Charles Pakana (Victorian Aboriginal News):

A bit over a year ago I met up with Kath Brackett, the Director of Community and Sector Development at the Municipal Association of Victoria. Now the MAV, as it’s known, is the legislated peak body that represents Victoria’s local government sector. During that meeting and a bit of a free-wheeling conversation, we both identified a mutual frustration with the state government’s then approach to promoting awareness within local government about the statewide and local treaty process. That process, which has been underway in a modern or formal sense here in Victoria since 2016. During that time, we’ve also come up with a bit of a solution to this and Kath Brackett joins me today on the podcast to talk about that. Kath, thanks for joining me today.

Kath Brackett (Municipal Association of Victoria):

Thank you Uncle Charles. I’m excited to be here.

Charles:

Kath, let’s talk about that initial meeting we had, which to my mind was between 18 and 12 months ago, and from your perspective as the director of community and sector development, what was your driving force to determine that yes, we needed to do something in local government about preparing for treaty.

Kath:

I think the main drive for me was a motivation to make sure that councils had the right information about treaty and that the treaty process didn’t become another site of disinformation and tension and stress within communities, both within First Nations communities, but also within local council communities. So we were very motivated to make sure that we brought the facts to the councils and the facts to the local communities because we were aware that that wasn’t happening, that in fact there was little knowledge about the Victorian treaty process. And in fact even less knowledge about the possibility of local treaties and the role of local council that.

Charles:

Was there any groundswell of dissent that you’d heard from the members of the MAV prior to our conversation that led you to think, this is really the way forward, we need to do something here?

Kath:

I’d certainly had conversations informally with different elected members about First Nations, native title, cultural heritage management plans and the voice. So there had been lots of conversations about the impact of that on local communities and many councilors were reflecting that they weren’t sure how to navigate that in a positive way with their community, and often some mayors wanted to show a lot of leadership in leading that conversation in a positive way.

Charles:

Now, before we actually get back onto the treaty path, let’s digress a little bit because you and I have had a number of conversations over the past 18 months or so about any number of First Nations issues as they apply to local government and the MAV. The MAV by its very nature, is a very white colonial construct. I think you could agree with that.

Kath:

Yes, I do.

Charles:

Since you’ve come on board and you moved across from Banyule City Council to the MAV, how long ago was that?

Kath:

About 14 months ago.

Charles:

There’s been a number of being put in place. Can we talk a bit about that, where the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices are taking and will take more of centre stage in MAV’s decision making and policymaking?

Kath:

Absolutely. So before I came to the MAV, in fact, the board under the guidance of the CEO Kelly Grigsby had established a new strategic plan that was actually very transformative both for the MAV and for the sector. And one of the leading actions in that was to support First Nations relations between local government sector and the broader community sector. So that provided the frame or the authorising environment for the work that flowed from that. And so some of that work has been obviously working in the treaty space, but also establishing an expert advisory panel of First Nations people to advise the board. That’s quite significant because it’s a panel that’s been set up with respect for principles around self-determination and the board has taken the approach that they want to get advice and guidance from First Nations community and people across all of the areas that the MAV is involved in, not just specifically on issues of First Nations.

Charles:

Now, I know this is still a very early days when it comes to that First Nations advisory panel, but how do you see it actually playing out for information to go from that panel or that board out to the broader local government community across Victoria?

Kath:

I think we’ve got a number of panels at the MAV, and so the experience has been that we kind of test ideas with the panel, but we also invite panel members to bring their own expertise to help shape and form the ideas that might drive the policy work of the MAV. It’d be similar in that way except we would see the First Nations panel actually advising across all of the panels. So we’re not imagining that we just have the First Nations advisory panel in their own corner doing their own piece of work. We would see them intersecting across all of the other panels as well.

Charles:

Okay. Let’s get back to Treaty then. The project is currently still in a pilot phase and I will just clarify to the listeners, I’m involved with this project as a Treaty consultant and the First Nations consultant and I’m active within this project, run us through the timetable of the process and the project so far because as I mentioned, we’re still in the pilot phase.

Kath:

So we’ve completed one pilot with one council and we are in the middle of another pilot with another council.

Charles:

Are we allowed to mention Boroondara’s name?

