The Greens have introduced a bill to set up a federal truth and justice commission, nine months on from the defeat of the voice to parliament referendum.
The bill was referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs for further review on Thursday – triggering public comment and hearings, and thus a renewed public focus on truth telling.
Greens senator Dorinda Cox said the Aboriginal community wants “some sense of hope” in the wake of the failed voice referendum last year.
Senator Cox said the Albanese government had been “silent” on the way forward in Indigenous affairs, adding she hoped the bill would start a new national dialogue on telling the full history of Australia.
Under the Greens plan, a truth and justice commission would inquire into “matters relating to historic and ongoing injustices” against First Nations peoples, the impacts of those injustices, and make recommendations to parliament.
Cox said the Greens want a wide range of people to be engaged in the co-design of a truth and justice commission, “but we also see a sense of urgency”.
Fellow Greens senator David Shoebridge said “millions and millions of Australians” were still feeling shattered by the referendum defeat.
“And I’ve been asking this government: what’s next? What’s the next step towards the pathway to heal and bring together this country? Surely that next step is truth,” Shoebridge said.
What are the Greens proposing?
Their bill seeks to establish a truth and justice commission with 10 members – one from each state and territory, and two chief commissioners – appointed jointly by the attorney general and the minister for Indigenous affairs.
The “majority” of the members would be First Nations peoples. Commissioners would serve a two-year term and could be reappointed for a second term only.
The commission would investigate historical and ongoing “systemic injustices perpetrated by the commonwealth government” and its agencies, and report on how those injustices would be “acknowledged and redressed in a culturally appropriate way”. It would be required to report its findings and recommendations within four years.
It would also have coercive power to compel a witness to attend a hearing, to give evidence and to produce documents, and could issue search warrants.
What has the government said about it?
The bill was referred to the joint committee with Labor support in the Senate.
Since the failed referendum, the government’s line has been that it is taking time to consult on the way forward in Indigenous policy.
In the Uluru statement from the heart, which on election night Anthony Albanese committed to implementing “in full”, a Makarrata commission was proposed to oversee a process of treaty making and truth telling.
Makarrata is a Yolngu word from northeast Arnhem Land, meaning “coming together after a struggle”.
But that was contingent on a successful public vote to set up the voice to parliament.
Last month, Albanese said he’d go to the Garma festival in Arnhem Land again this August to talk to Yolngu leaders.
“I’ll … sit down with people and talk about a way forward. One of the things that we wanted to do, the whole point of the voice, was listening to people in communities, rather than people in Canberra making decisions going forward, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Albanese said in June.
The Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, said the government was committed to the principles of truth-telling and Makarrata, but that there were a “variety of views on how to move forward”.
“I’ll look at the detail of Senator Cox’s proposal,” Burney told Guardian Australia. “It’s important that the next steps bring people together. After the referendum, we are taking the time to listen and get things right.”
States and territories have processes under way, Burney said.
What are those processes?
The nation’s first and foremost truth-telling process is the Yoorrook justice commission in Victoria. It began in 2022 with a mandate to investigate and record the injustices experienced by First Nations people in Victoria since colonisation.
Yoorrook, modelled on South Africa’s post-apartheid commission, has the same powers as a royal commission to subpoena documents and summon witnesses. Yoorrook is expected to deliver its final report in 2025. It has heard from everyone from the premier, Jacinta Allan, to the descendants of massacre perpetrators.
Queensland’s truth-telling and healing inquiry began on Monday 1 July. Led by Waanyi-Kalkadoon barrister Joshua Creamer, its aim is “a healed and reconciled Queensland based upon a shared understanding of a full and complete history.”
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But the Queensland process may be short-lived. The conservative opposition, now ahead in the polls, said it will abolish the inquiry if it’s elected in October. The Liberal National leader, David Crisafulli, said the inquiry would just “fuel further division” in the aftermath of the failed voice referendum.
Other states and territories have been ambivalent about truth and treaty processes.
The Northern Territory treaty commission’s final report in 2022 recommended the establishment of a three-year independent truth commission. There was little movement until April, when the NT attorney general, Chansey Paech, said it was time to be “fearless” about taking the next steps. Paech said he hopes to finalise a treaty or treaties within the next term of government if he is reelected at the August vote.
In Tasmania, the 2021 Pathway to Truth-telling and Treaty report looked at forms of truth telling in the state. An advisory group was appointed in December 2022 but there is “no set timeframe or predetermined outcome for this work”, according to the Tasmanian government.
NSW is going ahead with treaty consultations. It has just put out a call for treaty commissioners who would have two years to consult across Aboriginal communities before delivering a report on their findings.
NSW set aside $5m in the September 2023 budget to fund this stage of the process, but the Aboriginal affairs minister, David Harris, said it was in its infancy.
“This is not a discussion about what would be in a treaty, it would be about a process for having that conversation,” Harris said in April.
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has also been careful to say that ‘any next steps towards reconciliation’ would be put to the people of NSW at the next election in early 2027.
What exactly is truth telling?
Truth telling is activities or processes that seek to give a fuller account of Australia’s colonial history and its ongoing legacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The broader concept of truth telling emerged in the late 20th century – particularly in places where countries were transitioning from civil war and dictatorships to democracy – from the idea that “transitional justice” could be reached via commissions and other public processes that allowed oppressed peoples to tell their experiences.
There have been prominent public processes in South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda and Northern Ireland, as well as Timor-Leste in 2001, and Canada’s monumental truth and reconciliation commission from 2008 to 2015.
Not all of these processes have led to substantive change. And not everyone is in favour of the commission model, with some advocating localised, “bottom up” approaches designed by Indigenous people, like the annual Myall Creek massacre memorial.
“Revisiting trauma is not the road to justice for Aboriginal people,” the UNSW law professor and architect of the Uluru statement, Megan Davis, wrote in the Monthly in 2021. “Australian history is replete with examples of the commonwealth detaching justice outcomes from ‘truth’.”
How would it work?
Being “realistic” about what truth telling can achieve is important, according to a 2024 study by academics at the University of NSW.
The purpose of truth-telling needed to be clear from the outset, they said. It could be done for healing, to seek justice, or to educate Australians about the fuller history of colonisation.
In their report for Reconciliation Australia about the “barriers and enablers” of truth telling, they found a significant gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous Australians in what they understood truth telling to be, and their role in it.
The report said truth telling needed to be led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, recognise the continuing impacts of the past on their lives today, be ongoing and aim to achieve lasting change.
People needed to feel safe to speak – and to listen, they said.
“Truth-telling may involve difficult emotions and the potential for conflict, and strategies need to be put in place to manage these,” a co-author, Gomeroi Prof Heidi Norman, from the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Group in the UNSW School of Humanities & Languages, said.
The report found that while there was wide agreement among Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that truth telling was an essential step forward, they held different understandings and assumptions that “will need to be carefully navigated”.
“Truth telling is not a panacea that will fix every problem facing Indigenous communities,” the co-lead researcher Dr Anne Maree Payne said.
“It’s one step that is part of a bigger journey towards recognition and reconciliation, not a destination in itself.”
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