Four months after treaty, the sky hasn’t fallen in. Ngarra Murray says we have nothing to fear

Ngarra Murray is disheartened but not surprised that for the first time in a Victorian state election, the aspirations of her people will this November be squarely on the ballot paper.

The Coalition’s promise to tear up within 100 days of coming to government Victoria’s freshly inked treaty with its First Peoples and the rise of One Nation – a party founded on resentment towards Indigenous Australians – presents voters with a blunt choice on whether to support or refuse what Aboriginal people have already chosen for themselves.

Murray’s message to voters is they have nothing to fear from the historic agreement she helped negotiate last year as co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly.

“We’ve got a treaty in place, and the sky hasn’t fallen in,” she says. “I encourage all people to walk with us on this journey because it is about our coexistence.”

Gellung Warl, the Aboriginal governance structure created by treaty, will come into force on May 1. From Saturday, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in Victoria or connected to mob here can start voting to elect a new First Peoples’ Assembly, a representative body which under treaty will assume broad powers of oversight and access to government decision makers.

After serving seven years on the assembly and since July 2023 as co-chair alongside Rueben Berg, Murray is not standing for re-election. In an exclusive interview, she reflects that after advocating and agitating for treaty for decades and finally securing one, Aboriginal people will this year campaign to preserve it.

“We have got so much support in the unions, so much support across multicultural communities and the mainstream,” she says. “We know we can mobilise and have that support on hand if needed.

“That is going to be really vital leading up the [state] election.”

Murray has met with Jess Wilson since she became opposition leader and has made clear her disappointment in the Coalition’s plans, if elected, to rescind the state’s treaty legislation and establish a new government department and advisory committee to administer Aboriginal affairs.

Before she was elected leader, Wilson expressed concern that Gellung Warl was “expressly designed” to expand its authority. “The open-ended and deliberately iterative nature of this bill should concern all who value the rule of law and the separation of powers that underpin our democracy,” she told parliament last year.

In Queensland, Premier David Crisafulli upon coming to office in 2024 made good on his election promise to scrap the state’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry and repeal the Path to Treaty Act legislated the previous year. The inquiry was just five months into its work when it was abolished.

In Victoria, the treaty process began in the first term of the Andrews government with the passage of its first enabling legislation in 2018 and establishment of the Treaty Advancement Commission. Since then, the First Peoples’ Assembly has run for two full terms, and the Yoorrook Justice Commission completed its investigation and published its First Peoples’ narrative of Victoria’s history since colonisation. A treaty has been negotiated and signed and is underpinned by legislation.

The First Peoples’ Assembly estimates the cost of all this runs to about $700 million and that tens of millions of dollars more would need to be spent on winding up the treaty architecture and the opposition’s proposed bureaucracy.

“That wouldn’t be ideal when we have got a cost-of-living crisis,” Murray says. “I think all Victorians would understand that wouldn’t be the right approach.” The annual operating budget for Gellung Warl is legislated at just over $70 million for the first full year of operations and indexed to increase annually by 2.5 per cent.

Rescinding the Treaty laws would require the support of both houses of parliament. It is unclear whether an incoming government could tear up Treaty document signed by Murray and all First Peoples’ Assembly members last November.

Murray says the surging support in One Nation is driven, in part, by the same forces unleashed during the failed referendum campaign for an Aboriginal Voice to federal parliament. During that campaign, there was a pronounced increase in openly racist sentiment, particularly online, directed at Aboriginal people.

“I felt that growing up, it has always been there,” she says. “But we saw it rear its ugly head through the referendum, and that was absolutely brutal. That was probably the worst I’ve seen it, and it gave people social licence.

“We’ve seen the whole movement of the Nazis here in Victoria, we’ve seen the rise of One Nation, we’ve seen more racism in the regions. A lot of our communities haven’t recovered from that. It’s been absolutely horrific to see and so disheartening.

“That’s why the Yoorrook Justice inquiry was so important – to draw attention to racism and some of the atrocities and injustices that our people have faced for a long time in this country. As a black woman with black kids, I see it played out day to day. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done for us to mature as a country and move forward to where we can start to heal this nation.”

Murray says she decided at the end of last year to step down from the First Peoples’ Assembly to prioritise family. She is a mother of four children, the youngest of whom is 10. “Treaty is all she knows,” she says. “She’s a treaty kid.” Treaty has also been a part of Murray’s family since before she was born.

Pinned to the door of Murray’s office is a copy of a letter her grandfather John Stewart Murray wrote in 1988 to then-premier John Cain. “It’s time your government made some real endeavour for a settlement or a treaty agreement on our clans,” the letter reads.

Murray’s great-grandfather is Sir Doug Nicholls, a celebrated footballer and Aboriginal rights campaigner. Her father Gary Murray, brother and former AFL footballer Nathan Lovett-Murray and cousin Talia Gulpilil, the granddaughter of renowned actor David Gulpilil, are all standing as candidates in next month’s First Peoples’ Assembly elections.

Rueben Berg is also standing for re-election but if successful, will not nominate to continue as co-chair. The polls close on April 12, and enrolment stays open until the final day of voting. Murray encouraged all First People aged 16 or older to enrol to vote.

Murray says she is encouraged by the number of candidates standing in the assembly elections – there are 81 nominated for 22 seats – and particularly, the number of young candidates including young women offering the chance for generational change in Victoria’s Aboriginal leadership.

“Our people have always been here. No matter who is in government, they are going to have to have those conversations and continue the dialogue. I feel that there’s so much we can offer and nothing to be afraid of.”

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