First Nations Peoples: Truth, Treaty, Voice

All Australians must understand the past of Australia’s history and its ongoing impact on First Nations people before we can all move forward as a healed country.

Principles

The Australian Greens believe:

  1. That all Australians must understand the past of Australia’s history and its ongoing impact on First Nations people before we can all move forward as a healed country.
  2. That the establishment of a Truth and Justice Commission is one of this country's first priorities. The Commission should recognise the essential protocol of the relationship, Sovereign to Sovereign, between the Australian state and all groups of First Nations people.
  3. That there is a diversity of colonial impacts across the country for First Nations peoples and there are many stories that must be told. The impacts of invasion and colonisation have been different across the country. First Nations people continue to feel the social, cultural, economic, spiritual, and physical impacts of the devastations of having their lands, lives, cultures, children, and people taken from them.
  4. That in establishing a Truth and Justice Commission we are ensuring that the work done to date by diverse groups and agencies to remedy the ongoing impacts of colonisation is honoured.
  5. That, given a Treaty has never been negotiated or sought on a federal level with First Nations people, it is time to do so, and that this must be negotiated Sovereign to Sovereign.
  6. Any national consultation process must be fully inclusive and consistent with the United Nations Treaty processes and must be underpinned by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
  7. In accordance with free, prior and informed consent, all First Nations groups should have representation in a national Treaty process.
  8. That the Treaty process will be strengthened by having a broad base of political support across the Australian Parliament.
  9. That First Nations people have the right to self-determine the models by which they are heard and represented in the Australian parliaments and/or governments.

Aims

The Australian Greens want:

  1. To ensure funding is provided by the Commonwealth government to establish a Truth and Justice Commission to:
    1. enable justice and truth telling to occur and be recognised as an essential healing process for the whole of the country
    2. enable the Commission to act as a body to do the work of re-storying, co-designing, and bringing together all the groups, ideas, thinking, history and knowledge relating to this process of justice and healing in order for all to participate
    3. ensure that the Truth and Justice Commission has the power and resources to hold hearings across Australia,
    4. undertake relationship building and engagement, 
    5. ensure all Australians are included and can consider the discussions of the commission, and 
    6. ensure a countrywide communication strategy for all people in Australia is adopted.
  2. To ensure that the Federal Government is required to follow through on the outcomes and recommendations of the Commission.
  3. A treaty-making process that is inclusive of all First Nations peoples and Australians that is self determined by First Nations peoples and undertaken Sovereign to Sovereign.
  4. The body tasked with Treaty making to be fully independent, and funded and empowered to undertake all processes required up to or when the Treaty or Treaties is/are ratified by all Parties.
  5. To ensure that any model of First Nations representation to Parliament and/or government recognises and affirms the sovereignty of First Nations peoples, and must involve genuine representation of First Nations people.

(First Nations Peoples Policy - Truth, Treaty, Voice as adopted by National Conference May 2021. This policy complements and extends the First Nations Peoples policy)