23 Indigenous politics

Indigenous politics is possibly one of the most complex and misunderstood areas of politics in Australia.^[1]

Indigenous issues are often highly politicised, with an emphasis on the divergence of interests between governments, business, the community and Indigenous people themselves. We know that Indigenous issues do not have much salience in public opinion polls.^[2] Nevertheless, political leaders at both state and federal levels have often sought to use Indigenous issues to score points in public debates, demonstrating their ideological credentials. Many debates in Indigenous affairs are framed around deep-seated conflicts over values such as choice, equality, rights, responsibility, diversity, self-determination and sovereignty.

The major parties have moved away from the bipartisanship that surrounded the 1967 constitutional referendum and the passage of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth). Instead, over the past three decades, we have seen divisive and confusing debates around the Mabo case and recognition of native title;^[3] the creation and abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC); the ‘mainstreaming’ of Indigenous government services after decades of self-determination; the acknowledgement of the Stolen Generations culminating in the apology given by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008; the Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention), affecting residents of remote communities, introduced by the Liberal–National Coalition (Coalition) government under Prime Minister John Howard in 2007; and the national debate surrounding the 2023 Voice referendum, and attitudes towards treaty and truth-telling processes by state governments.

It is difficult for a relatively small minority to gain a genuine voice for their issues in mainstream media and government. It is also challenging to develop effective policies without an understanding of First Nations cultures and communities. This chapter breaks down some of these difficulties by:

• exploring the identities of First Peoples and how they understand their place within Australia
• considering the structural barriers to political participation by First Peoples
• briefly explaining the history of activism by First Peoples since colonisation.

We conclude by reflecting on whether there is one ‘Aboriginal movement’ or many before considering the significance of the Uluru Statement from the Heart reforms and the return to nation-based identities.

Who are the First Peoples?

It is useful to clarify the terminology that is used in this chapter. The First Peoples of the Australian continent have been called many things by non-Indigenous people since the 18th century. Some of these terms are now recognised as outdated and based in theories of racial difference. Even the terms ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Torres Strait Islander’ describe legally-defined identities that have been imposed. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the identities of Dharug, Wiradjuri, Larrakia, Noongar, Ngarrindjeri and other peoples were based on connection to Country, kinship and culture. The authors of this chapter have elected to use the collective terms ‘First Peoples’ and ‘First Nations’ in recognition of the diversity of collective identities as peoples and polities, and elsewhere ‘Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders’ or ‘Indigenous people’ where appropriate.

Legal definitions of identity are often debated, and sometimes disparaged, and it is important to understand the ways identity can be externally imposed or denied. In public policy, the ‘Commonwealth definition’ adopted in the late 1970s remains current for the purposes of determining eligibility for Indigenous-specific programs and employment in identified positions. It determines Indigenous status based on three criteria:

• that the person is of Aboriginal (or Torres Strait Islander) descent
• that they identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
• that they are accepted as such by the community in which they live.^[4]

These criteria have been difficult for some people to satisfy, particularly members of the Stolen Generations who have lost links to their birth families and their communities. For many First Peoples living in cities or country towns throughout most of the 20th century, it was preferable to deny Aboriginal heritage or avoid connecting with other Aboriginal people, out of fear of racism and social exclusion.^[5]

The principle of self-identification is recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states: ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own identity or membership in accordance with their customs and traditions’.^[6] The damage caused to land, culture, language and connection to kin, has made this very difficult for many First Peoples, even today. This is sometimes reflected in present-day conflicts over native title, recognition of traditional ownership and governance of organisations and communities.

The importance of self-identification is clear when we consider the Commonwealth’s official statistics on the size of the First Nations population in Australia. The 2021 Census counted 812,728 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – 3.2 per cent of Australia’s population.^[7] While First Peoples make up over 26 per cent of the population of the Northern Territory (NT) (over 61,115), the largest numerical populations live in the states of New South Wales (NSW) (278,043) and Queensland (237,303). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely than non-Indigenous people to live in remote or very remote parts of Australia; nevertheless, over 40 per cent of the Indigenous population lives in major cities.

There are hundreds of First Nations across Australia, with different cultures, traditions, law and languages. Among core similarities they share is a belief that they and their ancestors are related to ‘Country’. Country represents a specific area of land and water but is not reducible to just the geography of the land and its flora and fauna. Each group belongs to and is a part of Country, which they carry responsibility to care for and live with in a mutually beneficial relationship. In English, Country is an expression of First Peoples’ understanding of the cosmos or ‘philosophy of existence’.^[8]

While cultures and languages differ widely, all First Nations have a spiritual connection to Country, the land of their ancestors and its inhabitants. This is because land, people and the laws that govern them were created at the same time by ancestral creation beings. There is an inherent understanding that all things are connected: Aboriginal peoples are connected to Country through their ancestors, who were born from Country. These connections have been described by Yolŋu elders:

This connection, and the wealth of Indigenous knowledges and science that come with it, have largely been overlooked by governments throughout settler-colonial history. Since the earliest days of colonisation, land has been seen as a commodity to be exploited. This is the antithesis of First Peoples’ connection to Country – a living entity that is to be cared for and cultivated only in accordance with its needs and limitations.

