Charles Pakana: With the results of the 2023 referendum still generating hot debate across Australia, the Victorian government, facing a raft of recommendations following the Yoorook Justice Commission and a recently signed Victorian Treaty Act 2025 in place. Arguably, Victoria is a focus point in this country on matters dealing with Voice, Treaty and Truth. Two high profile academics commissioned, recently, a Victoria-wide social survey to gauge attitudes towards Truth and Treaty. Both join me today to discuss the survey and importantly, its results. Our first guest is Professor Emma-Jaye Gavin and she’s a Garawa Aboriginal scholar and the first indigenous professor of Truth Telling in Australia. Emma-Jaye, thanks for speaking with me today.

Emma-Jaye Gavin: Thanks so much for having me, Uncle.

Charles: And we’re joined also by someone who is no stranger to the Victorian Aboriginal News microphone, Professor Andrew Gunstone, co Chair of Reconciliation Victoria and recognised globally as a leading academic on reconciliation. Andrew, welcome back.

Andrew Gunstone: Great to be here with you, Uncle Charles.

Charles: We’ll start with you, Andrew. The survey itself, can you give me some rationale to it, given that we’re right in the middle of this Voice, Treaty, Truth debate that’s been going on for quite a while, specifically here in Victoria, and why you felt it was so important, and what, importantly, you were seeking to achieve?

Andrew: Well, Professor Gavin and I have been talking for a long time about; we need to really measure the attitudes of Victorians in Treaty and Truth telling, because obviously we’re leading the country in this space. We’re the only state that’s actually implemented Voice, Treaty in Truth and Uluru Statement from the heart. So we’re very keen to measure the attitudes. We’re very conscious, as you are too, Uncle.
During the referendum, often the loudest voices are the ones that get the most attention. So we want to hear what the average person in the street across Victoria felt about Treaty and felt about Truth telling. So I’ve been running a longitudinal study since 2005 on attitudes towards reconciliation and it’s the longest study in Australia, so we thought, let’s just do a version of that. And we commissioned a social survey company and it interviewed 1,006 Victorians across a whole range of demographics. So it’s a statistically accurate sample of Victoria.
It looked at men and women, it looked at rural and urban areas. It looked at peoples across the political spectrum, and it had a whole different range of ages, from 18 to 75 plus. And the opportunity then that gave us is to understand more accurately, and it’s the first survey conducted of this type, people’s attitudes towards Treaty and Truth telling in Victoria.

Charles: Give us an idea about some of the questions because historically so many surveys can be easily swayed one way or the other simply by particular phrasing of questions. So what were the questions like?

Andrew: Well, we asked two groups of questions and so one group was on Truth telling and one group was on Treaty. So we asked the questions and we explained in the question itself what Treaty meant or what Truth telling meant. So we asked the question, do you support a process of Truth telling or do you support a Treaty? And then we explained what those terms meant. That was the first set of questions. And then the second question was we asked it in a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. So we had a good range of responses there. We also asked questions about what was their reason for choosing that answer. And then critically, we thought it would be really good to ask, “Is there anything -”, This is for the people that either disagreed or strongly disagreed for Treaty or Truth telling. We wanted to ask what, if anything, would make them change their mind, because we thought this would be a really interesting opportunity to help lawmakers and help indigenous leaders understand maybe processes for different education campaigns to attract a greater level of support.

Charles: I just want to transition now to MJ and speak specifically about that section of the survey that dealt with Truth. You’ve been heavily embroiled in Truth and the processes and what’s been going on around Australia and here in Victoria for quite a long time. I was really interested to see that the results showed a 65% response rate either agreeing or strongly agreed with Truth processes. What exactly were they agreeing to in that? Similar things to Yoorook?

Emma-Jaye: So basically the question was very broad in what it included for Truth in Victoria and the fact that it was so widely supported seems to indicate a broad spectrum of support for what that might mean. So we have Yoorook, which is of course a large Truth telling body in Victoria, but it doesn’t mitigate the community level or individual or family level Truth that’s also happening. And again, with some organisations.

Charles: The response rate for disagree or strongly disagree was 13%. That’s a fairly broad range of responses there. Did that surprise you at all in this particular area with 65 agreeing and only 13% disagreeing with Truth telling?

