The Yoorrook Justice Commission has handed down its final report, making 100 recommendations. The recommendations include a redress for Aboriginal Victorians and for a permanent advisory body with decision-making powers.
00:00It is deeply significant what we've seen undertaken by the Truth Telling Commission
00:06here in Victoria.
00:07It was run as a Royal Commission and it began in 2021, so we've seen years and years of
00:13evidence gathering of everyday First Nations people here in Victoria going before the Commission
00:19to tell their stories.
00:20In fact, Europe engaged with 9,000 Indigenous people in the state over its term in the inquiry,
00:30which is really, really incredible.
00:32It also was able to subpoena documents, over 10,000 documents from government, and really
00:37do a full-scale investigation in the state of Victoria about what has happened since colonisation
00:44up until now.
00:46And really, in that way, that's never been done in this country before.
00:50So it was breaking new ground.
00:52It was very challenging for Aboriginal people to come forward and tell their truths and
00:57their traumas, you know, information and their family histories before the Commission in that
01:03formal way.
01:05The Commission travelled across the state during its time.
01:07It would often sit on country and hear from people directly about what was happening to
01:13them and what's happened to them over the past few decades.
01:17So really, it is hard to overstate the significance of this Commission.
01:21Its work was really transformational in being able to look at the systems in government, not
01:27just necessarily spend time on the past injustices that have happened to Aboriginal people in
01:33Victoria.
01:34So it was a very, very deep investigation and now we've seen it come to fruition with very much a blueprint for a new way forward, an opportunity for things to change.
01:41There is such a huge disparity in living conditions between First Nations people here in Victoria and non-Indigenous people as there is across the country.
01:48We see Aboriginal people locked out of housing, having a difficult time in housing, having a difficult time in health services.
01:55Over-incarcerated as well, from a young age, there's a very large amount of Aboriginal people still in child protection systems here in Victoria.
02:02So those are all the issues that this report seeks to really delve into and it goes into, as you said at the intro, a hundred different recommendations, a huge amount of recommendations.
02:09Pressing the government for large scale change.
02:10Bridgette, perhaps you can summarise for us then what Yuruk found.
02:11Bridgette, perhaps you can summarise for us then what Yuruk found.
02:12It's a huge amount of Aboriginal people still in child protection systems here in Victoria.
02:21So those are all the issues that this report seeks to really delve into and it goes into, as you said at the intro, a hundred different recommendations.
02:29A huge amount of recommendations pressing the government for large scale change.
02:34Bridgette, perhaps you can summarise for us then what Yuruk found.
02:38And what some of those recommendations are.
02:42What it found was that there was wide scale human rights abuses committed against Aboriginal people and a genocide committed against Aboriginal people from colonisation when the population of Aboriginal people in Victoria was decimated.
02:55It looked at the massacres committed against Aboriginal people.
02:58It looked at sexual violence committed against Aboriginal people in Victoria, linguicide, the removal of children.
03:05The continuing struggle Aboriginal people have in accessing their own documents about their own history from state institutions and from the government.
03:14It also investigated modern day abuses, alleged abuses in health settings, as I mentioned, and education settings as well.
03:22So it was a huge, huge finding that really what has been done to Aboriginal people as a result of colonisation has been completely devastating.
03:32It's now putting forward a hundred different recommendations on accountability, on political change, on making sure that Aboriginal people have a voice in the laws and policies that are designed to assist closing that gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the state of Victoria.
03:49But it also goes to redress and the issue of redress, I mean, some people talk about compensation, that's certainly mentioned in the report, but redress also means allowing people to come to the table to actually have more of an equal footing with people in government and in other institutions as well.
04:06We had the opportunity to speak earlier to Aunty Jill Gallagher, who is a deeply respected elder here in Victoria, she's also the head of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation here in Victoria.
04:19She was also a former treaty commissioner and she'd given evidence to Uruk and it was quite emotional to hear of what impact this has had on her.
04:26We've had 250 years of brutalised colonisation and four years of work can't address all of that, so I think it needs to be ongoing work.
04:42But the amazing report, over a hundred recommendations, and I think all Victorians should be very, very proud.
04:54Our own people, the first peoples of this state, actually told their stories, relived some of that horror and it was very hard to do that.
05:07But also a lot of non-Aboriginal Victorians did the same thing and that was amazing, very, very brave.
05:14Essentially what we've got here is the history laid bare.
05:18All the things that we knew, but in fact as an Aboriginal person some of the things that came out in the report I didn't know about as well.
05:24You know, there was a deep investigation of what's happened over the history in this state, but it also lays there a blueprint for change, doesn't it Aunty Jill?
05:35It certainly does, Bridget. That blueprint for change is something that now allows the government, because the excuses in the past has been, well we don't know what to do.
05:47But now we do. So we need to start implementing that blueprint.
05:52But there's still a lot of stories still to be told.
05:57But I think the most important thing that people have got to remember, even though a lot of Victorians did tell their stories, and some of it was painful,
06:07that still a lot of Australian citizens don't know our history.
06:16And I'm hoping, as part of the ongoing phase, is that we will do educate people about our prehistory and about our shared history.
06:28I'm curious, one of the recommendations that looks like it's going to happen, according to the Premier at least,
06:33Victoria looks like it's going to have a permanent, effectively an Indigenous voice to State Parliament, that's going to be made permanent.
06:39What do you think the significance of that's going to be? What's that going to help do?
06:42The significance of that is that finally Aboriginal people will have a seat at the table.
06:51The seat at the table to help government make decisions, to influence government to make decisions about what's best for our community.
07:03And that empowerment goes a long way to healing those wounds.
07:09So that's Aunty Jill Gallagher speaking to us earlier.
07:12Now, one of the key recommendations, Lorna, is that the government really begin to fund, in the long term, the First People's Assembly of Victoria,
07:21which is a democratically elected body made up of traditional owners from across Victoria,
07:26to have more authority, decision making, to be able to continue to advise the Victorian government in a much more formal way.
07:34One of the recommendations from the Commission is that treaties or a treaty in Victoria between the government and different First Nations groups,
07:42but also a statewide treaty could be a path towards redress.
07:46Now, negotiations are really progressing here in Victoria,
07:49so we could really see the first formal treaty signed in Victoria between Aboriginal people and a government of Australia.
07:57However, that doesn't have bipartisan support in Victoria.
08:00So I think there are some political questions over how this progresses without bipartisan support,
08:07but certainly it is progressing quite quickly here in Victoria,
08:10after many, many years of negotiations and talks that is happening in Victoria.
08:15One of the other questions is over why not all of the commissioners at Uruk endorsed the inclusion of the findings
08:23into this final piece of work that was released when it was tabled into Parliament.
08:28However, all commissioners did endorse all of the 100 recommendations, Lorna.
