First Nations

This country is a crime scene. Land theft, murder, torture, enslavement, denial of liberty, wage theft, sexual assault, social destruction, cultural desecration and the kidnapping of children are at the heart of Australia’s founding. Australian capitalism was built on this dispossession, and the same system that stole First Nations land and labour still profits from mining, logging and agribusiness on stolen Country today. The ongoing oppression of First Nations people and the exploitation of the working class are products of the same system. Victoria’s Treaty process, while a step forward in principle, remains hollow in practice: incarceration rates keep climbing, children keep being removed into out-of-home care, and land and wealth remain overwhelmingly in private and corporate hands. Words and symbolic recognition are not enough.

What we think

1. Australia was founded as a colonial-settler state, through invasion and dispossession of First Nations peoples, and Australian capitalism developed through further dispossession and genocide of First Nations people.
2. Sovereignty over land, water and sky was never ceded.
3. There has never been adequate redress for the systematic crimes committed against First Nations people.
4. Treaty processes are only meaningful if they deliver material change not just symbolic recognition alongside continuing incarceration, child removal and dispossession.
5. First Nations people continue to endure profound oppression, discrimination and racism.
6. The criminal justice system in particular is racist and brutalises First Nations people.
7. First Nations people have the right to self-determination in the economic, political and cultural spheres; their claims to sovereignty and land rights supersede the property ownership claims of private businesses.

We’ll fight to

1. Extend the powers of state-wide and local Treaties and support and implement the demand for increased First Nations control over First Nations affairs.
2. Establish a reparations tax on commercial and investment properties as a contribution to funding land theft reparations for First Nations people.
3. End the contemporary stolen generation by reducing the number of First Nations children in out-of-home care.
4. Acknowledge the Indigenous Stolen Wages Preliminary Investigation and establish a scheme to make payments to workers and the families of deceased workers who had wages and assets stolen, managed or withheld.
5. Increase targeted spending to rapidly equalise the health, education and socio-economic outcomes of First Nations and non-Indigenous people.
6. Increase access to First Nations legal, health and social support services.
7. Protect cultural rights and provide greater support to retain and restore culture and languages lost due to colonisation and genocide, including by funding schools to teach First Nations languages.
8. Victorian students should be taught about invasion and the systemic historical and continuing injustices perpetrated against First Nations people and their resistance.
9. Recognise January 26 as Invasion Day.
10. Implement all recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Bringing them Home Report, and the Yoorook For Justice and Transformation Reports.