Diversity Council Australia Panel Webinar

A pathway to National Truth Telling in Australia

Introduction

My name is Katie Kiss. I am a Kaanju and Birri/Widi woman from Far North Queensland. I grew up on Darumbal country in Rockhampton and now live on the lands of the Yuggera People in Magun-dgen (also referred to as Meanjin) which is where I am speaking to you from today.

I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging from all the lands we are coming from today and I acknowledge all First Nations people and non-Indigenous allies who are participating in, or attending, today’s event.

Thank you, Uncle Brendan (Kerin), for your warm and gracious Welcome to Country and for sharing your truth – your story with us. And thank you to the Diversity Council of Australia for inviting me to speak today.

I would also like to acknowledge my co-panellists: Commissioner Travis Lovett, Deputy Chair of the Yoorrook Justice Commission and Shelley Cable, Head of First Nations Strategy at ANZ.

And I also think it’s important to note from the perspective of truth-telling and understanding our history and ongoing advocacy, that last week we commemorated the 60^th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, led by Charlie Perkins and students against racism and injustice.

Social Justice Commissioner Role

First of all, a little bit about my role, to which I was appointed in April last year.

As Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, I have three key functions that are outlined in the Australian Human Rights Commission Act, 1986. They are:

• to monitor the exercise and enjoyment of human rights by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• to promote discussion, awareness, and respect for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; and
• to examine policy and legislation to see whether they recognise and protect the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In addition, I have a responsibility under the Native Title Act 1993 to report to the federal Attorney-General about the operation of the Native Title Act and its effect on the exercise and enjoyment of human rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The role of the Social Justice Commissioner was created in 1992, in response to the findings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the National Inquiry into Racist Violence – two very significant truth-telling undertakings.

There have been six Commissioners appointed since the role’s inception, and over the last three decades, all Social Justice Commissioners have been involved in advocating for a better relationship between First Nations people and Australian governments.

Between 1993 and 2017 Social Justice Commissioners published annual Social Justice and Native Title Reports – these are reports to the federal Attorney General which are tabled in Parliament.

After 2017, the legislation was amended so that annual reports were not required, but instead could be provided to parliament at the Commissioner’s discretion.

These reports are significant in that they document the human rights and policy history of Indigenous affairs over more than 30 years – informed by our people – and charter a course for a fair and just future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

I commend these decades’ worth of Social Justice and Native Title Reports to anyone wanting a history of advocacy around policy and legislation in this area. And to anyone who wants details on how certain policies have played out, the warnings that were given, the alternatives proposed, and the consequences of particular policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Many of the Social Justice and Native Title Reports highlight specific ways we need to acknowledge and address the truths of our nation’s past and to address ongoing disadvantage. These reports address the ‘nitty gritty’ of government policy and practice in terms of how to do this. And, of course, the Bringing Them Homereport in 1997 remains one of the most critical truth-telling publications in Australia’s history.

The History of First Nations Advocacy and the Challenges Today

While Social Justice Commissioners have played an important role advocating to Government over the past three decades, this is in addition to the past 237 years, which has of course seen countless First Nations leaders across the country contribute their time and energy—some dedicating their lives—to doing this work.

Within the last century we have seen advocacy such as:

• the 1934 petition by Yorta Yorta Elder William Cooper, founder of the Australian Aborigines League, for an advocate for First Australians in the federal parliament.
• the campaign preceding the 1967 referendum, which resulted in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being counted in the Australian census
• landmark High Court challenges to secure land rights and native title
• the Yirrkala Bark Petitions and the 1988 Barunga Statement which called for Land Rights, Treaty and Self-determination
• the establishment of national representative bodies
• the adoption of the Declaration in 2009
• the negotiation of the first National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in 2019 after decades of advocacy on Indigenous health
• decades of advocacy on constitutional recognition culminating in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, and
• the campaign for a constitutionally enshrined Voice in 2023.

