Victoria's Premier Jacinta Allan is today before Australia's first indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry, where she is giving evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission to address injustices against Victoria's first peoples.
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00:00 She has just begun, just in the last half an hour or so,
00:05 begun giving evidence for the first time.
00:08 We're seeing an Australian head of government giving evidence
00:11 at a truth-telling inquiry in Australia,
00:14 the first of its kind here in Victoria,
00:16 initiated by Aboriginal communities.
00:18 This is an Aboriginal-led truth-telling inquiry
00:21 to examine the effects of colonisation
00:23 on Aboriginal people here in Victoria
00:26 and to look at the intersection between the decisions made
00:29 by government and the disadvantage still faced
00:32 by Aboriginal communities right across this state.
00:35 So it was fitting that the Premier arrived here
00:38 to be welcomed by Wurundjeri elders here on Wurundjeri
00:41 country in Collingwood, where the Commission's officers are.
00:44 She was given quite a solemn and welcome reception
00:50 from Wurundjeri elders who initiated a smoking
00:53 ceremony for the Premier and welcomed
00:55 other members of the community that
00:56 have come to hear this significant moment
00:59 in Australian history.
01:01 There are some Aboriginal community members here
01:03 who have waited a very long time to see
01:06 a senior official of this kind give evidence
01:09 to a set of Aboriginal commissioners
01:11 and really be questioned about what the government's doing
01:14 in terms of its many commitments to close
01:16 the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
01:19 in Victoria.
01:19 We might hear a little bit of what the Premier had to say.
01:22 She gave a statement, Ros, to the commissioners
01:24 about the importance of truth telling and owning our history.
01:28 The process of truth telling is a refusal
01:32 to submit to that silence.
01:34 The record this commission will hand down
01:36 will mean at long last the truth of our state's history
01:39 is told--
01:40 the murder, the massacres, the dispossession of culture
01:45 and country, the land taken away,
01:47 the way of life destroyed, the children who never came back
01:50 home, and those who are still trying to find their way back.
01:55 I also want to acknowledge that it's not enough to merely know
01:58 this history.
01:59 We do need to learn from it, and we need to act on it too.
02:03 Bridget, what does this moment mean for Aboriginal Victorians?
02:09 Ros, I think it's complex.
02:11 I mean, this history is really complex for Aboriginal people.
02:13 There are a lot of painful things
02:15 that have been dredged up through this commission
02:17 process.
02:18 I mean, as the Premier's referenced,
02:19 the massacres, the theft of land, the ongoing poverty
02:23 that many Aboriginal people are experiencing,
02:25 the mass incarceration of Aboriginal people.
02:28 This is all the many complex issues
02:31 that this commission is tasked with interrogating.
02:34 So there are complex feelings from community members here,
02:36 but a lot of elders are here in the room
02:38 to hear what the Premier has to say today.
02:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]