Victorian Treaty Advancement Commissioner Jill Gallagher visited Horsham on Tuesday to meet with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community members to discuss what a treaty could look like.

Her role as commissioner is to set up and establish a fully-elected Aboriginal representative body in Victoria, which will work alongside the government to establish a statewide treaty negotiating framework.

The proud Gunditjmara woman stressed the historic significance of her task.

“The framework will be like the rule book, so to speak, when it comes to treaties,” she said.

“It will determine who can negotiate treaties, and what’s on the table and what’s off the table, from both a state government point-of-view and a community point-of-view.” 

Ms Gallagher said treaty discussions were long overdue in Australia.

“Our country has never had a treaty,” she said. 

“Two years ago, the state government called a statewide meeting to have a conversation with Aboriginal people in Victoria about what is self-determination was to us and Aboriginal community members present said they wanted treaties.

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“I think Bob Hawke was the last one (to promise a treaty), and he said we would have a treaty in Australia by 1990, so that was just another broken promise.

“What was different about this time was that the state government didn’t dismiss it, they said they wanted to explore what it would look like.”

She said role of the Treaty Roadshow was to inform people about the impact a treaty would have.

“It’s really important that people are fully informed and that they have the facts, not the myths,” she said.

“What I hope to achieve out of the Treaty Roadshow is to continue that dialogue with people.

“It’s also about assuring them that treaties aren’t about their backyards or their farms.

“This treaty could be about true recognition. This country has a history and some of it’s not nice when you look at colonisation and the impacts it had on Aboriginal people throughout the country.”

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She said it was important to have a large variety of people voicing their views.

“We cannot have just one treaty for the whole of Victoria, there have to be multiple treaties,” she said.

“It can be done. The Aboriginal people in British Columbia, in Canada, did it and I believe we can learn from what they did.

“I want to test the local Aboriginal community with some challenges I’m having and whether they have some answers for me.

“We need an Aboriginal Elders’ voice in the structure, and I want to ask the local community here how that can happen.”

She said a lot of work had already happened to get to this stage.

“The last two years of work by the treaty group and the Bill that is currently in front of Parliament, that’s all hard work that a lot of Aboriginal people have put into to start to develop a mechanism so that treaties can be negotiated,” she said.

“I can’t even begin to think about how long the development of a treaty framework will take.

“(The body) will need to have ongoing conversations with traditional owners and the general population about what’s involved, so it could take a while.”

The Representative Body needs to be established by July 2019.