JSCATSIA inquiry on Truth and Justice Commission Bill: 231 submissions received and public hearings under way

On 4 July 2024 the Senate referred the Truth and Justice Commission Bill 2024 to the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (JSCATSIA) for inquiry and report by 11 February 2025.

Ours was one of 231 submissions the Inquiry received, which suggests that, whatever political calculations may have been made about Makaratta, the truth-telling issue is still front and centre for blackfellers and many whitefellers. It is also at the heart of our Defending Country campaign.

Public hearings have commenced.

The Bill is intended to establish a Commission to inquire into and make recommendations to Parliament on particular matters relating to historic and ongoing injustices against First Peoples in Australia and the impacts of these injustices on First Peoples.

Defending Country noted the commencement of the Inquiry.  Our submission (no. 76; downloadable from the JSCATSIA site) included this Conclusion and these Recommendations:

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Conclusion

45. If Australia addresses intergenerational trauma in a formal structure like a Truth and Justice Commission, it will show we regard that trauma as important.

46. Even without a new formal structure, however, we can confront these issues in the Australian War Memorial and other commemorative institutions, as well as in the National Archives, the National Library, the National Museum, the Ngurra Precinct if it proceeds, in local memorials, and in school curricula.

47. What a nation commemorates shows what it regards as important. A nation which embraces the concept of Defending Country, a nation which does not distinguish by skin colour or descent or the identity of the enemy the worth of ‘service and sacrifice’ to defend Country, is a different nation from what went before. That is the kind of Australia which could grow from real change at the War Memorial.

48. The Australian Wars should hold a special place in our Australian future. Proper recognition and commemoration of this source of intergenerational trauma should be a priority if we are genuinely committed to Truth and Justice.

49. Not honestly recognising all of Australia's war dead diminishes us as a nation. Recognising and commemorating Australians fighting overseas (Australia’s Overseas Wars) to defend Australia, while not recognising and commemorating Australians fighting at home to defend Australia (The Australian Wars) is illogical and insulting.

50. What greater historic injustice can there be than to ignore or downplay our first and most important war and its lasting effects?

51. On the other hand, further drift and dissembling and tokenism by institutions and in policy indicates Australians do not regard these matters as important.

52. Eualeyai-Kamillaroi woman, Professor Larissa Behrendt, is one of the Supporters of the Defending Country campaign. In 2017, she wrote this in her chapter of The Honest History Book (2017), p. 238:

For Indigenous people, the perennial questions posed by that moment of invasion in 1788 are about the best strategies for surviving it and determining how to assert Indigenous identity, culture and sovereignty as it faces assaults from the dominant culture every day. These continuing, two-and-a-quarter-century old tensions lie beneath policy questions (Closing the Gap, dealing with incarceration, education, domestic violence, drugs and alcohol) and constitutional options (Recognise or Treaty or both). For the rest of Australia, there is the challenge of how the dominant national narrative – the story the nation tells itself – deals with the invasion moment.

53. That is even more true in 2024-25 than it was in 2017.

Recommendations

R1. That the Truth and Justice Commission prioritise investigation of the events and effects of the Australian Wars.

R2. That the Commission emphasise that the role of the Australian War Memorial in relation to the Australian Wars needs to be strengthened by amendment of the Australian War Memorial Bill 1980, revision of the Memorial's current redevelopment plans, and consultation with historians.

R3. That the Commission confirm that the Australian War Memorial and other commemorative institutions should give equal treatment to casualties from the Australian Wars and casualties in Australia's Overseas Wars since, in both cases, those involved were Defending Country.

R4. That the Commission note the risk that the Australian War Memorial's focus on interesting individuals and single instances of frontier conflict will divert attention from the overwhelming scale of the Australian Wars and their lasting impacts on First Nations people and all Australians.

R5. That the Commission note that broadening the focus of the Australian War Memorial also should lead to reframing Australian commemoration as a whole, both in other commemorative institutions and in national days of commemoration, like Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.

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Picture credits: Senator Dorinda Cox, Greens WA (left), who introduced the Bill (WikimediaCommons/adendagostino/Creative Commons);

Senator Jana Stewart, ALP Vic, Chair of JSCATSIA (supplied)