An important aspect of the relationship between First Peoples and Country is the cultural protocol of not speaking for someone else’s Country. First Peoples are quick to reject anyone who purports to speak on their behalf. In its simplest form, this is a recognition of each People’s custodianship over their own Country. In a political context, every Nation has its own issues, priorities and internal politics; local decision making involves a long process of consensus building to ensure that the right decision is made and that it is done in a culturally appropriate way. At an individual level, it is important that everybody’s voice is heard. Indigenous governance is built on consensus-making: sitting down and talking through an issue until there is a solution that everyone can accept. When this diversity of views is left unrecognised, it can lead to issues of misrepresentation and inappropriate decision making. This is often the case when governments fail to tailor their policies to local needs or when one individual is called on to speak on behalf of all First Peoples.

Political activism and engagement

The arrival of European settlers in Sydney Cove in 1788 was not a peaceful process. When understood from the standpoint of the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples, the first to encounter the settlers as they established the British penal colony, it was the beginning of an invasion. Despite being weakened by disease and malnutrition, as their food sources were destroyed or made inaccessible, the First Peoples were not passive, and violence spread as the settlers sought to extend their control over the Country of neighbouring Nations. Violent battles, revenge attacks and reprisals were common in the early years of the colony, and losses in what we now know as the ‘Frontier Wars’ were severe.

By the 1830s, colonial governments had begun to move Aboriginal people away from settlements, onto reserves and missions, under supervision, and eventually established the regime of ‘protection’, under which Aboriginal people were segregated, prevented from moving freely and subjected to ‘civilising and Christianising’ by missionaries and superintendents. Children with lighter skin or mixed parentage were removed. First Peoples had their freedom of movement and freedom of association constrained under the supervision of the Protection Boards. All of these actions combined are now understood to be acts of genocide, seeking to ‘eliminate the native’.^[10] First Peoples continued to resist the power of the settlers through this period with overt political tactics, such as petitions, rebellions and formal complaints to authorities about their treatment and conditions, often demanding the right to own land, and through less visible actions, including maintaining culture and language in secret.

By the end of the First World War, many reserves were closing in the south, as land was reallocated to soldier settlement schemes and governments found the costs of maintaining reserves and providing rations and housing increasingly prohibitive. Many First Peoples were forced to live on the fringes of urban settlements, relying on precarious low-paid employment. In the north, where frontier conflicts continued into the 1920s, large reserves were still being used to restrict the movements of First Peoples, and to suppress culture and language in coercive and punitive environments, especially in Queensland. The impact of this violence, racism and exclusion continues to affect many First Peoples today, in the form of intergenerational trauma.

First Nations political activity was very much constrained by government, but this does not mean that it was non-existent. On missions and reserves, resistance took many forms, such as women’s ongoing efforts to preserve culture and kinship ties against the wishes of the authorities.^[11] Early political organisations, such as the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association, founded by Fred Maynard and Tom Lacey, and later the Australian Aborigines’ League under the leadership of William Cooper, Doug Nicholls and Margaret Tucker, called for land and citizenship rights in the 1920s and 1930s. A significant protest was organised in Sydney on 26 January 1938, known as the ‘Day of Mourning’, disrupting celebrations of the 150th anniversary of British settlement in Australia and prompting Prime Minister Joseph Lyons to meet with a delegation of men and women to discuss their concerns. These organisations received support from non-Indigenous activists, including Christian groups, trade unionists and members of the Communist Party of Australia.

By the 1960s, activism around Indigenous issues had become much more visible, and First Nations voices were increasingly being reported by the media. The government’s policies of segregation and ‘protection’ were abandoned in favour of ‘assimilation’. Governments began to extend essential services and entitlements to Aboriginal people, including access to education and health care and eligibility for welfare payments.^[12] In return, First Peoples were expected to abandon their culture and ‘learn’ to live their lives as white Australians did. These assimilationist policies allowed greater freedom of movement and access to education and employment, but their unequal treatment as Australian citizens became increasingly obvious to the wider public. The Australian government faced international criticism over the poverty and exclusion impacting Indigenous communities.^[13] Meanwhile, the civil rights movement – a coalition of activists including feminists, Christians and trade unionists – focused on the campaign to give Aboriginal people ‘citizenship’ by amending the Constitution.^[14] In reality, the 1967 referendum was more limited in its impact: it removed the provision in the Constitution that excluded Aboriginal people from being counted in the Census and gave the Commonwealth the power to legislate on issues affecting Aboriginal people, a measure that activists hoped would override the obvious neglect of First Peoples’ welfare by state and territory governments.^[15]

