As Victoria makes treaty, Sheena Watt feels the burden of history
“I could get more technical and complicated about this but really it’s just about Aboriginal people having their voices heard.”
The parliamentary debate on the Treaty legislation (supported by Labor, the Greens and enough MPs to ensure its passage into law, but opposed by the Coalition) oscillated between endorsement of its guiding principle of self-determination and concerns about how the Indigenous governance structures it created would coexist and intersect with established government institutions.
One of the coalition’s main objections is that the agreement would undermine parliament’s sovereignty and create race-based disparities in democratic representation. As Liberal MP Joe McCracken put it: “This divides Victorians into two classes and I cannot support that. We must close the gap rather than create a new rift in our democracy.”
There were also some fabrications.
One of these is the idea, which has been expressed repeatedly, that the Gurnaikurnai people in eastern Victoria do not consent to the transfer of one of their traditional language terms, Gellung Warl, to the new governance structure created by the agreement.
Pauline Mullett and Cheryl Drayton, two women who identify as Kurnai, say consent was not given.
Moira Deeming made a strange claim during settlement discussions.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Gurnaikurnai Land and Water Aboriginal Corporation chairman Troy McDonald, a member of the First People’s Assembly treaty negotiation team, told this imprint that the idea of using the term was suggested by the Gurnaikurnai people after consulting language and cultural experts, and that the council had formally sought and secured authority to adopt the term.
The debate took an unexpected turn when Liberal MP Moira Deeming claimed that both New Zealand and Ireland are members of the First Nations.
In a more familiar refrain, Libertarian MP David Limbrick warned that indigenous interests were trying to lock up public lands, citing a well-documented dispute between rock climbers and Parks Victoria over the use of Mount Arapiles as evidence.
Nationals MP Melina Bath, the coalition’s spokesperson for Aboriginal affairs, acknowledged the agreement would become law and offered her best wishes to those who will celebrate it. It also reaffirmed the Coalition’s intention to repeal the agreement within the first 100 days of forming a government.
The coalition’s leader in the upper house, David Davis, said the agreement would create a “voice on steroids”.Credit: Jason South
David Davis, leader of the opposition upper house, described the deal as a “sound on steroids”.
“It’s quite possible to be both generous and supportive of the Indigenous community, but also have legitimate concerns about the form of this bill and what the bill will actually do,” he said.
The coalition did not put forward changes to the treaty legislation. As Liberal frontrunner Bev McArthur noted, there was no common ground between the deal negotiated between the state government and the First People’s Assembly and the deal the Opposition could support.
“I strongly oppose every aspect of this bill,” McArthur told parliament. “I am against it in principle. I am against it theoretically and politically. I am against the language of the bill. I am against its intention, the processes it creates, the bureaucracy, the expenses.”
McArthur also took aim at the “arrogant, smug and arrogant” attitude of Labor MPs who, in his words, were “fully convinced of their own merits”.
That description doesn’t sit well with Watt, who in his speech to parliament acknowledged both the uncertainty he felt at meeting a grandmother he didn’t know he had and the burden of being an Indigenous MP at such a crucial time.
“As I speak before you today about the meaning and importance of treaty, self-determination and justice, I do not forget that I am in a place that has historically excluded and contributed to the inequalities experienced by Aboriginal Victorians,” he said.
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The agreement under the Gellung Warl would create a permanent First People’s Assembly with broad access and authority to consult the government on all matters affecting Aboriginal people, a truth-telling body and an accountability commission that could conduct investigations into the performance of government ministers, agencies and programmes.
These powers are balanced by an express provision that nothing in the agreement limits the power of parliament to make laws and conduct other business. It is designed to sit within the province’s existing democratic structures, but as government minister Harriet Shing told parliament, it will bring a “fundamentally seismic shift” to how governments and parliaments deal with First Peoples.
Australia’s first statewide agreement between a government and First Peoples will be signed next month by Premier Jacinta Allan and First Peoples’ Assembly co-chairs Ngarra Murray and Rueben Berg. Murray and Berg were in parliament to witness the final vote on introducing the law.