Kath:

Yes, we are. So council one is Boroondara Council and Council two is Mitchell Shire at the moment. So each council was chosen based on information from First Peoples Assembly, Treaty Authority itself, Reconciliation Victoria, et cetera and any other local judicial owners that were involved. It was a bit like often described as a bit of a … so kind of layering where was the best place to have our first connection with the council. We chose Boroondara for lots of reasons. One because they’ve got a strong local reconciliation network, but also that the new councilors had shown a lot of interest in First Nations issues and to use my term, they’re not a usual suspect.

It was important to me to actually work with a council that wasn’t one of the ones that you always leaned on to show leadership in this space and they were fantastic from the mayor down and the executive, they’ve shown a high level of engagement and commitment to the process. We’ve run a session with the executive, we’ve run session with the whole council group and also their decision was to run a bit of a town hall session with the local community where about 300 people turned up.

Charles:

I was at Hawthorn Arts Centre, which was an amazing event.

Kath:

And we’ve generated a lot of resources or artefacts from those sessions that will help inform the pilots as we move out to other councils as well. So we’re actually very grateful for Boroondara’s commitment and level of resources.

Charles:

What were some of the key learnings that came from that early one? I know I’ve got my own set, but from your perspective and MAV’s perspective, what were some of the key ones that really come to mind right now?

Kath:

Taking time. Taking time to make sure that everyone is on the same page and has the same level of knowledge or information. I think I often reflect this myself actually, especially when I’m talking to councilors. I’m of a generation where I didn’t get a good education about indigenous history in Australia. So taking the time to understand that most of the people in the room don’t have the knowledge or haven’t been given the education that, for example, my kids have had through school. So taking the time and going back to explain the why and the basis for why we are having the conversation and why treaty is important.

Also explaining that treaty is actually a state government process. It’s not like an opt-in thing. It’s not like we’re asking them to say, “Yes, we support treaty or no, we don’t support treaty,” it’s helping them to understand the long history that’s got to this point, including the legislative process in Victoria for the treaty conversation.

Charles:

You’ve brought up a couple of points. I’m sorry to butt in, but you had brought up a couple of really important points and that is establishing the difference between 2023 referendum and a treaty process. One was actually, first of all, it was a federal initiative aimed at changing the constitution. And the second one is state-based and it’s not going to be voted on. If you found that there’s a bit of difficulty within some sectors of really grasping that difference where people so often fall back on, “Well, we voted on that overwhelmingly no in 2023.”

Kath:

Absolutely. Not in the two councils that we spoke about a minute ago, but certainly in a much broader sense definitely. And I think it’s quite enlightening for the councils to understand that timeframe. So we actually do do some work initially with council groups explaining the timeframe of treaty and we purposefully highlight the timeframe of the Voice and the Uluru Statement from the Heart and we separate out the federal and state processes and I think it’s actually a moment, like a bit of an aha moment for council groups when they actually realise this isn’t another way of prosecuting a voice. It’s actually a process that’s been in play in Victoria since from memory about 2019, if not before.

Charles:

Well, legislation was introduced in 2018, but actually the modern process started back in 2016, which interestingly predates the Uluru Statement from the Heart by 12 months, so totally different. The other point you brought up, which I think is important to understand this project, is the collaboration between organisations. Now you’ve mentioned MAV and Victorian Aboriginal News, but we’re only two of the players while MAV and we’ve got to give a shout-out to Laura Catapan at the MAV for doing so much of the grunt work there.

Kath:

Absolutely. Laura is the champion.

Charles:

She’s a legend.

Kath:

And she’ll be listening, so shout out to you there Laura and Shorty as well.

Charles:

But the other key partners, let’s just go through some of those because we have brought in the who’s who of the treaty process in Victoria. So from your perspective?

Kath:

First People’s Assembly, number one. Their level of engagement and work with us has been fantastic and we couldn’t have done this without them, the Treaty Authority as well. So the Treaty Authority has been really fantastic in working in partnership, but also in separately coming in a meeting with our MAV leaders like our CEO and President to talk about the role of the Treaty Authority and Reconciliation Victoria who are also helping to mobilise their local networks and their knowledge and local communities as well.

Charles:

Let’s just talk a little bit about how Reconciliation Victoria and the local reconciliation group in Boroondara came to the party and really helped out during that local council’s involvement in the project. They were critical to this, weren’t they just getting out there and sharing the word within the community

Kath:

So that we were able to work with them through their networks, as you said Uncle Charles, to spread the word about what we were doing and what the Treaty process was and also to help build momentum around the big town hall discussion that happened. I think it’s important that we do link in with the local Reconciliation networks because they’ve been doing hard work for a long time and they’ve built a lot of credibility and a lot of connections in local community, which we don’t have as being outsiders to that community.