The apparent achievement of formal political equality for First Peoples as a result of the civil rights movement in the 1960s satisfied many white activists, but it was soon clear that little would change in the substantive inequality experienced by Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, particularly economic inequality and poverty.^[16] Land rights were the subject of much of the political activism during this period, both in terms of the rights of First Nations to make decisions about what happens on their traditional lands and in terms of the potential for land ownership rights to be the basis of economic development – a path out of poverty. First Peoples also emphasised the spiritual significance of Country and its importance as the basis of law and social and cultural wellbeing. A number of key flashpoints attracted attention in metropolitan areas, such as the Yolŋu protests over bauxite mining at Yirrkala and the Gurindji walk-off at Wave Hill, where aggrieved station hands demanded the restoration of their land.^[17]

Land rights were also a significant part of the demands made by protesters at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, established in January 1972 on the lawns in front of Parliament House in Canberra. For the Commonwealth, the struggle for land rights was ultimately an issue that could not be ignored, and the Labor Party, under the leadership of Gough Whitlam, worked on developing a policy to legislate for land rights in the NT. This legislation was ultimately passed by Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal government in 1976. Many vested interests, such as mining companies and pastoralists, fiercely opposed the land rights legislation. They were supported by the NT government in resisting claims. First Nations activists were obliged to contest claims and defend hard-won rights for many years. As Arrente activist and former Director of the Central Land Council Bruce (‘Tracker’) Tilmouth observed, ‘land rights took a lot of getting, by a lot of people’.^[18]

Indigenous peoples have continued to force issues onto the government’s agenda through protest, advocacy and sustained campaigns. In many areas, activists have worked for long periods of time to achieve recognition for significant issues, struggling to gain acceptance of the problems in the face of government and media indifference or active resistance from vested interests. For example, Meriam man Eddie Koiki Mabo and others pursued their claim for recognition of ownership over land in the Torres Strait in a series of court cases against the Queensland government, which lasted for over a decade, and eventually resulted in the significant Mabo case decided by the High Court in 1992 and the subsequent passing of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) by the Keating Labor government.

In several cases, the Commonwealth government has been obliged to respond to First Nations advocacy by establishing wide-reaching inquiries. These have substantially changed the debate around Indigenous affairs over time. Notable inquiries include the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) and the inquiry into the Stolen Generations (1997). Both allowed Indigenous voices to be heard and reported. Both challenged accepted narratives of Australia, pointing to the racism embedded in institutions, policy decisions and society. More recently, the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory (2017) has shown that institutionalised racism has not diminished in many parts of the Australian political system,^[19] and the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s (2021-25) truth-telling process discussed below examined the historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria.

Indigenous organisations and leadership

The 1960s and 1970s saw First Peoples push for self-determination, in recognition of their unique status as Indigenous peoples and in pursuit of their own solutions to disadvantage and dispossession. With cautious support from the Whitlam Labor government, First Nations people put self-determination into practice by establishing Indigenous organisations such as land councils, community-controlled health services, charities and social enterprises. First Peoples needed legal entities to hold the title for land rights and to negotiate with mining interests. Organisations like the Aboriginal Legal Service and Aboriginal Medical Service were started by Aboriginal people to meet their communities’ legal and medical needs. These organisations seek to maintain independence from the government of the day, but many rely on government funding to operate. Indigenous organisations are now widespread, delivering services to local communities, employing substantial numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and acting as representative bodies.

Successful Indigenous organisations and businesses have empowered First Peoples to attain new levels of wealth and success within Australia’s political and economic system. Individuals who achieve this success are often identified as Aboriginal or Indigenous ‘leaders’ by governments and the mainstream media. This can lead to controversy because First Peoples identify very strongly with their Elders and cultural authority. Elders are the leaders of Indigenous families and communities. People do not become Elders simply by virtue of age. Although they may garner respect due to seniority, they will not be recognised by the wider community without a level of cultural knowledge and leadership.^[20] It is this cultural knowledge and mutual respect that is the source of authority within First Nations. Elders are respected as knowledge holders – the custodians of knowledge passed down to them by their own Elders about the proper way to do things according to obligations to Country and lore.

