Locking up kids shows Victoria’s treaty is for show
The Victorian Labor government signed a treaty with Aboriginal people on 13 November amid much celebration and back-patting. The treaty is the result of ten years of negotiations between the state government and the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria—the elected body representing Aboriginal people. Under the treaty provisions, the First Nations Assembly will become a consultative body, providing non-binding advice to the state government on Indigenous policies and actions.
The treaty has been a moment for Labor to trumpet its commitment to Indigenous rights and justice. It will bring “a future built on respect and partnership” and “strengthen culture for generations to come” according to Premier Jacinta Allan.
But just a day before the treaty agreement was signed into law, Allan and Victorian Labor announced new “adult time for violent crime” laws. These laws will make children as young as 14 face adult courts if they are charged with a range of offences, and if found guilty, given adult sentences. Currently, children cannot receive custodial sentences longer than three years: under Allan’s proposal, they can potentially be jailed for life. Allan’s measures appear to be modelled on the Queensland state Liberal government’s “adult time for adult crime” laws, which increase jail terms for young people convicted of 20 offences.
Allan and Labor’s celebration of treaty, while simultaneously moving to lock up children for longer, displays the shallowness of their commitment to achieving genuine change for Aboriginal people. This is not a mistake or the result of ignorance that might be solved by greater consultation. The effects of law-and-order policies and increasing incarceration rates on Aboriginal people and our communities are well known.
Just last February, a federal government Senate report into the incarceration of young Aboriginal people found that young Aboriginal people involved in the child justice system experience poverty, inter-generational trauma and racism. This builds on a report by the National Children’s Commissioner released in 2024, and supplemented a month before Allan’s “adult time for violent crime” announcement, which argues strongly against incarceration of children and highlights the disproportionate effect this has on Aboriginal children and young people.
Already in Victoria, young Aboriginal people aged 10 to 17 are around 9.5 times more likely to be placed into detention than non-Aboriginal children, according to the Sentencing Advisory Council. On top of this, draconian bail laws introduced last March by the Victorian Labor government have expanded the state’s ability to imprison Aboriginal people for longer.
The Victorian Aboriginal Legal service has reported that since the bail law changes, there has been a 46 percent bail refusal rate for Aboriginal people, compared to a 6 percent rate for non-Aboriginal people. For young people, VALS reported that their youth legal practice, Balit Ngulu, has seen a 233 percent increase in its caseload due to bail being refused for Aboriginal young people because of the harsh laws.
Allan’s proposed “adult time for violent crime” laws will only further entrench the over-representation of Aboriginal youth in jails, along with migrant youth who face similarly systematic disadvantage and marginalisation.
There cannot be equality or “respect and partnership”, in a system that cannot solve but instead criminalises and punishes poverty and oppression. Achieving genuine justice for Aboriginal people would as a start involve measures to improve radically Aboriginal people’s living standards, including massive funding increases to communities and services, the expansion of public housing, improvement in the quality and availability of education and measures to address inter-generational trauma and cultural destruction. But all this comes at the expense of providing subsidies to fossil fuel companies and other business handouts—much easier just to have some advisers in the fold who government can pretend to listen to every so often.
While there should be a treaty and it’s long overdue, the reality is it won’t be enough to challenge the fundamental dynamic and reality of the system we live under. Consultation serves as a smokescreen for government; it is intended to moderate the ambitions and goals of Aboriginal activists and stymie radical demands, the sorts of demands that need to be made and won if the situation for Aboriginal people is to improve meaningfully. And it does not stop government acting in interests opposite to those of Aboriginal people, as the earliest days of the treaty era have already shown.
Ultimately, the capitalist system is fundamentally unwilling to provide the justice that Aboriginal people so thoroughly deserve. Instead, it regularly introduces measures that make the situation worse, and not due to a lack of good advice. We can’t rely on treaty to change this. What’s needed is a united fight against the system.
