Charles Pakana:

In 2017, Gunditjmara woman, Aunty Jill Gallagher, took 18 months leave of absence from her position as the Chief Executive Officer of VACCHO, the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations, to take the lead as Commissioner of the Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission. During that time with a small and highly committed team, she established the Aboriginal electoral role and oversaw the foundation of the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria, the organization that has spearheaded Australia’s first treaty legislation, which is now before the Victorian Parliament. She joins me today to reflect on the journey, the modern journey to Victorian Treaty. Aunty Jill, welcome back to the program.

Aunty Jill Gallagher:

Charles, thank you for inviting me back.

Charles:

Aunty Jill, it’s now a momentous time in Victorian history with that legislation that you never really thought would happen in your lifetime before Parliament. Let’s take it back to the very beginning. So, around about 2016 when the mob called out to the government, what we want most of all is treaty. This was at Federation Square. Tell us your recollections of that particular sequence of events.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, because back then and still today, the government has a strong self-determination agenda for First Peoples. And back then, they actually wanted to hear from the mobs in Victoria, what does that look like? What does it mean? And as you’ve just stated, Charles, the mob said, true self-determination is to be able to negotiate treaty for First Peoples. What was different about that was that we actually had a government that didn’t just dismiss that call for treaty.

Charles:

That did pretty quickly, really, didn’t they, the government?

Aunty Jill:

They did very quickly, which surprised me immensely. I was shocked. But when I saw the media release that came out from Minister Hutchins and one of my staff came running upstairs and said, “Jill, Jill, you seen the media release?” I said, “What media release?” And so, I had a look at it and I thought, “Oh my Lord, the government are going to explore treaties for First Peoples in this state.” So, I then said to myself and said to my colleague at the time, I need to be involved in this somehow.

Charles:

So, were you involved in that early treaty working group that was established by the state government?

Aunty Jill:

Yes, yes, because the then minister, Natalie Hutchins put out an expression of interest for Aboriginal people to come onto a working group because we didn’t know who are they going to talk to or what mechanism are they going to have to be able to negotiate with. And so, the working group, the very original working group, the government put out the expression of interest, and I applied as an independent because they had criteria. You remember the criteria around whether you represent peak bodies or whether you represent mobs, clans, whatever. But I put in under an independent and I got on.

Charles:

So, who else was on there? I know Aunty Janine Coombs was on there.

Aunty Jill:

Aunty Janine Coombs, Dan Turnbull, I think.

Charles:

Dan Turnbull and Michael Harding, Aunty Eleanor Bourke.

Oh, wow. This was a who’s who of mob around Victoria.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah. There was a lot more people on there. It was just amazing to have that leadership.

Charles:

And what was the focus of that work?

Aunty Jill:

The focus of the work was to actually, now that we have a government that is willing to explore this, we need to have something that government can talk to. Is that individual clan-based treaties? Do they go out and talk to every black fella in Victoria? What mechanism?

Charles:

Sorry, this was actually before the legislation came out in 2018, wasn’t it?

Aunty Jill:

Yes, yes. So, part of our mandate was to develop that piece of legislation.

Charles:

Gotcha. So, what was involved in that? Because the legislation itself didn’t really talk about what sort of treaties we’d get. That was left up to the First People Assembly, of course, as we know. But a lot of the fundamentals of that legislation, I would assume, such as the key requirements, which were of course to set up a self-determination fund, the treaty authority. What else was put forward by the treaty working group to the government? What were some of the key initiatives that you worked on?

Aunty Jill:

Some of the key initiative was that piece of legislation. Now the whole working group couldn’t be involved, so we had to set up a legislation working group. And what surprised me about that piece of work, now I wasn’t a lead gig in that. It was Mike Harding. Mike Harding, he took the lead in that, and another, I’m just going to try and remember his name, but was to get that piece of legislation to set up the framework to go forward like you’ve just outlined the treaty authority and the list goes on, but we needed that piece of legislation to go in there. But what was unusual about that process that I have always remembered, I don’t know whether you’re familiar Charles, with how government developed legislation.

Charles:

A matter of fact, I’m quite ignorant of that, Aunt.