Leadership is a contentious issue in Indigenous politics.^[21] It cannot be assumed that a democratically elected leader holds legitimate authority in an Indigenous context. This is one reason why ATSIC was subject to criticism in Indigenous communities: the commissioners were elected in a democratic process but were not seen as legitimate representatives of the regions and peoples they served.^[22] When governance is structured to meet the needs of the settler-colonial state, it is easily critiqued as denying First Nations sovereignty, and the cultural authority held by Elders and Traditional Owners. Media and government departments need to be mindful of singling out Indigenous individuals because of their success or qualifications within the Australian system, as this doesn’t translate to authority to speak for their people. This is important because governments have a reputation of woefully inadequate consultation with First Nations. Finding the right people to talk to – those who have the authority and knowledge relevant to the issue – can be a difficult task. This is the heart of the problem of treating First Nations as a broad Aboriginal or Indigenous population, rather than as a diverse collection of communities with identities independent of each other and of the broader Australian population.

Barriers to engagement and participation

Like other minorities, First Peoples face considerable structural barriers to full participation in the Australian political system. It is important to recognise that, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, these structures have been firmly entrenched since the earliest days of European colonisation. Settler law and institutions took no account of the existence of First Nations, deliberately ignored their ownership of the land and denied their sovereignty. In this section, we will briefly consider some of the factors that continue to prevent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from enjoying political equality. These include obstacles to political representation, institutional impediments to accountability and the role of the media.

The Australian Constitution explicitly excluded Aboriginal people from the newly formed political community, and First Peoples were not included in the constitutional conventions leading to Federation. Aboriginal people were not given the right to vote in federal elections until 1962; even after that date, voting was not compulsory for Aboriginal people. The franchise for Aboriginal citizens had been inconsistently applied and even occasionally withdrawn by state governments throughout the first half of the 20th century. Under pressure from the Commonwealth, all state jurisdictions legislated the right to vote and to stand for election for First Peoples during the 1960s, with Queensland the last to conform in 1965.^[23] In some jurisdictions, little effort was made to encourage enrolment until compulsory voting was finally extended to Indigenous people in 1984.^[24]

Even after gaining the vote, it proved extremely difficult to gain representation in parliaments. The relatively small First Nations population is scattered across many electorates. The majoritarian electoral system guarantees that a substantial number of electorates are ‘safe seats’, where a large majority of voters favour one or the other major party and minority voices are easily overlooked. Furthermore, the dominance of the major parties means that candidates most often rely on party support to get elected, and Indigenous people have, until recently, only very rarely been preselected by major parties to run for election, especially for winnable seats. The first Indigenous member of the federal parliament was Neville Bonner, Liberal senator for Queensland, who served from 1971 to 1983. Aden Ridgeway was the second, elected in 1998 as senator for NSW, representing the Australian Democrats, and serving one term. The first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives was not elected until 2010, when Liberal candidate Ken Wyatt, a Noongar man, became the member for the Western Australian (WA) seat of Hasluck. The number of Indigenous members of parliament at the state and territory levels remains very small, with the exception of the NT.^[25]

The lack of parliamentary representation for First Nations has received critical attention in recent years, and political parties have much work to do in ensuring that First Peoples are preselected as candidates. The 2016 federal election was notable because a record number of 17 Indigenous candidates stood for election across the nation, of which 11 were preselected by either Labor or the Coalition.^[26]  Following this election, the number of Indigenous members of parliament noticeably rose to five, including Ken Wyatt (Liberal, Hasluck) and Linda Burney (Labor, Barton) in the House of Representatives, and Patrick Dodson (Labor, WA), Malarndirri McCarthy (Labor, NT) and Jacqui Lambie (Jacqui Lambie Network, Tasmania) in the Senate. In subsequent elections, the number of First Nations parliamentarians has continued to grow, though many candidates run unsuccessfully for minor parties and few preselected for major parties are in winnable seats.^[27] The 2025 federal election saw 19 First Nations candidates campaigning, of which seven were running for major parties, and six for the recently-formed Indigenous-Aboriginal Party of Australia.^[28] There are seven First Nations Senators and three First Nations MPs in the current parliament. Of these ten, six represent Labor, two represent the Coalition, and two are independent.

Once elected, the challenges of working effectively in a white institution can be enormous. The adversarial debating system, the majoritarian electoral system, which allows little room for consensus building, and the dominance of the two major parties, which frames issues as binary decisions, all work against Indigenous forms of decision making. Maddison observes the ‘representational dilemmas’ experienced by First Nations members of parliament, as elected representatives are constrained by party discipline and are not free to speak against the party line, even on issues that may negatively affect their people.^[29] Nor can they easily represent the diverse interests of all First Peoples, including those outside their own electorates. The need to manage expectations in the electorate is often challenging.