Emma-Jaye: I was very surprised. I think it indicates a larger swing towards more Truthful engagements between First Nations Victorians and non-indigenous Victorians, particularly post the Voice. I think it’s a larger swing than we would have seen prior to the Voice and I think that gives me a bit of hope that we are still moving in the right direction despite some of the hold ups we’ve seen more nationally.

Charles: And what about the demographics in that response? Did you see it more coming from a specific area or areas of demographics?

Emma-Jaye: Yeah, so if we look at the demographic trends and important to note that they split between men and women, but we also did have a category for people who do not identify as either and we just- there was nobody in the survey to click that box. But if we look at the demographics, 70% of women supported the Truth, only 60% of men. So there’s a pretty big gap there. A 10% difference between men and women.

Charles: What about youth?

Emma-Jaye: Yes, if we look at the age range, we’ve got a 79% support between 18 and 34 years old. And that’s the largest band of support is the younger generations. And we go less and less the further you go up in the age demographic. So 35 to 54 is a 65 to 71% support. 55 plus it declines to between 41% and 54% support for Truth.

Charles: I’m interested to hear some of the rationale that respondents may have given with regard to why they disagreed with support for a Truth telling process.

Emma-Jaye: So when we asked the question, “Why do you oppose Truth telling?” The answers were very interesting. We had nearly 48% believed that “it’s in the past and Australia should move on”, which is very interesting-

Charles: Oh, God.

Emma-Jaye: -to think you can move on without Truth and without justice and without healing. That was very eye opening, but I think also speaks to that demographic quite strongly. And a lot of the same arguments we saw during the Voice. We had 29% believe that it would divide society. And again, that was very interesting, that kind of terminology.

Charles: Bit of deja vu.

Emma-Jaye: Isn’t it? We saw that kind of rhetoric around the Voice where the NO Campaign really used that political division separated us from them. Hate to plug my own work here, but I have a book coming out this month called The Barriers to Truth Telling along with some amazing colleagues from Federation and Melbourne universities. And in that, my chapter looks at this vote and the lying of the no party and that illusion of political division and how it would divide the country. And so there’s a big focus on that. And I think that 29% of the ‘no’ voters in this survey showed that that’s still a big misunderstanding or misconception by those voters. We still have a bit of work to do to reach them.

Charles: So fertile ground for those correspondents and politicians that seek to capitalise on misinformation.

Emma-Jaye: Absolutely. And if we head back to the demographics that we’re looking at, there was also a quite big difference in regions. So if we look at metropolitan Victoria, much higher, 67% of voters were for Truth, whereas when we move to the rural areas, it’s 56%.

Charles: That’s still substantial, though, when you think about it. 

Emma-Jaye: Incredibly substantial, considering the Voice referendum just a few years ago. So we’re still in the plus 50% category, even in the rural areas, so I think that is quite positive. And then, of course, we’ve got political differences – came across very strongly.

Charles: Let’s jump now to Treaty, and, Andrew, this is where you’ve got a side lap to the microphone again. There was strong support for Treaty in this survey, but obviously not as much as for Truth. But still, the numbers were quite surprising for me and even uplifting. We’re looking at 53% agreed or strongly agreed, and then 24%, substantially more than what we saw for Truth, who disagreed or strongly disagreed. I, first of all, want to get your idea on why you think there was such a disparity between Truth telling at 65% supporting it, and then jumping down 12% to 53% in support of Treaty. What are your thoughts on that?

Andrew: Yeah, I agree. Uncle Charles. M.J. and I were very surprised and pleasantly surprised that we had such a strong level of support for Treaty. It’s not quite as high as the Truth telling, but we never expected that. We actually expected to be much less. So I think that’s a really good sign because there’s already a scare campaign out there. We’ve got the state opposition saying they’re going to renege on a Treaty in Victoria. We’ve got the scare campaigns going on from conservative commentators. And of course, we’re all scarred from the referendum experience, where we saw the lies and misinformation that are being used against Treaty as well. So we were quite pleasantly surprised. I think there’s less support for Treaty than there is for Truth telling, although there still is a majority support. That’s important to note. Overall, there’s still majority support. There’s probably less support because people are still not really sure what Treaty means. We’ve had Truth telling in this country for generations. You know, we go back to the Royal Commission, the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in  1991, we’ve got the Bring Them Home report in 1997, we had the Yoorook report just last year. People have been exposed to Truth in this country for a long time and I think it’s important to note when we’re looking at the engagements of Truth is that Truth is really critical, but it has to be coming there with some substantial reform, some organisational changes. And I think that’s where Treaty comes in. But Treaty isn’t new. Back in the late 80s Bob Hawke promised a Treaty but then never delivered it. And then we had reconciliation. He deliberately diverted to reconciliation. So the Australian community, Victorian community specifically, specifically haven’t actually engaged with Treaty. So I think there’s still a bit of uncertainty about that, but I think it’s a really strong base to work off. I can talk a bit about the demographics if you’d like.

