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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-05-17 Daily Xml
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Treaty

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:23): Supplementary from the original answer: the process is Truth, Treaty, Voice. What role will a truth and justice process play in South Australia's Treaty?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Attorney-General, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:23): I thank the honourable member for her question. She is quite right that the three tenets that came out of the statement from Uluru were a Voice to Parliament—a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament. As I outlined in an earlier question today, the level of support for that right around Australia is increasing. The statistics show over the last three years the level of support for that constitutionally enshrined federal Voice to Parliament has gone from about two-thirds to about three-quarters, according to ABC Vote Compass.

The next tenet from the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a treaty process—a Makarrata process, a Yolngu word for coming together after times of trouble or times apart; a treaty or agreement-making process. The third tenet—and I think it is recognised that none of these have primacy over the other, they are all very important parts—is a truth-telling process. I think it is recognised that in implementing the first of those, the Voice and the Treaty parts, truth-telling has to play a component along the way. It is not just an end in itself but part of everything else you do. Certainly, that is the third element of what we have committed to.

I think it was NAIDOC Week in the middle of 2019 when the Labor opposition—Labor having lost the federal election—decided we couldn't wait to see a change in federal government, to see a Labor federal government, to implement the statement from Uluru, but that if we were lucky enough to be elected as a state government we needed to do our part to progress this. This is what we committed to in opposition and what we are starting to process and will do from government now in South Australia.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart process, the consultations that went on right throughout Australia, were by far the most comprehensive consultation there has ever been with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across this country. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people set out the steps forward: Truth, Treaty, Voice. That hasn't been enacted but we will do that at a state level, and I am really hopeful we will have a federal government that will do that at a federal level.

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