Despite these constraints, the presence of First Nations members of parliament is significant. They reflect the presence of First Nations people in the wider community and give the otherwise white institution greater legitimacy. First Nations members of parliament take opportunities to present different perspectives in debates and committee inquiries. This has proven particularly important in the Senate estimates committee process, where First Nations Senators have used their practical understanding of the impact of government policy in remote parts of Australia to interrogate ministers and bureaucrats working in Indigenous affairs and to hold the government more effectively to account for the impact of its policies in Indigenous communities. Finally, there is undoubtedly strength in numbers, and solidarity can stretch across the parliamentary chamber, as the former member for Barton, Linda Burney, noted in 2018:

The wonderful thing is that we [the Labor Party] have a First Nations caucus, and we have a very good relationship amongst the Indigenous MPs, no matter what part of Parliament we’re on. We have a good relationship collectively, and we meet informally. That’s the mechanics, and the framework we’re working in.^[30]

Parliamentary representation is not enough on its own to ensure that governments are held to account for decisions affecting Indigenous peoples. Indeed, detrimental policies are frequently made by governments driven by ideological agendas or bureaucratic misunderstanding of the issues. The Commonwealth government’s winding back of native title law and the abolition of ATSIC under Prime Minister John Howard are notable examples, as are the Labor government’s decisions under Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd to dismantle the successful Community Development Employment Program and refuse to consider compensation for members of the Stolen Generations following the apology in 2008. In each case, government policy reflected dominant settler ideological views about the inappropriateness of ‘separate’ or ‘different’ treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people compared to the non-Indigenous population, and dismissed calls for redress or recognition of the special status of First Nations as sovereign peoples with specific rights. A more recent example is the Community Development Program introduced by the Abbott Coalition government, a punitive form of ‘Work for the Dole’ targeting people living in remote parts of Australia, with poorly designed ‘work-related activities’ alongside severe penalties for failing to attend the activities five days a week, all year round.^[31]

In the most striking example, the Howard government’s decision to impose an intervention on remote communities in the NT was rushed through parliament in 2007, with no opportunity to consider the perspectives of First Nations and those affected, in a crisis-driven response to the problem of child sexual abuse in some remote Indigenous communities. The extreme and widely criticised response included compulsory welfare quarantining, enforced health checks and school attendance for children, alcohol bans, increased police presence, changes to housing tenure, abolition of the permit system controlling access to Aboriginal-owned land and compulsory acquisition of leases over townships on Aboriginal land. The initial rollout of the Intervention included army and police officers and the installation of a ‘Government Business Manager’ in each community.

The targeted nature of these measures required the government to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), underlining the illegitimate nature of the Intervention. For some observers, the Howard government appeared opportunistic, using the cover of a ‘crisis’ in remote communities to justify the rapid implementation of unpopular and far-reaching changes that it had wanted to introduce, in particular the imposition of township leases and the removal of permits controlling access to Aboriginal land.^[32] Others noted the lack of evidence base for the policy measures^[33] and the absence of logical connections between the imposed policies and the problem of child abuse that had been identified in the original report that triggered the crisis – the Ampe akelyernemane meke mekarle (‘Little children are sacred’) report.^[34] The Howard government lost the election immediately after rolling out the Intervention in the prescribed communities, but the incoming Rudd government chose to extend it by another five years and expand its reach to more communities, despite criticism and clear opposition from many of the Aboriginal communities affected.^[35]

Sullivan explains that this lack of accountability is because the intended audience is not Aboriginal communities, but rather:

The wishes of white Australia, the context in which those wishes are formed largely through mass media images and reporting, and the ability of government to convince white Australia of adequate funding, appropriate programs and commensurate performance are significantly more influential than the voices of Aboriginal citizens. One of the greatest inhibitors of Aboriginal development is that Aboriginal policy is formulated for the non-Aboriginal public.^[36]

Yolŋu Elder and leader Dr Yunupingu observed the same phenomenon over decades of pursuing legislative and policy reform for his people, engaging with both Labor and Liberal governments. He pointed to the deeper settler logic that prevents genuine responses to First Nations demands for change:

All the prime ministers I have known have been friendly to me, but I mark them all hard. None of them has done what I asked, or delivered what they promised … For a prime minister is beholden to his party and to the parliament, which in turn is held by the Australian people. And the Australian people seem to disapprove of my simple truths, or the idea of proper reconciliation. The Australian people do not wish to recognise me for who I am – with all that this brings – and it is the Australian people whom the politicians fear. The Australian people know that their success is built on the taking of the land, in making the country their own, which they did at the expense of so many languages and ceremonies and songlines – and people – now destroyed.^[37]

The challenge of holding governments to account for policies targeting First Peoples is even more complex given the overlapping responsibilities of the Commonwealth and state and territory governments and the opaque nature of federal–state financial arrangements, which see Commonwealth funds disbursed to states and territories without clear lines of accountability.^[38] The perennial issue of overcrowded housing on Aboriginal-owned land in the NT is a clear example of the blame-shifting that can occur as funds are allocated by one level of government and spent by another, with poor outcomes. Similarly, the Commonwealth’s ‘Closing the Gap’ policy, designed to close gaps in health, employment, education and other outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, has failed to meet many of the targets originally set in 2008, but responsibility for the failure is difficult to trace due to the multiple departments and agencies involved, across two levels of government.

The attention paid by mainstream media to Indigenous affairs is minimal, as a rule, with occasional bursts of intense, almost voyeuristic scrutiny.^[39] This is, in part, because assumptions are made in newsrooms that stories about Indigenous affairs are not of interest to urban audiences on the east coast.^[40] Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz and Heidi Norman examined mainstream media reporting of ten key political moments over 45 years to analyse the impact of media reporting on Aboriginal political aspirations. They found a general failure of understanding, and the domination of four narratives  throughout media reporting: White Mastery, Irreconciliation, Subordination and Sovereignty/nationhood; narratives that have likely undermined Aboriginal peoples’ pursuit of self-determination, agreement-making and other political aspirations over time. ^[41]

Few media outlets employ journalists who specialise in Indigenous affairs. Furthermore, journalists’ understanding of the lives and circumstances of those living in remote Indigenous communities is usually extremely limited, given the lack of ongoing contact and time spent in the communities, along with language and cultural barriers.^[42] Often this will mean that the government’s framing of an issue can go unquestioned, and few Indigenous voices are directly reported. This distance between mainstream media and First Peoples has consequences in terms of the wider public’s understanding of the issues. Sensationalist coverage focusing on dysfunction, alcohol consumption, violence, welfare dependence and poverty is often dominant and entrenches racist stereotypes without providing an understanding of the context.^[43] This creates an environment in which extreme and paternalist policies can be imposed with little backlash from voters. Researchers Kerry McCallum and Holly Reid have observed the particular influence of The Australian newspaper. As one of the few mainstream media outlets choosing to focus on Indigenous issues, the newspaper uses a ‘campaigning’ approach, framing stories about Indigenous communities in ways that emphasise individual responsibility, moral failure and crisis, thereby endorsing government action such as the Intervention. The newspaper also privileges the voices of a small number of conservative Indigenous leaders. A recent study by Alison Holland observes the deliberate role played by mainstream media in encouraging the abolition of ATSIC in 2004, using bullying and racist tropes that had little in common with the depiction in Indigenous media of an organisation that was innovative, representative and successful in advocating on many issues of importance to First Nations communities.^[44]

First Peoples are increasingly using special interest media and social media to expand the range of voices in public debate. Indigenous newspapers, such as the National Indigenous Times and the Koori Mail, community radio stations and the government-funded National Indigenous TV (NITV) are presenting First Nations perspectives and voices and covering stories not receiving attention elsewhere. The popularisation of short-form video content by TikTok and Meta has created a platform for young Indigenous people to share their culture, perspectives on political issues and stories from Indigenous communities.^[45] First Nations journalists are also increasingly taking up positions in mainstream newsrooms and studios, articulating viewpoints that rarely receive public attention.^[46]

One movement or many?

Demands from First Peoples for change have taken many different shapes throughout Australia’s political history. The 1970s saw the birth of a strong pan-Aboriginal movement,^[47] inspired by the civil rights and Black Power movements in the USA. First Peoples collaborated as a nationwide collective to campaign for land rights, self-determination, treaty and sovereignty. This movement instilled a strong Aboriginal identity in many First Peoples. Following the Howard government’s dismantling of ATSIC and rejection of self-determination in favour of ‘practical reconciliation’, there has been a strong emphasis on engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals through increasingly neoliberal policies. At the same time, in opposition to the one-size-fits-all approach of government and in a resurgence of First Nations identities and political culture, the emphasis has shifted from the pan-Aboriginal movement of the 1970s back to a focus on localised Nation-based identities, recognising the sovereignty of each Nation over their own Country.

First Nations sovereignty remains the great unanswered question of Australia’s colonisation.^[48] First Peoples claim sovereignty as distinct political communities, while also pursuing their rights as citizens of Australia. This can be a source of conflict and confusion in Indigenous politics.^[49] First Nations have continuing sovereignty over their Country, which exists alongside and arguably in contestation with the sovereignty of the Crown. The High Court of Australia has refused to consider First Nations as sovereign;^[50] to do so would be to challenge the exclusive crown sovereignty from which the High Court receives its authority.

