Response to Victorian Government Apology to First Peoples
This week, the Premier delivered an apology to First Peoples after the passing of the “treaty” bill in the Victorian parliament. While the empty words of this apology may bring comfort to some, we say that this apology is merely smoke and mirrors for the genocidal state to pat itself on the back and attempt to make history on paper. Amidst the increased militarisation of VicPol, destruction of sacred country, and the kidnapping of our children, we say to the Premier that your words are nothing but lip service that contradict the very genocidal practices you continue to mandate upon Sovereign Indigenous Nations. As the deception “treaty” process is underway, the state expands stop-and-search police powers, backflips on raising the age of criminal responsibility, and enacts stricter bail laws. In the apology, the same words ring out, “we say sorry”, but sorry means you don’t do it again.
“For the laws, the policies and the decisions of this Parliament and those that came before it, laws that took land, removed children, broke families and tried to erase culture, we say sorry”.
It is hypocritical that the state apologises for land theft while continuing to lease, sell and develop so-called crown land and fight against land-back claims in court that continue to dispossess communities today on their own land. Planning laws, heritage frameworks and compulsory acquisition powers are modernised versions of the same colonial architecture apologised for. Our children are still forcibly removed at astronomical rates because the system never ended, only changed in language.
“For the tears shed in the dark, for the silence that shadowed their years, for the childhood taken and never returned, for the stolen generations, we say sorry”.
And somehow, after this poetry from the Premier, Victoria maintains the highest rate of Indigenous child removal in the country, with babies stolen at birth. Families are surveilled under child protection regimes that treat poverty as neglect. Victoria is operating a system that surveils Aboriginal families before their children are even born. Under current “child protection” and health protocols, Aboriginal mothers are flagged through risk algorithms that treat Indigenous pregnancy as a site of pre-crime.
“For the violence committed under the banner of the state and the colony that came before it, and for the neglect that allowed it to continue without consequence, we say sorry”.
State violence continues through deaths in custody, racial profiling and the militarisation of public order policing. The same Parliament that is funding a $1 billion prison expansion is also empowering police to use lethal force. The language of “Protectorate” may no longer be in use, but the instruments of colonial domination remain.
“For the laws that criminalised culture and punished survival, we say sorry”.
The state still criminalises cultural practices through heritage destruction approvals, policing of ceremony on Country, fines and arrests for cultural burning without government permission, and obstruction of Sovereign land defence. Living on one’s own land, gathering food, fishing in waterways and hunting are still punished. Culture is only allowed when domesticated into symbolic recognition and tourism.
“For the wealth built on lands and waters taken without consent while First Peoples were locked out of prosperity, we say sorry”.
Victoria continues to extract wealth through forestry, mining, water diversion, and real-estate speculation. The apology refuses to name the central contradiction: wealth built on stolen land is ongoing wealth, and the state has no plan to return land, revenue, or economic control. Instead, it offers advisory bodies and “treaty” bureaucracies while continuing to profit from the same theft it mourns.
“For the silencing of language and the erasure of words that carried knowledge older than the state itself, we say sorry”.
Aboriginal languages are celebrated rhetorically but denied structural resourcing, wide curriculum integration, or community-controlled language revival on a scale needed to undo generational damage. Meanwhile, developments continue to destroy place-names and story-sites. The state claims to honour language while supporting policing, prisons, and bureaucratic systems that still actively silence Aboriginal voices in decision-making.
“For the forced removal of families to missions and reserves where culture was controlled, movement restricted and identity denied, we say sorry”.
Today’s missions are public housing waiting lists, homelessness and police harassment zones. Control over where families may live is still determined by state agencies, landlords, and racist zoning practices. “Movement restricted and identity denied” finds its modern form in the card-check policing of young people, the surveillance of Aboriginal households, and the denial of cultural responsibility through carceral logic.
“For the policies that stripped First Peoples of the right to move freely, to marry without permission, to work for fair wages or to live with dignity on their own land, we say sorry”.
Centrelink compliance, punitive tenancy laws, and discriminatory employment conditions are the modern mechanisms of such policies. Dignity on one’s own land remains impossible when the land is still claimed by the Crown, managed by bureaucrats, or targeted for profitable development. The apology ignores that Sovereignty is still denied, and without Sovereignty, dignity is rationed by the same institutions that stole it.
“For the laws and policies which removed First Peoples from their lands and allowed the sale of sacred sites without consent, we say sorry”.
Sacred sites are still being bulldozed as heritage destruction is approved for roads, quarries, and private development. Consultation processes are rigged, rushed or non-binding. Cultural heritage law is riddled with ministerial override powers. In practice, consent is optional, and profit is decisive. The state acknowledges past dispossession while legislating present dispossession.
“For the laws that filled institutions disproportionately with First Peoples and made this seem ordinary, we say sorry”.
This is no story of the past, as record-high incarceration rates, routine police harassment, and ongoing deaths in custody, where no officer is ever held accountable. Institutions are expanding as we speak. The carceral system remains the most visible arm of colonial governance today. If filling institutions with Aboriginal people once “seemed ordinary,” the modern system has simply normalised the same outcome under different rhetoric.
“For the harm that was done and the harm that continues, we say sorry with resolve to work with you to address injustice in all its guises”.
Acknowledging ongoing harm while continuing harmful policies is the paradox of liberal reconciliation. “Working with you” often means creating bureaucratic tables where the state already controls the agenda. Injustice cannot be addressed while the foundational injustice of genocide remains unquestioned.
“And to those who carried the truth their whole lives but did not live to hear it spoken here, we say sorry”.
A delayed apology is not justice. Many Elders died fighting for land back, truth-telling and self-determination and these demands are still unmet today. The state apologises to those passed while refusing the structural change our Elders fought for. It treats truth as symbolic closure rather than an indictment requiring material restitution.
“We accept that this Parliament and governments past have authored laws and policies that have hurt and caused injustice and disadvantage to Aboriginal Victorians, and for that we say sorry”.
The distinction between “past” and “present” is the ideological shield of the colony. But the same Parliament is still authoring harmful laws: policing expansions, heritage destruction, and opposition to land back. Accountability without transformation is an administrative way of preserving its own power.
“As the minister mentioned, there were at least 50 massacres across Victoria that are officially recorded in historical evidence, showing that people knew, governments knew – and now we all know. That is why today we say sorry”.
If the Victorian government openly acknowledges the massacre history, then it necessarily acknowledges the political truth that these were not “tragic incidents” or “dark chapters.” Still, acts of genocide were carried out to establish and secure the colonial state itself. Massacres were the foundational strategy by which the colony cleared land and crushed resistance. To admit the massacres is to admit that Victoria was built through organised, state-sanctioned violence: militias, Native Police, settler patrols, poisoning campaigns, bounty hunts, punitive expeditions, and collective punishments executed with direct involvement. If the state was built through genocide, then the state has no lawful, moral, or political legitimacy to claim sovereignty over the 38 Sovereign First Nations whose laws and jurisdictions predate it.
It is clear that, between the lines of this carefully articulated fluff, the government is too afraid to say the truth, because these hollow words are nothing but a warm blanket to silence the pain and anger of our communities. This apology was delivered alongside intensified policing, child removal and land theft because it is political theatre. Real justice will not come from Parliament or its bureaucracies, but continued resistance of our people. We refuse to be spoken for, and we refuse symbolic closure. We will continue to fight for our children, our land and our right to exist because apologies are not a substitute for liberation. Their words end here; our struggle does not.