Aunty Jill:

Okay. I’m not the expert, but it’s my understanding, government themselves will develop an exposure draft, and that goes out for consultation. And that’s where community have a say when it’s an exposure draft. But in this process, the state government agreed for the working group to be part of developing the exposure draft.

Charles:

And that I think was obviously fairly unique.

Aunty Jill:

It was very unique.

Charles:

Right.

Aunty Jill:

Very unique. So, they can do it when they want it hey. Yeah.

Charles:

It’s amazing what government can do when they put their minds to it.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was the first thing we needed to do, was to develop that piece of legislation. So, we did that, and then that set the scene for the ongoing work of the working group. The working group then realized because weren’t an entity in our own right.

Charles:

Yeah, I remember that.

Aunty Jill:

We couldn’t have a bank account or anything like that. Not that we wanted one by the way, but we did need to have some self-determined funding and not just rely on government saying, “Well, we need to do this. Here’s the funding.” So, the working group decided with the minister, or the minister was the key in this. The Treaty Advancement Commissioner role was the next thing we needed.

Charles:

And this is where you come in. So, in 2017, later that year, obviously the government comes to you and says, “Here it is. So, you’re going to take it.” What were your thoughts on that?

Aunty Jill:

Well, that’s not how it happened actually. Isn’t that interesting? How it happened was, first of all, the working group was still the working group, but really didn’t have any authority and really didn’t have any budget. So, we’re just relying cap in hand. But what we did decide to do is structure ourselves. So, we needed co-chairs because we didn’t even have that. And so, the co-chairs, which was Michael Harding and myself, so we became the co-chairs. So, the co-chairs then pushed with the minister to this Treaty Commissioner role. This was your initiative? No, it wasn’t ours. It was actually the government’s initiative. By the way, I do need to be honest there. I’d like to make claim to that by the way. It wasn’t our initiative.

At the time, the working group thought to ourselves, “Why do we need a commissioner?” But Natalie Hutchins, who was the minister of the day, basically, she knew that we needed to have a commissioner which had authority, which had a budget to advance it. When she convinced us, that’s when we said, “Oh, now we see. So, we actually then ran with that.” So, the government then put out, they advertised the role.

Charles:

So, expressions of interest.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, they advertised the role. And I debated whether to throw my hat in the ring. And I thought, hmm…

Charles:

Was it a tough decision to make? Because it means you’d be going away from that show, which you’ve lived and breathed for so long, even up until that point.

Aunty Jill:

It was a tough decision and it was a new ground. I was very, very scared by the way. It hadn’t been done before in this country. So, there was no template. So, what made you do it? What was the exciting hooks? The exciting hooks was we could achieve something here. You got to have a go. You got to have a go. And the fire in my belly was there, and I wanted to have a go. And even if I wasn’t successful, I was still going to have a go and help whoever got the role. But I was successful, I got it. There were other people who applied for it, and we don’t need to go down that.

Charles:

No, but what was the brief from the government to you?

Aunty Jill:

Well, first of all, the Treaty Advancement Commissioner, I was appointed by the governor. I wasn’t appointed by government.

Charles:

Gotcha. So, you’re a legitimate commissioner?

Aunty Jill:

I was a legitimate commissioner that had powers, and my report had to go to the governor, who is the Crown’s representative, as we all know.

Charles:

Of course, yeah.

Aunty Jill:

Okay. So, I thought that was a bit of power in itself that no minister appointed me. And I forget the name of the document that I had, the sign, the…

Charles:

Letter’s patent.

Aunty Jill:

Thank you.

Charles:

Yep.

Aunty Jill:

Yes. And the powers that were outlined in that were quite significant. So, our mandate back then, the government thought that, “Well, once we had the commissioner role in place, we don’t need the working group.” But I said, “No, we do. We really do. The working group is crucial to making sure I get it right.”

Charles:

So, you are overseers almost?

Aunty Jill:

Basically. So, apart from the community themselves, going out to community-

Charles:

Goes without something.

Aunty Jill:

… but the working group was like my testing ground. If we came up with ideas, I’d test that with the working group. What do you think? Do you think it’s a good idea? Working group would say yes or no, or maybe we need to tweak this. So, they were crucial to the success of the commissioner role.