Sovereignty is often understood in international politics as the power to exercise supreme and unrivalled authority within a given territory. As Falk and Martin explain, most First Nations’ demands for recognition of sovereignty do not take this form. Rather, they rely on a notion of ‘internal sovereignty’, which is shared, recognised and negotiated within a geographic area.^[51] This is concerned with creating the space for First Nations communities to protect their culture, law and traditions and to exercise autonomy with respect to matters that are important to them, such as economic development, land resource management, protection of cultural heritage and education.^[52] Internal sovereignty does not seek to displace non-Indigenous people but does demand recognition of the identity and authority of First Nations to make decisions for their own people. First Nations hold sovereignty not as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, nor as a single pan-Aboriginal movement, but as hundreds of distinct polities across the continent. For this sovereignty to be exercised, it needs to be recognised at the local and regional level, acknowledging the authority of the respective Nations.

The re-assertion of First Nations identities has accompanied a reinvigoration of the treaty movement. Some of Australia’s state governments have recognised this reality and begun treaty processes with the First Peoples of their state, discussed further below. While there is a clear need to redefine the relationship between First Nations and governments, the path forward is unclear. There have been calls for self-determination and treaty for at least 50 years, with differing responses across the political spectrum. Indigenous people as both collectives and individuals also have their own articulations of what sovereignty looks like, what constitutes real ‘self-determination’, and what subject matter should be negotiated in any treaty.^[53] However, the contrast between the Voice referendum’s failure at the Commonwealth level and recent reforms in Victoria help make clear the enduring importance of political representation for Indigenous peoples.^[54]

Uluru Statement reforms and the Victorian Treaty

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a document which holds a unique position in Indigenous politics. It is an open invitation to the Australian people to reform their relationship with First Nations through a sequenced reform agenda summarised as: voice, treaty and truth.^[55] This was the impetus for the unsuccessful Voice referendum held on 14 October 2023 by the Albanese Labor Government.^[56] The Uluru Statement was the result of deliberations and consensus-building by over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates at the First Nations National Constitutional Convention held over four days between 23–26 May 2017.

This convention was the final step in a significant consultation process conducted as part of the Referendum Council process.  These consultations were unique, as they were Indigenous-designed and led using a dialogue model focused on consensus-building. During the Regional Dialogue process, 1,200 First Nations delegates were consulted, making it ‘the most proportionately significant consultation process that has ever been undertaken with First Peoples’.^[57] The delegates to the national convention (also known as the Uluru Dialogue) attended one of twelve regional dialogues where they were selected to represent the views and consensus held by their region.

The Referendum Council was established in December 2015  by the Turnbull Coalition Government with bipartisan support to investigate how to appropriately recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution. Since Federation in 1901, the Australian Constitution has only ever excluded Indigenous peoples from Australian political structures. The wildly successful 1967 Referendum deleted section 127 of the Constitution, which prevented Aboriginal people from being counted in the national census. It also amended section 51 (xxvi) to remove the exclusion of the ‘Aboriginal race’ from the ‘races power’, to allow the Commonwealth government to make laws targeting any race of people including Aboriginal people. The resulting constitutional silence has prompted debate since at least the 1990s about how the nation’s founding document might be amended to recognise the First Peoples of the continent.

At the Uluru Dialogue, representatives rejected outright the idea of symbolic recognition, which was the major focus of corporate and political campaigning since the late 2000s. They instead called for substantive reforms to the Australian legal and political system in the form of a staged process:

• enshrining a First Nations ‘Voice to Parliament’ body in the Australian Constitution
• establishing a Makarrata Commission to lead treaty or agreement-making processes between First Nations and Australian governments
• conducting a national truth-telling process, with localised examinations of the untold and suppressed histories of settler–First Nations relations.

The Referendum Council’s final report summarised its findings and supported the call for a First Nations Voice to Parliament.^[58] Both the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the final report received a hostile response from the Coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull. There was an attempt by parliamentarians to reinvigorate symbolic recognition in the Australian Constitution, holding a Senate inquiry into constitutional recognition that reported in 2018. In the lead up to the 2019 federal election, the Coalition government under Scott Morrison committed to developing models for an Indigenous Voice through a co-design process if re-elected. The final Indigenous Voice co-design report was released in 2021 and proposed a model for national and local ‘voices to government’. In 2022, the Australian Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese was elected with a commitment to ‘implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full’. The question of a constitutionally enshrined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament was put to the Australian people in 2023, with a national 60 per cent No vote and a majority No vote in every state.

During this six-year period between the Uluru Dialogue in 2017 and the 2023 Voice referendum, state and territory governments pursued their own responses to the Uluru Statement reforms. In Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory treaty processes were initiated by Labor governments but stopped by incoming Coalition governments. In 2024, the newly elected Crisafulli LNP Government repealed Queensland’s Path to Treaty Act 2023, which halted the ongoing work of the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry documenting individual, community and historical experiences and impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Queensland. In that same year, the Minns ALP Government started a consultation process on treaty in NSW, and elections were held for the inaugural representatives in South Australia’s First Nations Voice to Parliament. This pattern of significant political processes being commenced by one government and swiftly dismantled by the next was a strong reason why the Uluru Statement called for constitutional enshrinement of the Voice before pursuing treaty and truth-telling processes.