Awareness of this history of advocacy is part of the truth-telling of this country. The need for truth-telling and governance reforms (including Treaty) has not been recently invented. We have always resisted colonisation and subjugation wherever and however we can. We have worked within the system to try and get fundamental structural reforms, including acknowledgement of our right to self-determination. And we continue to do that. But never in that work have we ceded our Country or our sovereignty. This is an inconvenient political truth for the broader public to be aware of. A higher level of accurate knowledge of Australia’s colonial history does impact the way the broader Australian public feel about our campaigns for rights.

In 2025, we undertake our work in unprecedented times... While, more than ever before, diversity initiatives have become a mainstream element within both public and private corporate structures, we are bearing witness to unparalleled attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) internationally and, if our counter-messaging fails to cut through, this has the potential to spread the spot fires of racist discourse that have been lit around Australia.

Amidst global economic uncertainty, international political conflicts and a cost-of-living crisis, there are those who argue that measures to address the disadvantage of particular groups is divisive, and that experiences of racial discrimination are largely confined to the past. They demand unity (in the form of sameness) on the one hand, while causing division through a denial of difference on the other.

There is no question in my mind that disadvantage amongst the general population should be alleviated.

Neither have I any doubt that the ongoing gulf between the human rights Australia has signed up to internationally, and the codification of those rights into federal, state and territory legislation impacts us all. There is an urgent need for a federal Human Rights Act to protect and promote the rights of every Australian, and this has been the subject of a significant amount of work by the Australian Human Rights Commission over the last five years through its Free and EqualProject.

However, while growing inequality and lack of human rights protections affect us all, the reality is that the severity of their impacts chisel stark patterns. They are deepest around identity markers which make some Australians more likely to experience inequality and discrimination than others. First Nations people, people of colour, women, LGBTQIA people, people with disability, and older persons are all more likely to be subjected to discrimination, and where these characteristics intersect with one another—for example where a First Nations person has disability— individual experiences of discrimination and inequality are likely to be heightened.

As much as some people might want to believe otherwise, the evidence clearly shows that racial discrimination is not confined to the past. It is very much a contemporary phenomenon. Even within the current debates on race, the racism being experienced by First Nations people is ignored, accepted and unchallenged.

Furthermore, disadvantage experienced today stems not only from contemporary prejudices but from the historical discrimination experienced by the generations who have come before us. In the case of First Nations Australians, this differential treatment, alongside a refusal to accept our differences – cultural, social, political and economic - has been profound, and in certain important ways, unique.

For First Nations people—who are statistically the most disadvantaged population group in Australian society—there is a need for urgent action to address the particular circumstances we face. The dispossession of this continent and the subjection of our people to violence, forced migration, the removal of our children, and discriminatory treatment in a plethora of socio-economic and civil contexts has gone largely without remedy. We have not—in the language of justice—been restored, and this remains unfinished business.

Restoration requires us to confront the truth of the state of our nation. Restoration in a sustainable form requires transformed institutional and societal structures – we need system-level reforms that can deliver self-determination and cultural safety, and which acknowledges how enjoyment of the same rights will look different for different groups. Without such reforms, we remain at risk of a system which perpetuates ‘assimilation by default’. A system which continues to cost our people their wellbeing and their lives, and which will cost Australian governments increasing sums of money on continually failing policies.

This is an issue for all Australians – and it’s an issue for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Since being appointed Social Justice Commissioner, I have identified six high-level focus areas to move us forward, and I am currently moving around the country to test these with First Nations communities:

The first focus area is Access to Justice for First Nations communities.

The concept of ‘justice’ in its traditional sense is supposed to be positive. It should be about delivering remedies for breaches of rights – about fairness and equity in the application of rules. However, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s experience of ‘justice’ mostly features the criminal justice or youth justice systems – and it is the opposite of fair and just.

In the justice space, I note the many outstanding unimplemented recommendations of key truth-telling inquiries such as the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the 1997 Bringing them Home Report, Productivity Commission Reports, and the 30 years of Social Justice and Native Title Reports penned by my predecessors.