Charles: We’ll come back to the demographics in a second. But before we do that, I’m just looking at my notes here and one of the things that you were looking to achieve through this survey was, in particular to Treaty, what could persuade opponents to change their opinion.

Andrew: So one of the questions I said at the outset that we both asked for the Truth category and the Treaty category was is there anything that would change respondents minds?

Charles: Yeah.

Andrew: And so MJ [Emma-Jaye] can talk later about what we found out for Truth telling. But with Treaty, what was interesting and a similar response to Truth telling actually, a significant majority of responders said there was nothing that could be done to change their minds. This is of course the people that said either strongly disagree or, or disagree with the concept of Treaty. 79% said nothing that could be said would change their mind.

Charles: Still leaves 21%. That’s all I’m interested in. 
 
Andrew: Still leaves 21%. And of that 21%, the two biggest categories, which is, and again it’s exactly off the referendum and everything we’ve seen for the last 30 years in this space. 9% said the process should be equal, be fair and less divided. And of course that’s what we’re understanding is often a concern about indigenous affairs. But, that’s not really relevant to this space in the sense that this is a very fair process, that treaties happen. So we’ve got to sell that better about the process so people understand what Treaty meant.

Charles: So just before we go on, Andrew, I will just turn to MJ quickly, mj, when it comes back to Truth telling and what are some of those arguments that could persuade people to look at it differently, did you see similar arguments from people or similar comments from people?

Emma-Jaye: Absolutely. 83% said nothing would change their mind. And that’s very interesting. Those who won’t change their mind when presented with new information or when more supports are added, or if we listen to their disagreements and try and come to the table. 83% nothing. There was a small minority that said they would reconsider if there was more transparency. If Truth telling was a non political process or if it was a lower cost initiative.

Charles: How do you present it to the community as a non political initiative?

Emma-Jaye: Well, this is the thing, it wasn’t political. It came from community as we know. And perhaps that was the message that did not reach wider Australians and Victorians relevant to this survey. This came from, directly from community, then became rallied, signed work was done for 30 years before it got to the table of politicians. So I think it’s almost laughable to suggest that it would be a non-political process. Every aspect of an Aboriginal person’s life in this country is politicised. Truth telling in a way should be politicised because of the decisions made by government and the continued decisions made by settler colonial governments in this country that continue to have impacts that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives and outcomes; health, incarceration, education, all those things that cause the gap between First Nation and non-indigenous outcomes. So to those people who think it should be a non-political process, I would ask them to consider their definition of Truth and look more broadly. What are communities doing for Truth telling? What is your organization that you work for, your business? The lands they operate on are First Nations. So we’ve seen quite a few companies and organizations start their own internal Truth telling processes outside of a larger government process. So when we say Truth telling, we’re talking about all elements that contribute to Truth and knowledge exchange and healing overall. And so I’d say, you know, reframe your mind of what you are including as Truth telling.

Charles: A succinct and passionate response. Thanks MJ. Andrew, just want to come back to you now. We’re talking still a little bit about Treaty right now. And I just note that 19%, nearly 20% or 1 in 5 respondents, were very neutral to the idea. And that of course is what’s often referred to as the ‘fertile ground’ for those seeking to sway the popular vote. What thoughts do you have on that 19%? What can be done to start educating them, especially here in Victoria, about the fact that Treaty exists, about the fact that Treaty is a non threatening concept? What are your thoughts on that?