Charles:

It’s also worth mentioning that we didn’t make mention of the fact of the Wadunjeti Woiwadung involvement because that’s because really they went hand in hand with the First Peoples’ Assembly Victoria, and we’ve been absolutely so fortunate to have Uncle Andrew Gardner, an amazing Wadunjeti elder, who has been really holding our hand along the way the entire process, even as we’re going into another area right now. But just to ensure the listeners that traditional owners are always involved in these, let’s talk a little bit about engaging with traditional owners, whether it’s Tungurung as we do Mitchell and the Wurundjeri with Boroondara and then beyond. What’s the critical importance from MAV’s perspective on that engagement?

Kath:

That the engagement with the council is led by the traditional owners. So a pilot project is exactly that, so it’s different the way that we’ve worked with Wurundjeri and Boroondara as to Mitchell and the Tungurung and then other councils where we work with other traditional owner groups, so it’s absolutely First Persons led and traditional owner led. The way that we engage and even the information that’s shared with the executive, the council and the community more broadly is driven by the narrative of the traditional owner person who’s present with us at the time, which is you said at Boroondara was Uncle Andrew.

Charles:

Andrew, and what’s some of the more positive feedback that you’ve heard from some of the councils? We will get onto some of the negative stuff because I can’t believe it’s all positive, it’s not all roses. But some of the positive feedback you’ve heard

Kath:

Without sounding like I’m a drama queen, people have referred to as being actually life changing, that it was a moment where they actually were able to find words for what they were feeling or had observed or were able to make sense of some of the stuff they hear from community, particularly when the traditional owner, in this case was Uncle Andrew, was talking about his experience, his lived experience, dispossession.

Charles:

Really deep.

Kath:

It was very deep.

Charles:

That was amazing.

Kath:

Very deep. And the generous sharing from a traditional owner to the community is incredibly powerful, and I think that’s a really huge moment of change for people and actually eyeball someone and hear their personal lived experience is quite different to reading something or knowing something second or third hand, but having that deep shared experience that was very generously given, people described to me, as been quite life changing.

Charles:

What about from a local government preparedness perspective? What’s some of the feedback you’ve heard there? Because the whole focus was on educating and helping local governments get prepared for their inevitable involvement in local treaties.

Kath:

I think relief and clarity. Relief I suppose that it’s not going to be a political discussion in their community if it’s well managed. And clarity, that clarity in terms of who has what role and how a local council may or may not be involved in a local treaty process as well. So just relief that it’s not going to be another Voice discussion, which for some particularly rural and regional communities was very divisive and there’s still wounds to that from both First Peoples, but also local communities that it wasn’t going to potentially be another one of those conversations.

Charles:

For sure. What about some of the negative feedback you’ve heard, and that’s just important in a pilot project as the positive. What are some of the key things that come to mind right now as we talk?

Kath:

Think the negative stuff in fairness though often comes from people not understanding what treaty is about. So the negative stuff is things like, “Well, it’s the protection of private property, like is private property going to be part of a treaty process …

Charles:

We hear this time, time again, “Am I going to lose in my backyard.”

Kath:

Exactly. “What does it mean for my farm? Will I be told how I can farm my land or what I can and can’t do what my land?” Also, some of the backlash is more around thinking that it might reopen those wounds, particularly in regional rural communities that were very strong no voters seeing it as another opportunity to open up those wounds again. The only other issue that comes up a lot, which as you know, we’ve very eloquently dealt with at the Boroondara Town Hall discussion was the idea of how can you have treaty when there’s not two sovereign nations? So that comes up a lot and I think when you can answer that with fact, I think that helps move people forward in the conversation

Charles:

Beyond the current pilot project. Well actually, the current pilot project, which was initially two councils and I believe has now been stretched to four-

Kath:

That’s correct.

Charles:

… Laura has informed you is great, the diary is filling up. No doubt what happens beyond that because there are still 75 other local governments across Victoria.

Kath:

That’s a great question. In fact, one of the great outcomes of the pilot project has been the awareness raising to the other 72, 77 councils about the possibility of having a pilot. So that’s why we’ve moved to the four and we’ve already had two council CEOs reach out to us from very regional parts of Victoria where they had very high no votes to have the conversation.

