided into monolithic colours and Australia was one of the large pink areas belonging to the Crown.

Like so many of my fellow Victorians, I learned little or nothing about the First Peoples of this state. If I learned anything, it was that the history of this state began when the original inhabitants of this land since time immemorial left it all to John Batman in an exchange for some trinkets, and then they simply moved away. It was the original great replacement theory – the perpetuation of the Darwinist lie that the Indigenous peoples of this country, like the Indigenous peoples of other colonised countries, were on the verge of extinction.

In my 15 years of formal education the dispossession, the devastation and the genocide of our First People was never mentioned, and I was deeply shocked when I learned of it. I was also painfully aware that I understood very little of these people. They were so little known, so little understood, so little seen. Despite their rich heritage, their timeless connection to this land and their proud culture, our First Peoples were barely visible in my youth.

There were prominent exceptions, like the boxer Lionel Rose; the tennis player Evonne Goolagong, now Evonne Cawley; the artist and rights activist Albert Namatjira; the poet Kath Walker, now known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal; and of course the irrepressible Charlie Perkins. But while their exceptionalism garnered wide attention, their communities remained largely veiled to much of the country.

Times have changed, at least some, yet still many cling to the fears, the prejudice, the misinformation forged in our colonial education – attitudes compounded by the fact that many Victorians do not know any Indigenous Australians. Noel Pearson recognised this and all but anticipated the failure of the Voice referendum because of it. He said:

Unlike same-sex marriage there is not the requisite empathy of love to break through the prejudice, contempt and yes, violence, of the past. Australians simply do not have Aboriginal people within their circles of family and friendship with whom they can share fellow feeling.

Unlike members of the LGBTQIA+ community, he said:

“… we are not personally known to many Australians. Few have met us and a small minority count us as friends.”

The Voice referendum was lost – attacked from the right and sections of the left, perhaps poorly communicated and steeped in disinformation, agonising to First Nations communities and final in its judgement. The Statewide Treaty Bill 2025, though – contrary to the counterassertions and the hysteria – is not the Voice revisited. It is rather a much broader, more considered and comprehensive approach to changing the relationship between Victoria’s First Nations people and those who govern them.

There are those who would label this bill as divisive, calling it an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, stating it would be better to fund programs that improve literacy or fund health, education or housing. But seriously – seriously – is anyone arguing that these things are mutually exclusive? The racist institutions, the oppression, the injustice that our First People have endured since settlement, we cannot say that these do not exist, nor that they should not be addressed.

If we consider the scale of disadvantage that First People in Victoria are subject to, from their overrepresentation throughout our criminal justice system, the children in residential care, the ongoing black deaths in custody, the many, many ways that outcomes for First Peoples lag behind the rest of society, and then consider the sheer volume of programs from successive governments that have produced little to no positive change in these outcomes, it is more than apparent that we need to do things differently.

For the opposition to propose that a new standalone department will deliver better results than a Statewide Treaty is both foolhardy and more of the same – another government department doling out programs largely disconnected from the lived experience, the learnings and the wisdom of Aboriginal people.

That is why this treaty is so very vital. It is a commitment between equals. It acknowledges the truth of our collective past and the ongoing impacts of colonisation, and it recognises that our First Peoples are the ones best placed to make decisions that affect their communities. It is about respect and it is about self-determination.

For too long Victoria’s prosperity has flowed exclusively to non-Aboriginal Victorians. It is hard to comprehend the extraordinary hurdles placed in the way of First People’s right to live freely, to prosper and indeed to have the same chance of success that every immigrant – like my family – to this state is automatically afforded and takes for granted.

A prime example of how First People were locked out of the prosperity of this state was their exclusion from the soldier settler scheme. According to the Australian War Memorial archives, and I quote,

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have served in every conflict and commitment involving Australian defence contingents since federation, including both world wars … “

Around 1000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men enlisted in the two world wars, but shamefully upon returning home they were excluded from soldier settlement schemes and were deemed ‘unsuited to farming’ and ‘lacking the capacity for independent landholding’. While some 12,000 non-Indigenous Australians benefited from that scheme, only two Indigenous Victorians received land. Indeed co-chair of the First People’s Assembly Ngarra Murray’s own grandfather was denied land under the scheme. She gave evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission:

Having volunteered to serve a nation that barely recognised our people’s existence, Aboriginal soldiers like my grandfather risked their lives fighting for Australia. But when they got home, they faced the same old racism and discrimination. They were denied equal opportunity in their own country, and the disadvantage that caused has trickled down generations.

If we need further evidence of the criminal and civil wrongs experienced by first people for over 150 years, there is abundant evidence in the hearings of the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

That brings me to a thorny question, and that is of reparations. Needled by voices from the right, we seem to be very, very squeamish about the idea of reparations. It is touted as divisive and almost discriminatory, yet we have a legal system that addresses restitution for civil and criminal wrongs every single day. We expect to be compensated for harm, for loss, for injury due to another party’s wrongful act or omission.

This concept is indeed a very keystone of our legal systems. So how is it that we can say it is wrong for First Peoples to have their civil wrongs compensated? The magnitude of disadvantage by our First Nations people is not a reason to deny compensation. We should be considering how it can be achieved so we do not continue to compound that disadvantage.

If we are to mature into a truly equitable and reconciled state, we must embark on the virtuous path that treaty and its constituent arms provide. We all have much to gain from treaty, not least of which is the acceptance of our true history. It is no doubt discomfiting to acknowledge the massacres, the forced removals, the suffocating and brutal control of the state. But what is the alternative – to hold fast to a lie?

At the end of the day this is a considered and modest approach to change, a vehicle for self-determination for Victoria’s First People and a model for other states and the Commonwealth to follow. Victoria leads the nation in achieving this important milestone, and we can do that today and on Thursday. It follows nearly a decade of work: research, truth-telling, public hearings – a thorough ventilation of all the issues. But if it is to have life in the years to follow, if it is to bear the fruit of its potential, it needs the backing and the goodwill of all members.

What are those opposite hoping to achieve by opposing this historic treaty, by pledging to repeal it if they are elected? Whom is such an election promise aimed at? Are they trying to enhance their far-right credentials? Rather than trying to out-right the right, would it not make more sense to rotate to the centre? The honour of supporting this historic piece of legislation is profound. It is a transformational moment for our state and indeed for our nation.

I want to end with a quote from Daniel James, the Yorta Yorta writer and broadcaster, which beautifully encapsulates this very historic moment:

‘This treaty illuminates the way ahead. Not through denial or silence, but through listening, respect and self‑determination. It shows that moving forward means facing history rather than burying it, celebrating culture rather than erasing it, embracing one another rather than excluding.’

People will look back on this moment and will remember those who rose to meet this moral challenge. Legalise Cannabis Victoria is proud to meet this challenge. We are proud to support reconciliation and to elevate and to strengthen our civil society. I commend this bill to the house.

[Council divided on the Bill]

[Bill passed 21 votes to 16]

Banner image credit: Leroy Miller, First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria