First Nations Voice, Treaty, Truth

The Hon. L.A. HENDERSON (15:19): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs regarding election commitments.

Leave granted.

The Hon. L.A. HENDERSON: The government has committed to Voice, Treaty and Truth. My question to the minister is: can the minister advise when Truth and Treaty will be implemented and how the government intends on delivering this election commitment?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:20): I am happy to answer this for at least the sixth or seventh time—the exact same question—but I can understand that an opposition sometimes struggles for questions, so I am happy to answer it once again.

As I have informed this chamber before, we are committed to implementing the Uluru Statement in a state-based way. The first part of that, as many who were involved at the Uluru dialogues and those who have written and thought about it since, is the Voice component, which has now been implemented and voted on in South Australia. The other two components, as I have told this chamber a number of times before, we are keen to seek some views from the Voice on how we proceed with those.

As I have informed the chamber over and over and over again, we were the first jurisdiction in Australia to start Treaty discussions, back in 2016 I think. They were stopped when there was a change of government, but we are looking forward to restarting those. In terms of a time line, this is what we are going to do: we are going to talk to Aboriginal communities, we are going to seek the views of the Voice. I know that those opposite think it's a good idea to do things to Aboriginal people, not do things with them by talking to them, but that's certainly not what we are going to be doing.