Work towards a NSW treaty between representatives of European colonisers of Australia and First Nations peoples in the state is to start before the end of the year.
The first NSW Minister for Treaty, David Harris, said in July the Labor government would be advertising work on a treaty ‘quite extensively through Aboriginal communities’.
‘It’s envisaged that we will be setting up the framework towards the end of this year,’ Mr Harris said, ‘and then consultation will start next year, probably mid-year because we don’t want people to get consultation burnout, we’ve obviously got the Voice referendum at the moment’.
Labor’s two treaty questions
Mr Harris said work on a treaty was part of Labor’s state election campaign.
‘What we took to the election was a commitment to go to people, Aboriginal people, across NSW after the Voice referendum and ask them two important questions,’ he said.
‘One is, do they want a treaty?’ he said, ’and the second one is, if they do, what should the process look like?’
‘That consultation will open the discussion,’ he said.
‘This is not going to be a short process, we want to make sure that we get the views of Aboriginal people 100 per cent heard.’
Mr Harris, also the NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, said in the interview with Bay FM’s Community Newsroom he didn’t think a NSW treaty would ‘look the same as other states’’.
‘We have Aboriginal Land Councils, we have Aboriginal land rights, and we have the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations,’ Mr Harris said.
‘So we have a whole lot of really good infrastructure already, as well as native title holders and traditional owners,’ he said.
But the minister said the state needed a legislated way for Aboriginal communities to negotiate with the government on issues important to them and for agreements to be made.
‘Governments, when they change, would still have to respond to those agreements,’ Mr Harris said.
‘We want to hear from Aboriginal people, from those traditional owners, the native title holders, what they want, and how they see the process working,’ he said.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
