Legislation for a statewide treaty with indigenous Australians should never have made it to the steps of the Victorian parliament, let alone indoors. Treaty and treaties for Victoria were never voted on. There’s a good reason for that: Victorians wouldn’t have supported it. When they did get a chance to vote on racism and separation on skin colour, they said No. We can thank the Voice referendum for the clarity it provided; a distinct vote, unblurred by the multi-promise spectre of a general election.

The socialist Labor government is not the sole purveyor of a treaty: the spineless opposition allowed it to get this far, ushering through the enabling legislation.

In the marriage between citizen and state, the Andrews and now Allan Labor governments behave as the bullying partner: they undertake coercive control, they dominate, and they gaslight. They tell you what is good for you.

For all the years Daniel Andrews reigned as premier, his replacement stood behind him nodding like a perpetual bobblehead. During Covid, she nodded at proclamations such as ‘we had no choice’ because we are ‘guided by the science’. In the 2018 Advancing the Treaty Process Act, Labor again assumed a position on our behalf saying a treaty will: ‘bring pride to all Victorians and have positive impacts for all of Victorian society’.

As the Statewide Treaty entered the Victorian parliament last week, the Premier adopted her predecessor’s style. She released a statement which said, ‘I thank the Victorian people for coming with us on this journey…. The first Treaty in Australia’s history will be in your name, too – and it will benefit us all.’

While the rancid scent of Soviet-style diktats may mesmerise some, there is a great chance that most Victorians will be unimpressed: they are very capable of making up their own minds. They don’t need to be told what to think. And nor are they hitch-hikers on this treaty ‘journey’.

Victorians should also understand that ‘truth’ is very different to ‘truth-telling’. Truth-telling emanates from South Africa and requires the individual to look at colonisation through the victimhood lens. It seeks some information, not all. And so it is that the recent Yoorrook Commission re-wrote the state’s history pages that now read only of doom and gloom.

Some Victorians are very alert to what information went into Yoorrook, and what came out. The Whole Truth submission illuminated a catalogue of history books that exposed the traditional Aboriginal culture we never hear about. It wasn’t mentioned in the final cut.

With Yoorrook done, the ‘state treaty’ now turns the Yoorrook recommendations into legislation. This includes the demand to ‘embed’ truth-telling and traditional culture into the Victorian curricula.

If Jacinta Allan wants a robust and abundant education system – shouldn’t students know exactly what the culture was, and not merely Yoorrook’s Disney Dreamtime version of it? Yoorrook recommends that school libraries are audited and decolonised, ‘removing outdated or racist materials’. Instead, they believe libraries should be filled with indigenous-approved books.

For future students seeking the whole truth about their state it will be a case of happy hunting.

In truth, decolonising libraries will simply empty the bookshelves given every book is the result of colonisation.

Perhaps given Victoria is now a two-tiered state where we are supposed to celebrate one race above all others, then we should be looking to celebrate such a mighty achievement. We already have Sorry Day. So, let’s bring on Thank You Day.

On this auspicious annual day, perhaps the indigenous elite pushing for separatism (and getting it) can say ‘thank you’ to the colonisers for a modern country where, for indigenous people, there is no more cannibalism, no slavery of women to men, no genital mutilation and group rape of pubescent girls, or massacres of rival tribes, organ theft from living people, infanticide or the strangling of the elderly when they get too old to care about.

Instead, on Thank You Day, activists can say thank you for modern medicine, mobile phones, roads (which they can name), schools (where they can indoctrinate), permanent homes and ready food, water and sanitation. They might even say thank you for international sport or books, art, theatre, canvas, paint and so on.

Yes, the Premier’s generosity of spirit will surely run both ways.

The treaty will give indigenous people a say over legislation that affects them. But as equal citizens – it means all legislation will impact them. A treaty therefore affords them an opportunity not given any others. What will it do for federalism and how other states interact with Victoria?

By offering a separate system for Aborigines ‘because it gives people a say in their lives’, Premier Allan is effectively saying that the Victorian parliament no longer works.

If equality means something – and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities means anything – then the Premier will have no choice but to offer Victorians of other persuasions the same. Why shouldn’t Indians, Chinese or Muslims also get their own treaty? Or Catholics or French or transgender people? For they, too, experience change and trauma.

And by enshrining indigenous lore and law, why wouldn’t sharia law also be made available to those who subscribe to it?

In establishing a permanent body in the parliament the indigenous are, by default, broadcasting that they will never succeed. If they succeed, they do themselves out of a job and billions of dollars. In other words, it is in the indigenous elites’ benefit to fail and to keep failing.

And why will they fail? Because, of course, they will say the state has not properly funded them for success. Silly state. They will simply need more money, and every indigenous problem will be solved.

Yoorrook laid the ballast for arguments of victimhood and the re-writing of history.

Treaty is about destroying democracy. It tears at the fundamentals of equal citizenry. It accepts different forms of law, it provides funding, rights, opportunities and legislation only for some.

It changes Victoria forever. And not in a good way.