Charles:

Your key objectives though, seem to be the establishment of the Aboriginal electoral role itself. And then subsequent to that, getting people to nominate for the assembly, which was, I know a really tough gig for you.

Aunty Jill:

My key deliverable was not actually setting up a electoral. No. My key deliverable was setting up a mechanism, designing and implementing a mechanism that government could talk to.

Charles:

Essentially, what’s now the assembly.

Aunty Jill:

Essentially, which is now the First People’s Assembly of Victoria.

Charles:

But in order to get there?

Aunty Jill:

Well, I had to work out how to get there. And some of the challenges that came with that, I have to say, some of the highly stressful challenges, and you raised it earlier on before we started the podcast, there was a number of issues. First of all, how do we get this body? Is it through an election process? Is it through the existing back then there was only 12 recognized-

Charles:

Yeah, that’s right.

Aunty Jill:

… registered traditional owner groups, or what other mechanism could we use to get this mechanism in place? So, that was the question we had to answer. The other question that was very highly volatile was, well, what do we do with Aboriginal people that aren’t traditionally or culturally from this space that we now call Victoria?

Charles:

And you and I have yarned about this many times over the years. Okay.

Aunty Jill:

So, that was a humongous questions that needed to be answered.

Charles:

So, just on that one, Aunt, if you wouldn’t mind just belaboring that for a minute. So, the conversations that you would’ve had with the treaty working group on non-Victorian First Peoples, what were some of the challenges that you and the working group identified there?

Aunty Jill:

A lot of the challenges were, look, when you talk treaty, a treaty is a contract between two sovereign entities. Okay. So, we need to be very clear about that. And if you’re an Aboriginal, a First Nations person who’s not from what we now know as Victoria or any lands in Victoria, what role is that? And I didn’t come up with the answer, but we had multiple discussions with the working group, and then we took the question out to also the community, what do we do? And what came back was that Aboriginal people that come from other areas within Australia should be part of the elections. And I’ll come back to those elections in a minute.

Charles:

Yeah, sure.

Aunty Jill:

Should be part of the elections. So, they can enroll, they can vote, but they can’t sit around the table and decide on treaties.

Charles:

Correct. Sure.

Aunty Jill:

Okay, so that’s what came back from the mob. And I thought, well, that’s pretty good. But the other thing that was added, but anything that comes out of treaty, all Aboriginal people that are living on those lands should benefit from that.

Charles:

And that’s embraced within the statewide treaty process right now of course, so that’s lived true.

Aunty Jill:

Yes.

Charles:

So, the Aboriginal electoral role.

Aunty Jill:

Okay, so the other question for me and the working group was how do we get this mechanism? Do I just appoint, the government appoint…

Charles:

Which is always a dangerous thing to do.

Aunty Jill:

Of course, it is. So, I couldn’t answer that and neither could the working group. We have many conversations, but we took that out to asking community what is there? And we actually called Aboriginal people from across Victoria together to be part of a, what do you call it? Like a parliament’s not the right word.

Charles:

A gathering.

Aunty Jill:

Anyway, let’s call it a gathering. We focused on elders, we focused on youth, we focused on people in the middle.

Charles:

I remember that. Yeah.

Aunty Jill:

And right across Victoria. And one of the questions we wanted them to answer for me was, how do we get the people on this mechanism? And a resounding result was yet can only do it through an election process, but not through the existing electoral role.

Charles:

Exactly. Which is why the Aboriginal electoral role is not reported back to the State Electoral Commission or the Federal Electoral Commission, a big message that’s always out there, but then to go and get an electoral role, oh my God, what were your thoughts on that?

Aunty Jill:

Well, to get electoral role was quite easy, but to carve up Victoria into electoral boundaries.

Charles:

I want to find riches. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Aunty Jill:

… was a nightmare, Charles, I’m telling you. But when the community answered that question, they basically gave us some other nuggets. And those nuggets were the voting age has to be 16 and up, which even mainstream voters are saying it should be 16 and up. But anyways, and if we are carving up the state of Victoria into Aboriginal electoral boundaries, don’t carve up or split in half existing traditional owner groups.