Andrew: Absolutely, Uncle Charles. And that’s a big significant percentage that we can have fertile engagement with. And also wanted to note that the second highest category amongst those that disagreed or strongly disagreed about Treaty, about what could be done, was they wanted more information. So 9% of those responders who said either strongly disagree or disagree, they said they could change their mind if there was more information. So I think that’s really important. The other thing I just wanted to point out, and MJ gave a fantastic answer about Truth telling, and I think something also to bear in mind with Truth telling and Treaty is it’s a bit like what comes first, the chicken or the egg. When people say it’s politicised, well, that’s because it’s being politicised by political parties, and exactly the same thing happened with the referendum. So the Liberal Party and the National Party opposed the referendum. They opposed, in Victoria, they’ve opposed Treaty, they’ve opposed Truth, and then when their own supporters start to look at that, they’ll say, oh, it’s all divisive, but it’s become divisive because of the lack of political leadership. And that’s the big problem. But totally agree with MJ about it is a political process anyhow. But in terms of engaging with those people in neutral territory, particularly with Treaty, because there’s quite a large percentage of people that are not sure. I think it’s really about that education campaign and fighting against that scare campaign, because we saw that in Native Title, we saw that with the referendum, our political opponents will stoop at nothing to try to defeat these processes, including absolute lies like, “your backyard’s not safe.” I’m waiting for that to come.

Charles: Yeah, of course, Yeah, oh, it’ll happen.

Andrew: I think basic information and also really explain to people what it boils down to: a Treaty is not something that complicated. It’s literally an agreement between two parties. And so it’s not something that just leads in international law, it’s actually an agreement between two parties.

Charles: We’ve banged that message home over the years here on this platform. MJ, you had something to say on this as well?

Emma-Jaye: Yeah, I just think that the definitions around Treaty are where people get stuck. I think there’s an assumption that Treaty happens at the onset of colonisation and it’s a historical thing and then it’s done. So I think the average Australian perhaps doesn’t know that a Treaty is an ongoing agreement. And I think the average Australian perhaps does not know that if, say, in North America, in Canada, that these treaties are ongoing and new, you can have new treaties created between governments and first nations and Indigenous communities. And so I think we need to look more widely at what the rest of the world is doing and learn from them and not be so stuck in our ideas of what things are historically. You know, we don’t have to rely on our morals. We get to change and we get to make the best country that we can. And honestly, that starts with Truth telling and then it starts with agreement making and Treaty making and healing.

Charles: And for our audience on the Victorian Aboriginal News website, we do have an interview that was done with Professor Cheryl Saunders from Melbourne University a couple of years ago where we actually spoke about what a Treaty really is. And she summed it up in two marvellous words and they were a solemn agreement. And as Andrew said, don’t get stuck on the fact that it’s got to be this international agreement of some sort. Andrew, that now takes us to the survey point on reconciliation, with 73% actually supportive of reconciliation. Now that’s a huge response rate. I want to ask, first of all, did the respondents actually understand, were they given the information to help them understand what reconciliation actually represents?

Andrew: So a bit of background here. The two main focuses in the survey were Truth telling and Treaty. But we also asked three brief questions, to explain what each of these concepts meant. Because we wanted to get an understanding, we wanted to cross analyse between those who supported one of these other three areas and Truth or Treaty. And so we asked about reconciliation, Voice to Parliament and Uluru statement from the heart. So in terms of reconciliation, that was good to see. We had a very strong support for reconciliation. 73%, as you said, said “Yes”. And much stronger support amongst women, younger people, metro region and progressive parties, as all the survey data shows. But we have to take that with a grain of salt because as you know, I talk a lot about substantive reconciliation.

Charles: You do. Yep.

Andrew: This is a broad catch all phrase. I think we need to cross tabulate between people that say yes to reconciliation, but how are they supporting some genuine substantive changes like Truth telling and Treaty? But it’s a good result for reconciliation.

Charles: Do you think that that also leads to the, for me, surprising response about the support for Voice to Parliament where it was essentially a 50/50 split with 50% actually supportive of it. We’ve then got 13% unsure that fertile ground again and 37% fairly hard. No. MJ, did you see that as an expected result or were there any surprises in there?

Emma-Jaye: Not really. We had 50% support and that is fantastic. Really excited. I would obviously prefer to see it a lot higher, but 50% is still good. Importantly, 13% were unsure, so only 37% were ‘no’. So that was quite interesting. It is less than 50% ‘no’. So what we want to really focus on is that 13% ‘unsure’. And how do we help them with the process of understanding the Voice to Parliament, what it would do, what their questions are, why they wouldn’t support it, and then help them build the knowledge so that when we do this again, perhaps there is higher support. But important to note that for the Voice to Parliament, there was much stronger support among women, younger people, in the metro region, and of course, progressive parties, as was typical.