My second focus area is to promote the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Since the adoption of the Declaration in 2009, the Australian Government has done little to embed the Declaration into the Australian legal framework. Last year the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs made six recommendations in its report on the Inquiry into the Application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Australia. Among them is to develop and implement a national plan to progress the Declaration. A response to the Committee’s report is expected after the next federal election.

In the context of truth-telling and Treaty, as in all areas of policy that affect First Nations people, I want to emphasise how useful the Declaration – or UNDRIP – can be to guiding our way. It doesn’t introduce any new rights – there are no rights included which non-Indigenous people don’t have. It simply explains how the same rights will look different in their enjoyment by Indigenous peoples. And it also provides guidance on how rights intersect in practice for individual human beings. For example, for an Aboriginal child to enjoy the right to education equally, they will require an educational environment that is culturally nurturing and safe – so the right to culture and the right to education intersect.

My third focus area is to support the realisation of First Nations health equality, and particularly to advocate for the need for the ‘transformation of government’ as addressed by Priority Reform 3 in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

In July 2020 Australian governments and the Coalition of (Indigenous) Peaks signed the Closing the Gap Partnership Agreement. The agreement contains 19 socio-economic targets (of which only five are on track) and four “priority reform areas”.

The Productivity Commission has found that Australian governments have not fully grasped the scale of change required to meet their commitments.

Systems failures at government level affect everyone. But systemic racism and structural disadvantage exacerbate system failures for First Nations people, so transforming government, and consequently ‘the system’, is critical to closing the gap and achieving better outcomes for our people.

My fourth focus area is advocacy on Land Justice reform.

Like previous Social Justice Commissioners, I will be providing guidance on the reform of the native title system and connected regimes such as cultural heritage and environmental management.

Relevant to this focus area is also my role engaging with newly established or establishing treaty arrangements.

I won’t talk much on land justice specifically today, but it is important to note that truth-telling and treaty sit squarely in this context of land justice, from which all other rights emerge, and that significant relevant governance work has been done in this context too.

My fifth focus area is building the capacity of the First Nations Human Rights Network.

There is already significant leadership capability and expertise in First Nations communities across the country, and I am listening to our communities and our Elders about what role I can usefully play in building and supporting that.

One aspect of this focus area is increasing our advocates’ knowledge of human rights so that we can effectively use the international human rights framework to progress and realise our rights here at home.

Over the course of the consultations, I have conducted so far, I’ve found huge commitment and enthusiasm to strengthening our national human rights networks and I’m looking forward to helping this develop, and networks flourish.

Coming together to build better futures re-establishes our villages that are necessary for ‘social cohesion’.

The sixth focus area – is advocacy and guidance on the implementation of the three pillars of the Uluru Statement from the Heart—Voice, Treaty, Truth.

Voice, Treaty, and Truth - are no less relevant today than they were before the Voice Referendum in 2023. All three pillars are necessary to advance the rights and recognition of First Nations and none of these have been addressed.

Political and media narratives promoting mis- and disinformation have created division and disunity amongst our people and further strained the relationship between our people and the broader population. If we are to progress improved outcomes for First Nations Peoples, we will need a reframed relationship with Government that is grounded in Truth, Justice, and Healing.

I believe that most Australians have a strong sense of justice but that how this manifests is shaped by their understanding of why a diversity of outcomes for groups and individuals within society exists.

When people are desperately trying to keep afloat and feeling like they’re struggling in ways that their parents didn’t, recognition of others’ greater hardships may not come easily. The structural solutions required are complex and not conducive to short sound bites. When superficial answers are put forward, they can garner appeal despite their lack of efficacy.

In this regard, truth-telling about our history is important because without it, there is a real and growing risk that ahistorical narratives that blinker Australians from the causes of our contemporary reality might prevail.

Truth-telling processes.

Indeed, a clear and consistent theme I am hearing as I travel around the country is the critical importance of truth-telling to moving forward, and that it is indispensable to shaping a First Nations national agenda which delivers a fair and just future.