Charles:

Of course.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah. And try to stick as much as possible to traditional boundaries where you can. Anyway, as we came up with the electoral boundaries, we had to convince mob that in no ways it connected to mainstream electoral commission because we had a lot of our mob who’ve never voted in their life and didn’t want to, of course, and didn’t want to get fines.

Charles:

Of course.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, okay. But the community soon told us that’s what we needed to do. And I thought that was amazing.

Charles:

But you then went about traveling right across the state. You were speaking to mobs. You went and visited every prison in the state?

Aunty Jill:

Every prison in Victoria.

Charles:

To ensure that everyone heard about it, because you weren’t just getting people to come onto the electoral role. It was yarning up, this is what treaty could be. This is what it could be for you. This is what it could be for us. And I remember, and this is what always struck me, Aunt, is that as I was trailing you around as the treaty correspondent, at that point in time, I was always stunned by the number of events where it wasn’t mob. You were out there promoting this to non-mob.

Aunty Jill:

Oh, very much so.

Charles:

And that was just so well taken on board.

Aunty Jill:

And by the way, mob in prisons could vote. They just couldn’t run. I just needed to say that. So, there was…

Charles:

Bit difficult for them to get out to assembly chamber meetings. Yeah.

Aunty Jill:

Yes, yes, yes. There was voting booths in each of the prisons.

Charles:

Wow.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, was humongous tasks to think in 18 months or less than 18 months, we actually had a fully elected, fully operational First Peoples given that our clans, our mobs caught the brunt of colonization and all the hurt and all the damage that done to our traditional boundaries, to our, you know what I mean?

Charles:

As we’ve seen in Europe, for goodness’s sake. Yeah, of course.

Aunty Jill:

Exactly. It was a humongous task. And sometimes, I almost quit.

Charles:

I remember you being very frustrated at times.

Aunty Jill:

I was a lone commissioner.

Charles:

Tell me about some of the challenges you had. Now, you and I, before you answer that. We’ve talked about the challenges from mob before, and that’s out there. I want to hear about some of the other challenges. Challenges from government, because they must have existed, for goodness’s sake.

Aunty Jill:

They certainly did. They certainly did. And I’ll talk about a couple.

Charles:

No names, no pack drill, by the way.

Aunty Jill:

No, no, no. I won’t dob anyone in. But the government system is a big system. And they were learning also, by the way, to give credit where credit’s due. But the frustration I had with government was, for example, when we first opened the electoral role and we’re encouraging people to enroll and blah, blah, blah, the government’s expectation that would have 70,000 Aboriginal people.

Charles:

Oh God, yes. Yeah.

Aunty Jill:

I mean all the time, they kept on saying, “No, 2000’s not enough, no, 5000’s, not enough, or whatever the number was.” And I’m thinking, “Well, hang on. It’s got to grow. You can’t just expect people to rock up if they’ve never voted before. It’s going to take time for people to feel safe and trust.

Charles:

And it’s still a work in progress.

Aunty Jill:

And it’s still a work in progress even today, but it’s a lot better today.

Charles:

Oh, absolutely.

Aunty Jill:

But the expectation from government was that everyone signs up, or…

Charles:

Do you think they were scared about the potential negative backlash from the Conservatives and conservative media because that’s happened? And we saw that.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, yes, I agree. And there probably was, but you got to remember, and I don’t know, but surely there’s documents floating around somewhere in the archives when Victoria first opened their electoral role-

Charles:

I’m sure it took a while.

Aunty Jill:

… and theirs is compulsory, ours isn’t. So, it makes a difference.

Charles:

Of course.

Aunty Jill:

Anyways. So, frustrations like that, the expectations.

Charles:

But how did that play out, those frustrations? I mean, I can imagine people just calling you saying, “Come on, you’ve got to get another 5,000. You’ve got to get another couple of thousand.” How did that actually work out?

Aunty Jill:

Well, how it played out was the then head of DPC, the secretary, I can’t remember the person’s name, thank God.

Charles:

We’re not mentioning names. That’s right.

Aunty Jill:

Yeah, we’re not mentioning names. Would call a meeting with me as a commissioner and ask why.

