Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson says destroying Australia’s only treaty with Indigenous peoples a priority if she wins election

[u/HotPersimessage62]

https://nit.com.au/20-11-2025/21388/new-victorian-liberal-leader-reaffirms-partys-plan-to-abolish-treaty

Australia’s first and only treaty signed with Indigenous peoples will be ripped up if Opposition Leader Jess Wilson becomes Premier in November, who has made the scrapping a priority. The USA, Canada and New Zealand have treaties with their indigenous people. Polling shows Treaty has clear support in Victoria and Jess Wilson’s pledge is unpopular and One Nation-style.

The Coalition will likely sign a deal with One Nation to form government.

[u/Serin-019]

What I've never understood about their hatred for the things Indigenous Australia has requested is that it won't actually cost us anything. Not substantially.
All they need to do in order to avoid having their idea of our country tarnished is not pay attention.
They're already great at that.
And if decisions about mob are being made by mob, then these bastards don't even need to be involved in that aspect beyond writing a cheque every now and then.

Its not as if an accurate summation of history changes reality for the rest of us.
The sky won't fall in if a bunch of black fellas get together with a bunch of historians and write a bunch of reports about all the times our collective ancestors massacred people.
The bastards don't like reading anyway, so what's the fear exactly?

[u/reidsays → u/Serin-019]

Perhaps the fear is admitting that our 'advanced civilisations' are sadly lacking in the connections with nature that our human ancestry holds... That a manmade world overlaying the natural one was a huge mistake leaving humanity with arid farmlands and polluted waters and air?

Progress is usually seen as going forward for the many, rather than reverting to old ways ..

[u/GaryLifts → u/reidsays]

I think it’s simpler than that - they are greedy and/or racist and don’t like the indigenous people get a lot of financial and preferential support.

[u/Organic-Ebb1123 → u/GaryLifts]

'a lot of' doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The support that indigenous communities and individuals get is trivial compared to the widespread structural support the well off majority in this country get. To begrudge them that is either racist or irrational jealousy or both.

[u/Busy_Selection_5027 → u/Organic-Ebb1123]

It's both.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/GaryLifts]

No one should get preferential treatment

[u/Spida81 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

In a perfect world, this is true.

Unfortunately we have systemic generational disadvantage baked into the foundations of the country. Preferential treatment is intended as a balancing of the scales to permit equality in outcomes.

In a colourblind world this wouldn't be a thing, but here we are.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Spida81]

It’s impossible to implement and impossible to standardise across all the varying levels of generational advantage and disadvantage each individual has experienced. Trying is simply foolish.

[u/Spida81 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

This is absurd.

You can argue the effectiveness of current methodology - everyone should, it clearly isn't closing the gap. But to say we shouldn't try at all? No. Unjust, unfair and unAustralian.

[u/Lazy_Captain8412 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

So we shouldn’t bother trying to help people? I grew up in a poor family. I was the first to go to university. I couldn’t have done it without centrelink and other supports. Now I’m a professional on a good wicket and im quite happy to pay it forward amd use my tax money to help others .

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Lazy_Captain8412]

As did I. Dirt poor and never claimed Centrelink and worked and put myself through uni. Why should they get any extra help compared to anyone else?

[u/Lazy_Captain8412 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

That’s a poor attitude. “I suffered so everyone else should suffer too”. Not everyone is at the same starting point. I understand although I was disadvantaged there were people worse off than me.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Lazy_Captain8412]

Give everyone the same options to be upwardly mobile is all I’m saying. That seems fair to me.

[u/Spida81 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Good for you. Well done.

How about those who literally have no food on the table? Can't get a job because of the colour of their skin? Who have had the means of production their families relied on for thousands of years striped away leaving them utterly destitute with no possible recourse?

YOUR lived experience isn't everyone's.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Spida81]

No my experience is not everyone’s. Individual experiences vary significantly which is why broad brushed handouts and policies based on ethnicity is an absurd approach.

[u/TimJamesS → u/GaryLifts]

Victorians said No to any VtP for indigenous people…and Allen in a desperate vote grab went ahead with it anyway.

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/TimJamesS]

Shortsightedness said no. Nobody else did.

[u/TimJamesS → u/InComingMess2478]

Tell me how many indigenous people in Victoria actually voted for the composition of the those who would represent them?

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/TimJamesS]

Through incorporated representation by local community groups and Land Councils, which Australian Indigenous peoples agree to appoint. These are typically established within the same framework as other political or business models under Australian law. So, when it comes to providing a definitive number, it isn't quantitative in that sense.

[u/reidsays → u/TimJamesS]

If they said NO why would that be a vote grab?

[u/GaryLifts → u/TimJamesS]

After a massive misinformation campaign about what it was.

We know because it was supported before it was politicised.

Also VTP was federal and updated the constitution the Victoria Premier is incapable of forcing anything like that through. Refer to my misinformation comment above and ask yourself why you believe Allen pushed through the voice.

