Equality is a central theme of the Australian ethos. Freedom and democracy might round out a handsome triumvirate of the nation’s top three values.
Yet equality is being challenged in Victoria courtesy of the Statewide Treaty Bill 2025. This is the legislation that will enable a statewide treaty (and other treaties) between indigenous Victorians and the state. Safe to say, the Bill has little to do with equality or indeed, democracy. Yet the activist train that has been a long time coming – and stopping all stations – could have largely been halted if a committee within the Victorian parliament was doing its job fully.
The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) exists for two main reasons: the first, to make sure every new Bill entering the parliament is legislatively up to standard in an I’s-dotted and T’s-crossed kind of way. The second is to ensure Bills comply with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006, otherwise referred to as the Charter. The Charter’s first sentence all but explains the essence of the work when it says, ‘all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights’, and ‘human rights belong to all people without discrimination’. It goes on to describe the meaning of discrimination – and its inclusion within the Equal Opportunity Act of 2010 in which race is listed as one of the attributes for which discrimination is prohibited.
Section 7 of the Charter sets out human rights. 7 (2) talks about a ‘free and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom’ and allows for some limitations to enable certain objectives to be ‘achieved’. 7(3) then makes it very clear that ‘nothing in (the) Charter gives a person, entity or public authority a right to limit… or destroy the human rights of any person’. Section 8 talks about equality before the law. You get the drift.
It is why it is so extraordinary, that in the review of a proudly race-based bill, SARC barely mentioned the Charter in its report. The only specific attention it paid to it was in relation to two matters. Simply put, they revolved around ‘spent conviction discrimination’ and whether it is discriminatory for people convicted of certain offences to be disallowed membership of the Gellung Warl (the Victorian Voice), and issues around the tabling of First Peoples’ Assembly reports into the parliament and the affording of parliamentary privilege. It said boo about equality. It was silent about discrimination on race. And it was absent on the impact of the Bill on the rights of non-indigenous Victorians.
All this from a committee whose sole task it is to make this assessment.
The silence is eerie. But perhaps not surprising from a committee of eight – five of whom are from the Labor government and one each from the Legalise Cannabis party, the Nationals and the Liberals.
SARC has ushered through a race-based Bill – intended to function forever – that effectively enables two parliaments, two legal systems, two taxation systems, two funding streams and two standards of FOI and access to information. Instead of being treated as equal Victorians and supported on the grounds of need – indigenous Victorians are being treated differently – on the sole basis of race. They are treated as a ‘collective’ with a blanket remedy offered as a solution to individual problems. No other group of people gets this. No other group of people has asked for it. But now they might.
In the first place, the Bill enables the Victorian ‘Voice’ to exist and sit within the walls of the parliament – addressing the parliament, with direct access to the premier, ministers, department heads and the head of police. It will directly influence legislation. Perhaps the most pervasive element is the requirement for every Bill brought into the House – not only to provide a Statement of Compatibility with the Charter of Human Rights – but a Treaty Compatibility Statement. The statement needs to tackle whether the Bill addresses ‘the unacceptable disadvantage inflicted on First Peoples by the historic wrongs and ongoing injustices of colonisation’.
In modern parlance, it’s gaslighting and it ‘verbals’ the MPs into accepting a highly contestable statement. It gives no merit to the idea that some advantages may also have come from colonisation.
The Bill (and other treaty-related Bills) also demand that Aboriginal lore, law and cultural authority be adopted, respected and seen as equals to Western law.
In relation to taxation, Gellung Warl will be exempt from paying land tax and payroll tax (local council rates are already exempted in other agreements in place in Victoria). Gellung Warl is funded separately – up to $72 million a year by 2028-2029. The ‘independent’ Treaty Authority (of five indigenous people) gets more than $20 million a year. There is the Self Determination Fund paid ‘in perpetuity’, and an infrastructure fund of $20 million in its first year. No other race-based group gets any of this.
So why is it that the one committee – with a singular purpose – completely failed to do its job and check if the Treaty Bill impacted the rights and equality of other Victorians?
It made zero mention of the ‘enduring nature’ of Gellung Warl – and how the premier’s ‘special measures’ directly offend the Federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The Act allows for short-term ‘affirmative action’, not never-ending discrimination.
SARC didn’t question anything about allowing 16-year-olds to vote for the First Peoples’ Assembly (the ‘Voice’ within Gellung Warl) – again, a right not given others – and a corruption of not only equality, but democracy. How can this be allowed when, for example, Gellung Warl will have a say on matters such as raising the age of criminal responsibility, at a time when it decries the number of indigenous people in jail?
Nor did SARC question why there was no definition for the term ‘self-determination’ despite that being the raison d’être for the whole Treaty shebang. It merely noted that the term was ‘not defined in the Bill’. SARC similarly absorbed the Bill’s references to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (Undrip). Undrip is not part of Australian law because it offends the nation’s sovereignty, political and legal systems and pursues race-based separation. Yet SARC simply accepts the terms of the Bill’s explanatory memorandum which extols the virtues of the ‘First Peoples’ Assembly and ‘its functions…in accordance with Article 3 of Undrip’.
Victoria is adopting a UN document when it is expressly incompatible with the Australian constitution.
Quite clearly, the Statewide Treaty Bill 2025 offends the Charter and its very basic message that ‘every person has the right to enjoy their human rights without discrimination’. SARC did not question the activist’s vernacular of nations, or traditional owners, or sovereignty. Each of these terms is contestable. But by accepting them as truths, allowing them to enter the parliament, it may subject SARC’s members to a contempt of parliament.
Equality is not a hard term to understand. It is beautiful in its simplicity and in its meaning. The Victorian Allan government and the committee charged with understanding equality and enforcing it have failed us all, including all those in the state who most need help. They have failed those who most need equality. And those who most need their human rights upheld. These things should not be based on race.
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