Charles:

Oh, good Lord.

Aunty Jill:

And so, I would bite my tongue, keep calm, and go to the meeting and be very polite and say, yes, we’re working on that, we realize that, yes, yes. But the other frustration was, I don’t know whether I’ve ever told you this story, Charles, but it was in the middle of, we hadn’t established the final design of the assembly at this stage and I had a change of EAs. Now, earlier on, I spoke about how I was totally independent of government, but my staff weren’t.

Charles:

Because you had people seconded from the government to work at the commission. I remember that. Of course, yeah.

Aunty Jill:

Exactly. And they were still public servants. So, none of my files, my files that I had on my computer could ever be-

Charles:

Seen by the government.

Aunty Jill:

…. seen by the government, or someone who does a, what do you call that, where you can apply to have access to files?

Charles:

Freedom of information.

Aunty Jill:

Freedom of information.

Charles:

Right. So, it could be accessed under FOI.

Aunty Jill:

But my staff were not because they were public servants. So, that was another frustration. But it never became an issue, by the way, but potentially it could have been. But I was in the middle. My EA had resigned and went and got another fantastic job. And one of these days, I’m going to go crooked her. No, I won’t. She was a lovely person, beautiful person. And so, I had to recruit a new executive assistant, but we were forced to use the government’s, and I won’t mention their name either, the government’s consultancy firm.

Charles:

Oh, gotcha. Yeah.

Aunty Jill:

Recruitment consultancy firm to do the recruitment for us. So, they did. And of course, what do you call it? They did all the checks and everything else that you do and reference checks…

Charles:

They filtered them essentially

Aunty Jill:

Filtered them.

Charles:

Oh.

Aunty Jill:

That’s exactly right. And so, my staff had four applications sent to us, and they said, “Jill, you don’t need to be on the interview panel.” And I thought, “Okay, all right. I won’t care, by the way, but I should have been.” In hindsight, that was a bad decision on my part and we recruited a lovely young lady.

Charles:

Aunty Jill, tell us a bit about this person that you did employ and what you discovered as a result. Once again, no names.

Aunty Jill:

Well, after being about four to five weeks in my office, one of my staff Googled this person’s name. She rang me up 9:00 at night, crying and very distressed. And she said, “Jill, Google.” So, I did. And I was horrified at what I found.

Charles:

What did you discover?

Aunty Jill:

This woman and her husband were heavily involved in the white supremacy group.

Charles:

Now, this person who was there as your EA for over a month had access to your personal files-

Aunty Jill:

Personal files-

Charles:

… to all your contacts.

Aunty Jill:

… all my contacts, everything that we were doing to design and develop First Peoples Assembly of Victoria.

Charles:

Was there any inkling, and we’re not going to dive too much into this person, but it does talk about the dangers of our society when it comes to achieving degrees of self-determination. There are always people working against us without a shadow of a doubt. But were there any signs that this was a potential problem if this person in that month or so, you had them with you?

Aunty Jill:

No, no, the loveliest person.

Charles:

What was the result? So, you had a call from the staff member that night. What happened 9:00 the next morning?

Aunty Jill:

The next morning, that person’s employment was terminated.

Charles:

Right. What was your reaction to the government? Because the government was the one that you said had been responsible for feeding those applications through to you via their recruitment agency. No names again.

Aunty Jill:

Their response to me, because I actually wanted to go public with this, Charles. I actually thought it was important enough to know that we have elements in society that don’t want to see Aboriginal people Advance, and we still have today.

Charles:

Oh, God.

Aunty Jill:

But I wanted to go public with it. The government basically said no, under no circumstances. And I know I had powers, I could have, but then I would’ve pissed off one of the key partners in Treaty.

Charles:

Yeah. So, let’s jump over there and then to the election itself. So, how did it feel to actually, I know it’s an easy question. It’s a cop out question to ask, how did you feel? But what was the sense you carried with you when you actually saw the opening of the polling for the First Peoples Assembly of Victoria?

Aunty Jill:

I thought, this is amazing. We’ve actually, I couldn’t believe it, but it’s not all down to me either. I had some amazing staff.

Charles:

I know you do.