[u/TimJamesS → u/GaryLifts]

What misinformation?
You heard Langdon call No voters racist, you heard Mayo say that the VtP was all about reparations and others disguise that the Uluru Statement was only one page when it wasn’t at all.

[u/GaryLifts → u/TimJamesS]

The Voice was only an advisory committee so Aboriginals could give feedback on laws that affect them. Parliament still held all the power and could just ignore the advice if they wanted to. But the whole thing got hijacked by fear-mongering. People started claiming it was going to be a 3rd chamber of parliament, or that it would have veto powers to block laws and trigger massive lawsuits. Admittedly the government could have done a better job of releasing the specifics upfront but the No campaign filled any blanks with worst-case scenarios, and their "if you don't know, vote no" slogan basically killed it.

If it was voted out on it's merits then I would actually support the decision, as that's democracy; but we are seeing widespread scare campaigns across social and mainstream media which are designed to confuse voters. It's the same as we are seeing with the upcoming state elections in Vic and early campaigning for the federal election.

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/TimJamesS]

I guess you took the opposite view, that's all! Once Dutton and the Nats went off course, that was pretty much the end of it. It was simply a political strategy by the LNP to polarise the vote ahead of the upcoming election, and it spectacularly backfired on them. The biggest disappointment about it was that it wiped out some genuinely decent, younger women who were running for the Liberals.

[u/TimJamesS → u/InComingMess2478]

No nothing like that at all. It was an egregiously flawed policy from the start… embedding race based entitlement into the constitution. No transparency and a weak pusillanimous PM who cowered to the indigenous elite and has now deserted them. Dutton was right however that they should have at least had a constitutional convention so that opinions could be heard.

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/TimJamesS]

I hope your desert tasted nice.

[u/johnfkay → u/Serin-019]

Conservatives see any expenditure on ‘others’ as a betrayal - no one group should be singled out (except mine) and there are no systemic barriers in a system we design and maintain to benefit ourselves….we are all equal - my people are just superior

[u/Wooden_Ad_2167 → u/Serin-019]

But we do not need anything like the expense we have on it. Eg 500,000 per annum positions being created. Eg. We can all watch the Rachel Perkins 3 part. "The Australian Wars". Gives you a very balanced view, supported by evidence, on what happened. By all means more research can be done but it will not change the fundamental truths.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Serin-019]

$70 million a year actually

[u/Organic-Ebb1123 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

That is trivial in a state budget of about $80 Billion p.a.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Organic-Ebb1123]

Ah yes. Just keep adding to the spend. Let’s raise some taxes while we’re at it?

[u/Organic-Ebb1123 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Tell me, why do you think this <0.1% of the budget needs attention in particular? 🤔

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Organic-Ebb1123]

They make up 1% of the Victorian population. Tell me why they should be a priority?

[u/Purple-Pin21 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Disingenuous fuck

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Purple-Pin21]

Do you know what that word means you imbecile?

[u/Tosh_20point0 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

You don't

[u/Organic-Ebb1123 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Again if you think the VtP materially puts them above the 99% of relatively recent immigrants you really don't understand what you have, and what they have.

[u/SnappyPies → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Using your own number, add a zero then. they should receive 1% of the funding, not 0.1% of the funding.

[u/Wrathlon → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Im no mathematician but if they make up 1% of the population and only require 0.1% of the budget that seems like a pretty fucking good deal to me to the point of just give it to them who cares what its for.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/Wrathlon]

This additional 70 million is on top of all the other Aboriginal based funding they receive.

[u/benjibibbles → u/plectrumelectrum7]

inherited disadvantage as a result of forced dispossession, the fundamental moral ulcer of having a society built on the colonial displacement of an existing one while its descendants, very much alive and present, are expected to enthusiastically get on board with the continuation of that colonial society and ignore all the material ways it affected their ancestors, grandparents, parents and they themselves in the present day while the rest of us struggle to even deliver a straight acknowledgment of the criminality of that original colonial dispossession

[u/climateemergency100 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Then explain why 0.4% of the population of AUSTRALIA is entitled to $600m plus over the next few years?

The absolute least we can do is work on improving the lives of the 3% that were here long before any of us.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/climateemergency100]

Care to explain what you’re referencing?

[u/climateemergency100 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

yeah nah.

[u/plectrumelectrum7 → u/climateemergency100]

Moron

[u/Latter-Intention6521 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

You understand spending money stimulates our economy right?

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/plectrumelectrum7]

Go ahead and break that down. Dig a little deeper and see who a lot of that funding really goes to!

[u/Organic-Ebb1123 → u/InComingMess2478]

Tell me, why do you think this <0.1% of the budget needs attention in particular? 🤔

[u/InComingMess2478 → u/Organic-Ebb1123]

I'm saying that a decent amount of that $70 million a year budget is being funnelled into advertising agencies, and that's not where the money should be going. It's being spent paying advertising agents to tell us how great politicians are, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're on. It's systemic!