This country has a gaping wound that requires healing. The treatment must include confronting our collective historical and contemporary history, truth-telling, respect and recognition of differences in lived experience, and a commitment to listen, accept, address and heal.

Like rain after a drought, truth-telling can renourish our political landscape and make our society whole. It has the power to isolate the spot fires of misinformation which have sparked division and hate across the country.

As the former Executive Director of the Queensland Interim Truth and Treaty Body, I am under no illusions that the path ahead will be easy and without set-backs. As you will be aware, the Path to Treaty process in Queensland was dismantled, without consultation, as the first point of business by the incoming Crisafulli Government.

This was a very concerning way to treat a genuine truth-telling process representing years of dedicated work, groundbreaking developments in community engagement, co-design, and guidance on institutional and community ‘readiness’ for truth-telling.

And the Northern Territory Government has also confirmed in the last couple of weeks that the NT Treaty process is now terminated with that government also choosing to ignore the well-considered input of community and subject-matter experts.

Around the country truth and treaty developments are in varying stages of development.

Leading the way, the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Treaty Authority have now made significant progress with the Path to Treaty. In November of 2024, a ceremony marked the opening of Statewide Treaty Negotiations, after significant work over the preceding decade.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission in Victoria—where my co-panellist Travis Lovett serves as a Commissioner—was the first formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria. It delivered an interim report in 2022, a second interim report focused on child protection and criminal justice systems in 2023 and is due to deliver its final report this year.

Outside of Victoria, I note that both South Australia and NSW are also moving on truth and Treaty.

• First speeches were delivered by the South Australian Voice to Parliament in November last year; and
• Treaty Commissioners have commenced their roles in New South Wales and are soon to start an intensive community consultation process

These achievements should be celebrated. They show what can be done and provide inspiration to those in other jurisdictions where Truth and Treaty processes have stalled or are yet to manifest such as is the case in Tasmania and Western Australia.

And at the national level, it has been disappointing that the commitment to begin work on the establishment of a Makarrata Commission has not been fulfilled.

Some believe that post the Voice Referendum, it now lacks the political capital to support it’s progress.

But I have an alternative view, still hanging onto a sense of faith in humanity. Despite the weaponisation of Indigenous issues by political and media actors, and the spike in racism we have experienced since the failed referendum, I do not believe that the majority vote against a constitutionally enshrined Voice represented a repudiation of truth-telling or an abandonment of the cause of First Nations rights more generally, and the evidence supports this.

Polling conducted by UNSW and Reconciliation Australia shows 94 percent of non-Indigenous Australians are ‘highly motivated to participate in truth-telling, to learn about the ongoing impacts of the past on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.’^[i]

The ANU’s detailed analysis of the Voice referendum also found overwhelming public support for constitutional recognition of First Nations Australians generally, for measures to address disadvantage experienced by First Nations people, and for reconciliation.^[ii]

Determined to break the inertia at the national level, I am talking with key truth and treaty stakeholders about how we defend and advance the progress that has been made across the country and how this important work can support the development of a national-level truth-telling process.

A national pathway to truth-telling (and Treaty) would involve a great deal of work and careful consideration, but I believe it would be an indispensable investment in our country’s future.

To heal that gaping wound, and to move our country forward in a way that truly supports unity, respect and reconciliation.

Because of our experience in the jurisdictions, there are now First Nations leaders with detailed knowledge of the foundational principles and the critical steps required. We have the expertise.

What we need is for governments to stop delaying the inevitable, to stop burying the truth of this country and its development – ancient and contemporary, warts and all – to establish a reframed relationship – one built on truth, justice, integrity and healing.

We need our national leadership to a commit to funding the process in full and to a timeframe that meets our needs to heal and reconcile within communities, between communities, and with the broader Australian community.

And we need our allies, like everyone here and bodies like the DCA, to stand with us.

This is for all of Australia.

Thank you