Aunty Jill:

Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff, just brilliant.

Charles:

And a couple of them still at the assembly kind you.

Aunty Jill:

Yes, I know. And the fact that we actually from scratch designed and developed an electoral process for First Nations people in this state-

Charles:

And look what it’s achieved.

Aunty Jill:

… and look what it’s achieved. It’s amazing to think we have a treaty bill in Parliament waiting to be debated.

Charles:

Now, I’ve asked you this before. I’ve challenged you with this before. I remember on more than one occasion, you would be speaking to community and you would say, and you know what, I’m going to say Aunt, aren’t you? I do not believe that I will see Treaty in my lifetime, but it’s something for which I will always support. It’s well, within your lifetime, all right, legislation is going to be passed.

Aunty Jill:

Yep. Well…

Charles:

Are you surprised.

Aunty Jill:

Can I say Charles? I’m very surprised because in the first treaty bill that we put through Parliament was the mechanism to the design principles of the mechanism to set up the First Peoples. I knew the First People’s Assembly had a big task. They also…

Charles:

It was huge.

Aunty Jill:

I mean, I was one person, but here you’ve got an elected body of people who their communities have elected and have put in trust and faith that they will do the right thing by our culture and by our peoples.

Charles:

And they were insanely amazing people. I mean, led by Marcus Stewart from Taungurung, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson. Just amazing people. And many of them still on the assembly right now. When the assembly was set up, do you think that the assembly members had any idea of the body of work that was going to be thrust upon them?

Aunty Jill:

I don’t believe so.

Charles:

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have known.

Aunty Jill:

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have put up their hand. I mean, when I first embarked as a commissioner for treaty, setting up First People’s Assembly, I had no idea on the amount of work. I had no idea. And I naively thought every mob is going to be behind me a hundred percent.

Charles:

That was not the case.

Aunty Jill:

It was not the case. How stupid. But anyways, the First People’s assembly, the first election, then the second elections, they’ve all done amazing work because it’s not easy in that chamber.

Charles:

No, no. I know.

Aunty Jill:

I mean, people think because we’re black, we all think alike, and we all greet it with one another.

Charles:

Oh God, we heard that too many times in 2023, didn’t we?

Aunty Jill:

Haven’t we? I mean, that’s not the case. Unlike the politicians, they managed to keep their debates private.

Charles:

It’s interesting, actually, and this will be the second last question that I ask of you, Aunty Jill. But given that amazing body of work that was developed, I mean the self-determination front, the treaty negotiation framework, and then of course now the bill, the legislation that’s going before Parliament, do you believe that without cultural guidance, without cultural protocols, that body of work could have been achieved?

Aunty Jill:

No, you needed both. You needed cultural guidance, and you also needed, how can I put this? A modern worldview walking on two sides of the blind. You needed both. There’s no way could we go back to establishing clan-based approaches, even though we are there. We’re getting there here in Victoria through the Traditional Owner Settlement Act. And that’s amazing. Even now, we’ve had the numbers on the First Peoples Assembly increase due to the work of the Traditional Owner Settlement Act and new members coming on board, I think is really good. But no, you needed both. We can’t go back and undo what’s been done.

So, we have to also work and operate in a modern world, but we also still needed that strong connection to culture and cultural guidance.

Charles:

So, now for the last question, Aunty Jill, it’s a question I asked you many times since 2018, when I first started trailing you as a journalist on Treaty. What are your aspirations ultimately for Treaty?

Aunty Jill:

What are my aspirations?

Charles:

Personal aspirations.

Aunty Jill:

Personal aspirations for Treaty. My personal aspirations for Treaty is that Aboriginal families can one hold their head up high, that they belong to one of the oldest living cultures on the planet. That all Victorian or Australian citizens can do the same.

Charles:

Absolutely.

Aunty Jill:

When they go overseas, they can say to the Egyptians and to the Greeks, we have an ancient culture in our country, too. The amazing First Peoples of this country. And talk about the culture. That’s my aspirations for Treaty is our true place in society and our true acknowledgement of our ancient history.

Charles:

Aunty Jill Gallagher, thank you for your time and the reflections.

Aunty Jill:

Thank you, Charles.