Significantly, Victoria was the first jurisdiction to implement all three Uluru Statement reforms. Labor’s electoral success under Daniel Andrews in 2014, 2018 and 2022 enabled the Victorian Government to take their treaty process the full distance. In 2016 the Andrews Government committed to pursuing treaty and greater self-determination for Aboriginal peoples in Victoria. The proposed Aboriginal Representative Body to conduct treaty negotiations with the state was formalised as the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria by the 2018 Treaty Act. The assembly is an independent body of 33 members, democratically elected for a four-year term to represent First Peoples in Victoria and negotiate treaty with the Victorian government. The first members of the assembly were elected in October 2019. In 2020, the assembly negotiated for the creation of the Yoorrook Justice Commission to gather evidence about the ongoing impact of colonisation on First Peoples in Victoria. The official public record of the evidence given to Yoorrook and its final reports were tabled in Victorian Parliament in July 2025, and in December 2025 Premier Jacinta Allan delivered an official apology to First Peoples in the Victorian Parliament.^[59]

In August 2022, the Treaty Authority Act was passed by the Victorian Government after successful negotiations with the First Peoples’ Assembly to formalise the treaty process. The Treaty Authority was established as an independent umpire to treaty negotiations. In 2025, the First Peoples Assembly and the Victorian Government finalised negotiations on a statewide treaty. This was formalised in the Statewide Treaty Act 2025 which passed both houses in October without support of the Liberal and National Coalition Opposition. On 13 November 2025 the Act was signed by members of the First Peoples’ Assembly and the Victorian government led by Premier Jacinta Allan and received Royal Assent from the Governor of Victoria. As part of the statewide treaty, the First Peoples’ Assembly will become a permanent representative and decision-making body under the umbrella of a new entity called Gellung Warl. Gellung Warl will also include two new bodies: Nginma Ngainga Wara, an independent mechanism to hold the Victorian government accountable for its Closing the Gap commitments, and Nyerna Yoorrook Telkuna an ongoing truth-telling body.^[60] First Nations in Victoria may also negotiate Traditional Owner treaties, with funding secured in the statewide treaty for a Self-Determination Fund to support this process.

While in the aftermath of the Voice referendum, the Commonwealth Labor Government has turned its attention away from the Uluru reforms to the ‘practical’ reconciliation popularised by Coalition governments, the Victorian Government has demonstrated what can be achieved through a process that is given enough time and resources to drive Indigenous-led policy and political change. With the commitment from the Victorian opposition to overturn the statewide treaty if elected in November 2026, we are reminded of the highly politicised nature of Indigenous politics in Australia which makes it difficult for First Peoples to pursue meaningful and effective reform.

Conclusions

This chapter focused on the complex nature of Indigenous politics, and the diversity of First Nations across the Australian continent. Historically, governments have failed to take into account the political culture and leadership of First Peoples, preferring policies that are one-size-fits-all and often based on a poor understanding of local priorities. This has led to decades of policy failures, allowing for the continuation of socio-economic disadvantage and denying Indigenous cultures, laws, knowledges, experiences and aspirations.

First Peoples have a long history of political activism and resistance, pre-dating the formal recognition of political equality and the right to vote in the 1960s. Adapting to changing circumstances and the restrictions imposed by governments,  Indigenous activists have maintained a number of consistent demands over a long period: land rights, self-determination, treaty and recognition of First Nations sovereignty arising from their continuing obligations and connection to Country. The struggle against institutional racism and social exclusion has also been an enduring theme. Activism has led to significant achievements in terms of social and political change, but First Peoples are forced to work within racialised institutional structures.

Uluru Statement from the Heart remains an open invitation for substantive reform at the national, state and territory level, and treaty negotiations in certain jurisdictions show another promising path forward. It is clear that Indigenous peoples are determined to engage as equals in the political process and work with all Australian citizens to develop a new, more inclusive political culture that reflects the contemporary realities of First Peoples, settlers and migrants sharing the Australian story. In the words of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, all Australians are invited to ‘walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future’.

References

About the authors

Diana Perche is an Associate Professor in Social Research and Policy at UNSW Sydney. Diana’s research focuses on the participation of First Nations in Australian politics and policy making, and on how Australian governments use evidence and ideology to design public policy affecting or targeting Indigenous people.

Jason O’Neil is a Lecturer in the School of Global and Public Law at the UNSW Faculty of Law & Justice and a Scientia PhD Candidate in the School of Social Sciences. Jason’s research focuses on Indigenous self-determination and centring First Nations’ Country-based authority in Australian public policy. He is a Wiradjuri man from Central West NSW.