We are also going to be running some quite specialised sessions just for CEOs on treaties to high level 101 of what it actually is. But in addition, we have put together a proposal for state government because we think that as the momentum grows, which hopefully will happen once the treaty legislation is received into Parliament, hopefully this week or next week, that there’ll be more momentum around wanting to know more. So we’ve put a proposal to state government. We’ve had a couple of meetings with the minister and we’re hopeful that the state government will fund the MAV and our partner organisation to deliver the kind of pilot project across at least 16 other councils in Victoria.

Charles:

I will point out and I’ll take it on my shoulders rather than throw it to Kath, but under the treaty negotiation framework, which really sets up that entire treaty process here in Victoria, it is the state government’s responsibility under that framework to which it has agreed by the way to educate and inform the broader community, and that would by its very nature, include of course local government. So let’s talk about the next two local governments. I haven’t heard much about who they may be. Are we prepared to make announcements or was it a little bit early right now?

Kath:

It’s a bit early, Uncle Charles. As I said earlier, we need to work with the traditional owner groups as well to see if it’s the right fit for the councils. So we’re going to be meeting with the council CEOs and talking through our pilot project and then getting guidance from their First Peoples’ advisory group and local traditional owners about how we might go about doing it if we do.

Charles:

So. I did hear yesterday from Laura that I was invited to a number of other sessions to facilitate conversations with the CEOs across Victoria, and I believe that’s going to probably be about two sessions. What’s the strategy there? Why not simply go with what we’ve been doing? And that is get all executive leadership or senior leadership team, then the councilors, then the staff, then the community. Why sessions specifically for CEOs?

Kath:

It’s complicated because each council’s incredibly unique. There’s 79 unique entities with unique communities, and as we’ve learned from both Boroondara and Mitchell, how you approach a council, how you have a conversation is really about their readiness for it. And the CEOs have a great insight into the readiness of their organisation, their councilor group as well, and the local community. So by giving the CEOs the one-on-one on what the treaty process is and what we can offer in terms of our engagement piece, particularly if the state government does fund the ongoing engagement, gives us an opportunity for them to start to do some of the earlier work within their council as well and get their council ready for a treaty conversation.

Charles:

Now, a lot of people may well be thinking, well, Boroondara is a safe area even though politically and we look historically, it’s actually the seat of the past leader of the conservatives here in Victoria, but it’s a fairly safe bet to do a session there. I’ll be quite frank, as you know, I’ve been advocating that what we need to do is get out of those areas where during the referendum there was a very high no vote. I think apart from being exciting, it’s challenging and it’s obviously where that information is needed. I’m going to put you right in the spot right now, Kath, what’s the MAV’s approach to that? To playing it dangerously?

Kath:

Absolutely. We want to live dangerously, which is why we’ve had a practice run with two councils when we’ve learned a lot from both, but taking that knowledge, having tested it there into the areas that you’ve described. So we’re hopeful that the next few councils actually reflect exactly what you’ve just described, where there’s been very high no votes, but also there’s actually a CEO, which is why we need a leader, whether it’s the mayor or the CEO or both as fantastic to help us begin that initial consultation and engagement with the council. So going back to your earlier question, the purpose of that CEO forum is to help identify some leaders with the CEO group.

Charles:

Now, what about community? Because in both the pilot projects so far, Boroondara and Mitchell Shire, the ultimate goal is to get the speakers, and that is people from the first people Assembly Victoria, traditional owner groups and the Treaty Authority in front of community. How important is that and what are some of the challenges that may have come up or pre-event?

Kath:

It’s really important because when I think about what was some of the great outcomes so far from the Boroondara one and even the Mitchell one, even though we’re not as far advanced, is that interpersonal connection, the connection between the community and the councils and a First Person where they can ask questions that they might not normally ask. So the benefit of having the local community, it’s immeasurable in that regard, but the challenge is about making it safe and culturally safe for people as well.

Charles:

Kath, there’s no doubt of the law that councils hearing this are going to want to jump on the bandwagon. Is that what you want, do you want people to start approaching you right now and say, “Put us on the list either for this next stage of the pilot program?” Or if we do get funding, cross fingers, touch wood, from the state government, Minister Hutchins, Minister Stakos, I hope you’re listening, we want to be on that list, what do they do?

Kath:

Reach out to us. It’s one of the MAV’s absolute objectives to work with all of our member councils to help get councils ready for all sorts of things to deal with issues of disinformation and misinformation. We want to support our councilors in this situation to be treaty ready and to have the right information at the right time and to give them the tools and resources to engage their local communities.

Charles:

Kath Brackett, thanks for your time.

Kath:

You are welcome. Thank you.