A left-wing government attempting to convince voters that dividing people by race is not only harmless but moral, critics dismissed as spouting misinformation, and the public being told that failure to accept the proposal is a lack of compassion. If this feels like we have been here before, it is because we have.

The Statewide Treaty Bill introduced into the Victorian state parliament earlier this month is an even more extreme proposal than Prime Minister Albanese put to Australians in October 2023.

In 2023, the Prime Minister declared the Voice to parliament was ‘a modest and gracious request for reconciliation’. When Australians looked under the bonnet, they found the Voice was neither modest nor gracious, but rather an ambitious re-engineering of Australia’s democracy along racial lines. Australians saw this clearly, and overwhelmingly rejected it, with 60 per cent – and almost 55 per cent of Victorians – voting No.

Now, less than two years later, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is claiming her treaty legislation is ‘simple’, ‘practical’ and ‘common sense’. There is nothing ‘simple’ about her government’s 246-page Bill. It will at its core divide Victorians by race, and give special privileges and extra votes to people based solely on their racial background.

It will do this by establishing a permanent race-based body – the Gellung Warl – which will operate as a fourth branch of government complete with untested and sweeping powers, including to make ‘substantive rules’, its own electoral system, a permanent truth-telling process, and the special ability to summon ministers, bureaucrats, and even the chief police commissioner to appear before it in secretive hearings.

Only a fraction of Victorians will be given the right to vote for officials of this new body – but all Victorians will be paying for its upkeep. It will have incredible influence over the direction of state government and will be comprised solely of indigenous politicians complete with an entire new bureaucracy to service them.

The body will not be subject to oversight and is ‘not subject to the direction or control of the minister’ in how it operates or exercises its powers. It will have the power to summon ministers and officials as part of its monitoring of how government is eliminating ‘institutional racism’, but accountability will be strictly a one-way street.

If ministers defy its instruction, they will no doubt come under unrelenting political pressure for defying Gellung Warl – the official voice of ‘first peoples’ in Victoria. In effect, the draft laws will set up a radical and unprecedented third chamber of parliament that cannot be voted out but will exercise extraordinary influence on those who can.

On top of this, Jacinta Allan is trying to sneak a lowering of the voting age to 16 into the treaty process. Her government’s plan to allow 16-year-old indigenous voters to elect members of the Gellung Warl is the Trojan horse that will allow for its expansion into other elections, marking an unprecedented change to electoral law in Australia.

Worse still, the treaty process creates a situation where some Victorians, based on their race, will get two votes to determine who governs their state via parliament, while the rest only get one.

The financial scale, alone, is extraordinary. Where funding is usually at the discretion of the parliament, the draft laws lock in a permanent funding stream to the body that will increase by 2.5 per cent every year from 2030.

By locking this into law, the government has effectively insulated the body from ordinary budgetary scrutiny. Any change to the funding of the body will require entirely new legislation by the parliament.

The result of this permanent funding is that taxpayers will spend an eye-watering $679.4 million over the next decade simply to cover Gellung Warl’s basic functions. In other words, Victorians will be made to pay more each year to sustain an institution that does not represent them, is insulated from their accountability, and undermines their representatives in parliament.

The Premier’s claim that the treaty ‘will not take anything from anyone’ flies in the face of what treaty proponents – including those appointed by the state government – have said they want.

The Bill is not nearly the end of the treaty process but merely opens the door to more treaties between the state and local treaty groups that will be negotiated in secrecy. Damein Bell, CEO of the First People’s Assembly of Victoria candidly wrote the Bill ‘marks the beginning of a new Treaty era’.

It cannot be known what the substance of those agreements will entail, and what the state government will sign away in the name of the people of Victoria. In fact, much of the detail around treaty negotiations will be exempt from freedom of information laws.

However, the recommendations by the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the body that has recommended this treaty, has demanded that all treaties be negotiated in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These guidelines include the restitution of traditional lands, monetary compensation, tax relief, and any other benefits requested during treaty negotiations.

Research by the Institute of Public Affairs, which has looked at international examples, found the total financial cost of a treaty to the Victorian government could amount to in excess of $48 billion per annum if these guidelines and international precedent are followed.

On top of this, IPA analysis of the state government’s own budget reveals it has already spent $776 million over the past decade developing this treaty, and the Bill as introduced to parliament shows the administration of the treaty alone will cost approximately $679 million over the next decade.

The Premier’s insistence that the treaty Bill represents ‘common sense’ is an insult to those being effectively disenfranchised. It defies the fundamental principle that all Victorians are equal under the law, and creates a two-tiered legal system. Ignoring the will of the Victorian people, as explicitly expressed on 14 October 2023, is not common sense – it is a travesty.