Treaty in Victoria: a report from 2025 Delegates Conference speaker Rueben Berg

‘I’m pleased to be able to share with you that we are getting very close, here in Victoria, to the first statewide Treaty, which will be the first Treaty of any kind in this entire nation.’

So began Rueben Berg, co-chair of the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria, in an address to ANMF (Vic Branch) Job Reps and HSRs at the 2025 Delegates Conference.

Below is an edited extract of Reuben’s address, in his words.

Self-determination

The first People’s Assembly is a democratically elected group of Traditional Owners across Victoria. We’ve been chosen by our community to represent them on this journey towards Treaty. It’s been a journey that we’ve been taking for a number of years, and it’s built on the pivotal foundational idea of self-determination: the simple notion that First Peoples should make decisions about First Peoples’ business, that Aboriginal peoples are the experts on Aboriginal matters, and that if you want to find out the best ways to improve things for Aboriginal health, talk to Aboriginal peoples.

Truth-telling

A key pathway towards Treaty in Victoria has been the conversation around truth. It was identified early in our journey that if we wanted to pursue Treaty we needed to make sure that we had truth first.

The truth-telling process involved First Peoples – and others – coming together for the First Peoples-led Royal Commission, the Yoorrook Justice Commission, to share their truths about the impact of colonisation. It’s really powerful to have on the official public record now the true story of First Peoples’ experiences as told by First Peoples.

That truth telling is key to help the broader understanding about why we actually need the Treaty. It’s about recognising that so many barriers have been placed in the way of First Peoples across generations, across decades, that has led to the discrepancies we see in health and other socioeconomic outcomes today.

And it’s through self-determination that we hope to remove those barriers so that we can get better outcomes for First Peoples, better outcomes for all Victorians. So through Treaty, we’re going to make sure that Aboriginal people are in the driver’s seat to make decisions about things that directly affect them.

Treaty negotiation framework

This Treaty-making process hasn’t just sprung up overnight. The formal negotiations did just start in November last year, but we’ve been building on lots of work that’s been going on for generations before us.

The first key thing that was established by the Assembly, as well as the Yoorrook process back in 2019, was the Treaty negotiation framework. This is the rule book for Treaty-making in Victoria, setting out the rules for how Treaty will operate, and the principles of how people undertaking Treaty must engage with one another.

It has a focus on good faith, transparency and accountability. And it has identified two different types of treaties that will work in parallel in Victoria:

• Traditional Owner treaties, focused on rights around land, water and culture
• the statewide Treaty, looking at systemic reform more broadly.

Self-determination fund

When you sit down to negotiations and one side has all the resources, that doesn’t lead to fair negotiations. So another pivotal feature of the Treaty process is the self-determination fund: a pool of resources controlled by First Peoples to support Traditional Owners on their journey towards Treaty-making.

We also have larger aspirations for this self-determination fund to deliver wealth and prosperity for all First Peoples. For too long now, First Peoples have had to go to government and beg and plead for the scraps from the table. We’re creating this self-determination fund so that we have the economic independence to pursue the issues we think are best placed for the needs of First Peoples.

Treaty Authority

Another key component of Treaty-making in Victoria has been the establishment of the Treaty Authority, an independent body able to resolve disputes, to make sure that all parties are following the principles around transparency and good faith, and to make sure that cultural ways of doing business are upheld – that there’s recognition of both law and lore.

Globally informed

Australia is the only Commonwealth country that does not have a Treaty with its First Peoples. That obviously leaves us at a disadvantage, but there are advantages as well – specifically, we can draw from what other nations have done.

So informed by all those things globally that have happened in the past we’ve brought together our own powerful possum-skin cloak of truth that draws together all those positive elements, hopefully puts aside the bits that didn’t work, and builds the strongest Treaty that we can here in Victoria.

Some of those key learnings that we’ve gathered from around the globe include:

• the importance of political representation
• the ability for First Peoples to talk directly to government, to make sure their voices are heard
• making sure First Peoples have decision-making powers about things that affect them
• making sure there’s capacity to influence outcomes
• the importance of weaving Treaty into the fabric of the nation
• the significance of First Peoples-led sovereign wealth funds to build capacity and capability of First Peoples.

First Peoples Assembly’s aspirations

Some of the Assembly’s aspirations for this first statewide Treaty include.

• Enhanced role for First People’s Assembly of Victoria. We want a body that’s not just about negotiating Treaty, but which is recognised under legislation to be able to talk directly to government – to tell them what we think is important to hear about First Peoples’ business.
• Transfer some government decisions to First Peoples: for example, there are some First Peoples roles that sit within government that the ministers appoint. This is great, but we want to see those sorts of appointments handed over to First Peoples so we can choose our representatives.
• An independent accountability mechanism, to make sure the government is delivering on the things they’re supposed to be delivering.
• Skills-building for First Peoples so they can fill roles, within the Assembly but also within the Aboriginal Community Controlled sector and Traditional Owner organisations.
• Ensuring that the powerful truths uncovered by Yoorrook are better shared in our schools, from kinder to year 12.
• Strengthening the role that First Peoples can play in the naming of places and monuments, to better reflect the true history.

I have great confidence these outcomes will not only lead to powerful outcomes for First Peoples but to better outcomes for all Victorians.

Allies: get involved

So that’s the journey we’re on. We believe it will see powerful change. But the First Peoples community represents less than three per cent of this state, so we cannot do this alone. We need our allies to walk with us on this journey to Treaty.

I want all Victorians to be proud of the work that we’re doing here in Victoria through Treaty – we are leading the way in this country.