The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has promised to establish a treaty with First Nations people that will address historic injustice, while also vowing a crackdown on youth crime that will see more Indigenous children in detention.
Palaszczuk received a standing ovation for her keynote speech at a Path to Treaty event on Wednesday, at which she promised the “historic” treaty bill would be introduced to state parliament next week.
The premier said the legislation will establish a First Nations Treaty Institute and outlines its powers, functions and composition and a five-member Truth Telling and Healing Inquiry.
Palaszczuk’s speech heavily referenced historian Henry Reynolds, whom she said opened her eyes to “very troubling matters in law” that were “buried in Australia’s past” that she “had not read or even heard of at school in Australia”.
She spoke of failed efforts from the British Colonial office and various leaders to establish treaties that had “died in a desert of ignorance and indifference where they have stayed for more than 200 years”.
“Well I am here to tell you, friends, that ends now,” the premier said. “We have this opportunity to change our story and walk together into a much brighter tomorrow.”
Treaty advancement co-chair and Ghungalu man Mick Gooda spoke about being “on the right side of history”, promising a treaty process that would involve community-led negotiations.
Gooda told reporters afterwards that Indigenous Queenslanders did not want to see centralised bodies and lawyers take over the treaty process.
“The only people you’ll hear me talk about is Ghungalu people,” he said. “We’ve taken this view that community have got to negotiate treaty.”
Gooda said this decentralised approach would take time and that the inquiry was unlikely to begin this year, though local truth telling would begin straight away.
“What is the truth in Winton? What is the truth in Taroom? In Rockhampton?” he said.
“We’ve got to empower communities to take control of their treaties. We don’t even know what they are going to put in their treaties, that’s got to emerge over time … There’s no deadline, we just need to take time and take people with us.”
The Palaszczuk government will also next week attempt to legislate its 10-point plan to crack down on youth crime, which was announced in response to the alleged killing of a woman in her home north of Brisbane on Boxing Day. The premier has conceded that “a lot of people aren’t going to like” the plan, which youth crime experts have criticised as a “kneejerk reaction” that will not reduce crime but will see more children locked up.
Queensland leads the nation in youth detention rates and First Nations children are disproportionately represented in the justice system. Figures tabled in state parliament in September show that Indigenous children account for 62% of Queensland’s youth detention population – but made up 84% of those placed in solitary confinement between July 2021 to June 2022.
Palaszczuk said it was a “fair question” when asked if the youth crime crackdown contradicted treaty, but that she remained concerned about serious repeat offenders.
“What we are looking at now is how do we strengthen our NGOs, our non-government organisations, to focus on that 17%,” she said.
While the premier’s words on treaty were warmly received by many Indigenous people at Wednesday’s event, some were uneasy about the government’s approach to youth justice.
“I don’t think we should be locking any kids away, Indigenous or non-Indigenous,” Wakka Wakka man and army veteran James Mi Mi said. “There’s got to be other avenues we can explore.”
Gooreng Gooreng Taribelang woman Grace Sarra, who participated in a panel discussion at the event in her capacity as Reconciliation Action Plan adviser at Paralympics Australia and Netball Queensland, said that truth telling and treaty could help resolve racial issues plaguing the youth justice system in the long term.
“The truth-telling aspect of today can be incorporated into solving those issues, because clearly, something’s gone wrong down the track,” she said. “So let’s look back at our history and figure it out. A lot of the drivers of it are the impacts of colonisation.”
