Victoria’s Treaty: A Woke Gesture That Defies the People’s Verdict, By James Reed

In November 2025, the Victorian Labor government signed what it proudly calls Australia's first-ever treaty with Aboriginal people. With all the solemnity of a royal coronation, Premier Jacinta Allan and a handful of Indigenous leaders put pen to paper, promising "truth-telling," a permanent First Peoples' Assembly, and a vague commitment to "healing." The United Nations applauded, inner-Melbourne Twitter lit up with crying emojis, and the commentariat declared it a historic triumph.

Two years earlier, in October 2023, the same state voted No to the Voice to Parliament by a clear 55–45 margin. Every single state and territory rejected the proposal; nationally it went down 60–40. Victoria's No vote was not some rural redneck aberration: it was delivered in suburban seats, regional cities, and even in Labor heartland. The message from the electorate could not have been clearer: Australians do not want new, constitutionally entrenched or quasi-constitutional Indigenous political structures.

Yet here we are. The political class has simply moved the goalposts from Canberra to Spring Street and declared that the people's verdict does not apply to them.

This is not reconciliation; it is defiance dressed up as virtue.

1. Democracy? Only when it suits

The Victorian treaty process began in 2016, well before the Voice referendum. Fair enough, governments can run long-term projects. But once the Australian people had spoken in the most unambiguous democratic exercise on Indigenous recognition in our history, any responsible government would have paused and reflected. Instead, Victoria accelerated.

The treaty was rushed into law within weeks of the second anniversary of the referendum defeat, as if to rub salt into the wound. The message from the government is unmistakable: "You, the voters, got it wrong. We know better. We will deliver the elite consensus anyway — just at state level, where you can't stop us with a referendum."

That is not leadership. It is contempt.

2. Truth-telling as ideological theatre

The centrepiece of the treaty is the Yoorrook Justice Commission, which has already labelled aspects of Australian history "genocide" and demanded sweeping reparative measures. Its final report in 2025 was a 2,000-page exercise in moral absolutism, light on nuance and heavy on guilt.

Truth-telling sounds unassailable — who could oppose truth? In practice, it is a one-sided courtroom where British settlement is prosecuted, evidence of Indigenous violence or complexity is sidelined, and the conclusion is pre-ordained: modern Australia is built on original sin, and the only remedy is permanent racialised governance.

Most Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, want practical outcomes, better health, education, jobs, and safer communities. They do not want an eternal grievance industry funded by taxpayers and staffed by the same professional activists who lost the Voice campaign.

3. A third chamber by stealth

The new First Peoples' Assembly is elected only by Aboriginal voters, sits permanently, and will have a formal role in scrutinising all legislation that affects Indigenous Victorians. That sounds suspiciously like the Voice, only without the bother of asking the public.

John Pesutto was blunt: "This is the Voice through the back door." He's right. The Assembly will enjoy privileges no other group in Victoria possesses. Over time, expect demands that its "advice" be binding, or that it receive a block of dedicated seats in the state parliament. The ratchet only turns one way.

4. The Indigenous majority that doesn't exist

Advocates insist this enjoys overwhelming Indigenous support. That claim is slippery. The Assembly elections have turnout below 15% of eligible Aboriginal voters in some regions, and many traditional owners in Victoria explicitly rejected the process. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Lydia Thorpe (before she quit the Greens), and Warren Mundine have all criticised state-based treaties as divisive, lawyer-enriching stunts that deliver little to grassroots communities.

When even prominent Indigenous voices say "not in my name", it is arrogant for a Labor government in Melbourne to claim it speaks for "First Peoples".

5. The real legacy of the No vote

The great unspoken truth is that the 2023 referendum loss was not a vote against recognising Indigenous history or improving Indigenous lives. It was a vote against entrenching racial division in our political structures.

Australians are generous and fair-minded. They will fund schools, hospitals, and jobs programs targeted at disadvantage wherever it occurs. What they will not accept is a new political class telling them that democracy must now be mediated through racial identity.

Victoria's treaty ignores that lesson. It is the elite saying: "We lost the argument, so we will impose the policy anyway."

History will record this moment not as reconciliation, but as the point at which Australia's governing class openly declared that referendum results are optional when they offend progressive orthodoxy.

That is a far greater wound to our democracy than any historical injustice the Yoorrook Commission could ever catalogue.