It is frightening how little is taught in schools about the United Nations. Australians have virtually no idea what role this supreme international forum plays in their lives.

How many Victorians know that the so-called Treaty signed without their approval by their government and Aboriginal activists is wrongly based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, known as UNDRIP?

And if they did know, are they aware that UNDRIP has not been adopted into Australian law by either the ALP or the Coalition? Why? Because it undermines the sovereignty of Australian law including relating to land ownership.

This did not stop the Victorian government from saying in the Explanatory Memorandum of the Statewide Treaty Bill 2025 that it was establishing a:

‘…special measure to ensure the equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms by First People and to promote and uphold the unique and inherent right of First Peoples to self-determining their own future …  including the right to participate in government.’

What does that really mean?

What does it mean for those Indigenous people already elected to our parliaments?

What if the rest of Victorian people do not agree with separate rules and government for Indigenous people in what is hailed as an equal society?

But then comes the clanger of all time. Reference is made to a human right, hitherto rarely noticed, ‘to participate in government’. Whatever this means.

Participating in government has never been a human right, not even for Aborigines.

It is a privilege.

The Allan government clearly forgot that UNDRIP has never passed muster to become part of any Commonwealth legislation.

Put simply, the Bill is enshrined in UNDRIP but UNDRIP is not enshrined in any Australian law or Constitutional arrangement.

Not one mention in the 46 articles of UNDRIP refers to a ‘right to participate in government’. It smells of a lazy Minister referring to a UN document to give an air of authority.

If Australians did know about the UN they would know that its behaviour has changed enormously since it was founded in 1945. The 21 original member states were merely trying to prevent future world wars. It was about peace and security.

With nearly 200 member states today, many became nations when former colonies in Africa and South America gained their independence. The so-called developing countries have the numbers to win every vote now largely aimed at social programs and wealth transfer.

A strategy document published by the Victorian government said, ‘Self-determination is defined under the United Nations DRIP as the ability of indigenous people to freely determine their political status.’ This is the same United Nations which, until recently, had Iran heavily involved in the UN Commission on the Status of Women. It still has China as a Co-Chair of a Committee looking into climate change.

Referencing United Nations Declarations such as this is a false source of legitimacy.

Hence the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) whose functions are, inter alia, to consider all Bills introduced into the Victorian Parliament and report as to whether the Bill directly or indirectly trespasses unduly on rights and freedoms.

The problem is a tendency by the Andrews and Allan governments to overlook or ignore the firm obligation they have had to comply with the law. This disgrace begins with the membership of the SARC committee. Five of the eight members are ALP members, and another is from the Legalise Cannabis Party.

The second problem for the Statewide Treaty Bill was it was nearly 300 pages long – complex – and full of changes to fundamental structural principles of democratic governance, particularly sovereignty and equal citizenship.

Introduced into Parliament on 9 September this year the Bill was accompanied by a Statement of Compatibility with Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. It was 15 pages long. Four weeks later, on October 10, SARC closed the time to receive submissions from the public. This deadline was not advertised. Nor was there notice given to any members of the public that they could make any submission at all.

The one public submission was made by the Australian Research House (ARH) which contacted the SARC Secretariat on its own initiative. This organisation also made submissions to the Yoorrook Commission (thewholetruth.au) but were not interviewed possibly because their submissions held different views to the Commission itself.

A 20-page submission from the ARH was sent to the SARC Secretariat and to each member of the SARC committee on time. Several MPs acknowledged receipt. However, the ARH submission was not even tabled.

When SARC met on Monday October 13, it was a day before the debate was scheduled in the Parliament. The SARC report was released an hour before debate of the Bill began and may explain why very little debate was had. Had they read the report, it would have been obvious that SARC failed to consider the basic issues of how compatible the Bill was with the Victorian Human Rights Charter.

It did not even question whether it impacted human rights.

When the Victorian Parliament debated a Bill in 2018 called Advancing the Treaty Process, the relevant Minister admitted that consultation with non-Indigenous Victorians had not taken place. But he promised that ‘by the time this mechanism (of consultation) has come into play, there will be significant community education and information about the treaty process’. That did not happen. No community education was held. People still don’t understand it.

Victorians are supposed to live in a democratic system of government, but the current government treats its citizens as mugs. In the same 2018 debate, the Minister gave a sombre disclosure. He said, ‘What the Bill does is it takes an emerging conversation and emerging knowledge and, I have to say … an unmet movement that has not been recognised … a movement towards Treaty … a grassroots movement.’

He said 62 per cent of people supported this ‘movement’. This is the same 62 per cent which was recorded as being in favour of the Voice at the beginning of the Referendum campaign – which rapidly fell to 40 per cent. Astoundingly, the Minister confirmed:

‘In fact, probably most Victorians are happy that they do not understand what happens in the Parliament … this piece of legislation is about allowing and supporting Aboriginal people to have a go … and we’ll see how far along this path we can go.’

For this government, the public’s ignorance is bliss.

Clearly the Treaty legislation is full of examples of human rights abuse, as well as the introduction of racial bias. Mechanisms put in place such as SARC have been ignored.

This line-up of serious government failures provides the political ballast for its apology to Victoria’s Indigenous people for the impact of state-enabled systemic injustice.

After saying sorry, financial reparations will surely follow.

One can only surmise how long it will take for Indigenous people to say a ‘Sorry’ of their own. It would be directed to the past generations of Aborigines who suffered through the tyranny of the Aboriginal culture of violence, revenge, organ theft, infanticide, the woeful treatment of women, and cannibalism.

The history books tell us it was clearly a culture of systemic injustice.

Roger Pescott is a former Australian diplomat and Minister in the Kennett Government.