Thursday, 9 June 2022
Business of the house
Standing and sessional orders
Standing and sessional orders
That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended to allow the following arrangements to apply on Wednesday 22 June 2022:
(1) At the break of business immediately after statements on parliamentary committee reports, the Chair will direct the Clerk to ring the bells for one minute to call members to the Chamber;
(2) Once the bells have finished ringing, the Chair will invite Bangerang and Wiradjuri Elder, Geraldine Atkinson, elected Co-Chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and Nira illim bulluk man of the Taungurung Nation, Marcus Stewart, elected Co-Chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria to attend on the floor of the House;
(3) The visitors may carry into the House possum skin cloaks, wooden message sticks, wooden digging sticks, and other objects or artefacts approved by the Speaker;
(4) The Chair will invite Co-Chair Atkinson and Co-Chair Stewart to address the House in English and Aboriginal languages to explain what the treaty process means to them, their families and Victorian Aboriginal communities and how it may support reconciliation to benefit all Victorians;
(5) During the addresses, one of the visitors will read out the names of members of the First Peoples’ Assembly—
(a) the names of the members of the First Peoples’ Assembly must be provided to the Speaker at least one day in advance;
(b) after their name is read out, each member of the First Peoples’ Assembly may attend on the floor of the House entering via the door closest to the bar of the House, walking directly through the Chamber and exiting via the door behind the Chair;
(c) members of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria may carry with them possum skin cloaks, wooden message sticks, and wooden digging sticks, and other objects or artefacts approved by the Speaker, and they may clap their objects or artefacts as they walk through the Chamber;
(6) At the conclusion of the addresses, the visitors will leave the floor of the House; and
(7) The House will immediately proceed with Government Business.
The Treaty Authority and Other Treaty Elements Bill 2022 is the result of work alongside Victoria’s Aboriginal community through the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria—a significant body of work, I should add, with a lot of effort and time and passion poured into it. The bill will allow the Treaty Authority to be established as a truly independent umpire to oversee negotiations between the government and Aboriginal Victorians. The 31 members of the First Peoples’ Assembly, covering every corner of Victoria, have contributed to the development of the Treaty Authority model and through that of this bill. This is self-determination in action, and it is something that we should all be extraordinarily proud of in this place. It represents a genuine partnership between the state and Victorian First Peoples.
Given this partnership, I feel it is appropriate that the elected co-chairs of the assembly, Bangerang and Wiradjuri elder Geraldine Atkinson and Nira illim bulluk man of the Taungurung nation Marcus Stewart, be invited into the chamber at the commencement of the second-reading debate. I know we typically reserve only the most special of occasions for ceremonial practices like these, but this is absolutely worthy of that distinction, and I thank members in this place for their cooperation. The co-chairs will be invited to make a short address in English and Aboriginal language to explain what the treaty process means to them as well as their families and the Victorian Aboriginal communities more broadly and how it may support reconciliation to benefit all Victorians long into the future. The co-chairs will also read the names of the members of the assembly and invite them to walk through the chamber. This really is an opportunity for Aboriginal people to have a true voice in this place that has been denied them for hundreds of years, but I think it is also a way of demonstrating the partnership that has been poured into this model and of course this piece of legislation as well.
There is precedence for this motion. In 2018 the former treaty advancement commissioner, Jill Gallagher AO, and the chair of the treaty working group, Mick Harding, were invited by this chamber to address the house ahead of debate on the Advancing the Treaty Process with Aboriginal Victorians Bill 2018, a moment that will remain memorable for many of us in this place, and I think it was an important step forward. I want to in advance thank members for their consideration and hopefully cooperation on this motion, which I genuinely believe should be a source of pride for all in the chamber. This is a truly significant piece of legislation. It represents self-determination in action, as the First Peoples’ Assembly itself has said; it represents government doing things differently, which is ultimately what the treaty process will require of us; and it is a historic step forward to resetting the relationship between the state and Victoria’s First Nations people.
Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (10:08): I rise to support the Minister for Aboriginal Affair’s motion to have the co-chairs of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria attend the chamber and all the other 29 members of the First Peoples’ Assembly come through the chamber. If my memory serves me correctly, I think the Liberal Party actually had Wayne Phillips as the first man of Indigenous descent as a member of Parliament in here 20-something years ago, so it is not without precedent that we have had representation from the Indigenous community in this chamber in the past.
I share the comments from the minister about the aspirations of our Indigenous community here in Victoria, and particularly about actually delivering on the ground for local communities. We do not want to see a disconnect between the bureaucrats in Melbourne in this process and our local communities, and good outcomes for our local communities. On this side of the chamber, and I would suggest on the other side of the chamber, we want to make sure that this process not only delivers on the aspirations of our Indigenous communities but actually makes a meaningful contribution to the Closing the Gap indicators—to think that we still have our Indigenous community over-represented in the justice system, they are disadvantaged in our education system and they do not attain the same rates as the rest of the community here in Victoria. Particularly I know as a local member the issue of Indigenous housing is a critical issue we regularly deal with in my office, particularly for young mums with children who are victims of domestic violence, who are really struggling to get housing when they leave an abusive relationship. So we want to make sure as we work through this treaty process that it actually really delivers for those people on the ground in our communities. Quite a few of the members on this side, the regional members on this side, have large Indigenous populations in their communities and are very focused on making sure the things I am talking about can happen.
While I have got the opportunity to speak, we have a real situation in the community of Koondrook, where faceless bureaucrats in Melbourne are taking the local elders’ names in vain, saying that they are actually opposing the building of a new kindergarten on a site there. The local elders are absolutely supportive of the community and that new kindergarten, but again we have this disconnect between people in Melbourne, who want to effectively play Indigenous politics to the disadvantage of the Indigenous community, and the elders in that community, who say, ‘We are part of this community. We want to work with our community to achieve these outcomes for the whole community, because we’ve all grown up together’. But there are people who are using a wedge in that community, and I am sure there would be other examples if other members had the opportunity to speak where it is actually not working on the ground for people.
We are very focused on making sure that as we work through the treaty process, as we work through the truth telling, it delivers for the Indigenous community in the communities where they have grown up and they live and interact, play sport and do all the things they do in those communities. It has to deliver at the ground level for our Indigenous community. We look forward to welcoming Marcus Stewart, Aunty Geraldine and the other members of the First Peoples’ Assembly onto the floor here in a couple of weeks time.
Motion agreed to.