An Australian Indigenous academic has argued that the Queensland government’s decision to legislate an Indigenous treaty won’t benefit the livelihoods of most ordinary Indigenous Australians.
The comment comes after Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she would introduce a treaty proposal with Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to parliament next week.
The bill would establish a First Nations Treaty Institute and outlines its functions and powers. It would also create a five-member truth-telling inquiry that is “customised to have a culturally appropriate, non-adversarial approach.” This would make Queensland the first state in Australia to legislate the Indigenous treaty.
In Australia, a treaty is understood as a signed, negotiated agreement between Aboriginal people and the government that would recognise Indigenous Australians as the original owners of the land and may include provision of practical rights and compensation.
The Premier’s speech on Feb. 15 at the Path to Treaty event heavily cited Australian history Henry Reynolds, who previously proposed to change the date of Australian day and criticised Australian founding fathers such as Samual Griffith and John Downer for their roles in the “destruction of Aboriginal society.”
Palaszczuk said that according to Reynolds, the idea of a treaty could be traced back to Australia’s colonial past when the British Colonial office proposed to “make treaties” with the Indigenous people.
Attempts to do so had failed, however, because “the British had relied on a description from Joseph Banks during Cook’s expedition of ‘an unoccupied, sparsely populated land,’” she added.
“Reynolds is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think we can agree Australia was not empty when the First Fleet arrived, and there is no evidence Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples gave up their lands willingly.”
The Premier also said that treaties provide people of former British colonies like New Zealand a “shared sense of identity and pride that we should have too.”
“But all efforts to establish one in this country have died in a desert of ignorance and indifference where they have stayed for more than 200 years,” she said.
‘Not Beneficial At All’
But Anthony Dillon, an Indigenous Australian researcher at the Australian Catholic University, said an Indigenous treaty is “not beneficial at all” for Indigenous Australians and “many, many Aboriginal people who are calling for a treaty are already doing very well without a treaty.”“They should be saying, ‘I want my brothers and sisters to have what I have. I achieved it without a treaty, and here’s how I achieved it …’,” he told The Epoch Times.
Dillon further argued that although Australia does not have a treaty like New Zealand or Canada, “doing something because everyone else is doing it is not a good enough reason for doing it.”
“Aboriginal people can share in the pride of identifying as Australian if they want as it is a choice, and indeed many already have done so, and did so without a treaty,” he said.
“I am all for telling truth' whole truth and not just cherry-picked elements of truth. However, advancement is not and should not be contingent on truth-telling.
“It’s great to tell truth, but we should not wait for truth-telling in order to improve the lives of those Aboriginal people who are most disadvantaged.”
Director of Legal Rights Program at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne Morgan Begg previously argued in a commentary on The Epoch Times that “at its best, the issue of a treaty is just incoherent.”
“Indigenous Australians are Australians, and the Australian government can’t sign a treaty with itself.”
“At its worst, the treaty is a divisive idea because it is predicated on the idea that Indigenous Australians are in some way legally separate from other Australians.”