Charles: And let me guess, some of the arguments put forward by those people saying ‘strongly disagree’. Divisive?

Emma-Jaye: Yep.

Charles: Get over it?

Emma-Jaye: Yep.

Charles: What else was there?

Andrew: What was interesting, if you look at some of the arguments against, like one of the strong arguments against many of the questions we asked was it’s not equitable or the issues of equality. But then for Treaty, one of the responses people said why they did support it was about equality. So equality is actually brought up by those who said strongly agree as well as by that cohort who said strongly disagree. Australians love the word equality, but I don’t think there’s much understanding. Maybe that’s the next survey, Uncle Charles, getting people to understand what equality means they don’t really understand.

Charles: We’ll always give you some podcast time for that one. Let’s now get to before we have final statements. The Uluru state from the heart. And I found this was really interesting and I’ve, I’ve got to point out this one figure and it was the first figure that just stuck in my mind when there was.  “What’s your support for the Uluru statement?” It was 36% ‘yes’, 12% ‘unsure’, 16% ‘no’. And we’re talking less than two and a half years post the ‘23 referendum, 37% were even unaware of the Uluru state from the heart. MJ, I’m going to flick to you on this one for your thoughts on it, because that was distressing as hell, quite frankly.

Emma-Jaye: Absolutely. And this, this is why we go back and we can see the political confusion amongst voters because they went back and they said, oh, we don’t want it to be political. Well, the Uluru statement from the heart came from community. It was a community event with hundreds of people all coming from all over Australia to have these conversations, to write this Uluru statement, to then put out these things like Truth and Treaty.

Charles: Yeah.

Emma-Jaye: And the average Australian has clearly missed that message. So the fact that they’re still not aware of it after a full referendum…

Charles: It’s alarming.

Emma-Jaye: Oh, Good God.

Charles: Couldn’t have put it better. Look, we have reached the end of our time, unfortunately. Mj, some final comments and thoughts from you.

Emma-Jaye: So in my closing statement, I would just like to say that I think what we can take from this is fairly positive. There is a strong support, the majority of support for Truth telling in the state of Victoria. So we’re thrilled to see that in results. We can see a clear generational shift for younger Australians and so perhaps there’s more work needed to be done to reach the older populations in the, in the regions particularly. We have nearly 8 in 10 under 35 supporting Truth telling, so the young ones are definitely our future. So, yeah, I would just say the overall message is of hope and I think that’s particularly important with what we’ve been feeling post the Voice, there was almost statewide depression, I would say, amongst indigenous people and allies, and that was quite a traumatic experience that I’m definitely not over and I’m sure many aren’t. So to have a message of hope that Truth is still here and there are still the majority of Victorians…

Charles: That’s a nice thing. 

Emma-Jaye: It’s a nice thing, isn’t it?

Charles: Yeah. Andrew, final thoughts.

Andrew: Completely agree with MJ. It’s a really strong message of hope for Truth telling, but also for Treaty. I think there’s two messages in this as well. One to the state opposition: Stop playing divisive games with the electorate. 

Charles: Never, never. They’d never do that.

Andrew: And realise that there’s actually a groundswell of support. And it’s not just in the trendy inner suburbs like Brunswick, it;s actually right across the state. We have a strong support for Treaty and Truth telling right across the state, across all demographics. And we need to look at ways to help build that amongst those areas. Struggling to understand it. But there’s also a message for other state and territory and national governments as well, that governments that previously committed to the Uluru statement from the  Heart, including the Albanese government, should actually address their commitments and implement Treaty and Truth telling and Voice legislation, because at the moment there is a cry out amongst a majority of Australians for Treaty, Truth and Voice. And we need to get that implemented to ensure that we can get some substantial justice for this country.

Charles: Professor Andrew Gunstone, thanks for your time.

Andrew: Thanks, Uncle Charles.

Charles: And Professor Emma-Jaye, thank you so much indeed for your time as well.

Emma-Jaye: It’s a pleasure as always, Uncle. Thanks for having me.