Extract from article published on October 30th 2025 by Chip Le Grand from The Age:
As Victoria passed into law the state’s historic treaty with its First Peoples, the government’s only Indigenous MP, Sheena Watt, says it is a case of profound public policy colliding with the deeply personal.
During an emotional treaty debate which culminated on Thursday night with a vote in the upper house, Watt was close to tears as she recounted the moment she met her maternal grandmother for the first time and remade a family connection severed by the state’s past practice of removing Indigenous children from their parents.
She described their meeting in the Goulburn Valley town of Mooroopna last year as “an embrace that crossed the generations and, truthfully, our imagination”.
“I went there filled with questions and I left feeling full of love,” she told this masthead during a break in the treaty debate. “I left feeling that we had more to say, and it was the first time of many that I would see her.”
The same might be said of treaty, a process that formally began in Victoria nearly 10 years ago and has finally come into force. The statewide agreement before parliament on Thursday was expected to be followed by further treaties negotiated between the government and respective First Nations groups.
Treaty as an Aboriginal aspiration stretches back decades. Watt says it is a conversation most white people, until comparatively recently, have not been listening to. When asked what treaty will do for Indigenous people, she returns to the story of her mother, Annette Gail Watt, a member of the stolen generation.
“Treaty is so intimately connected to my family’s story now,” she said.
“For too long, governments have been making decisions about us without talking to us, without us being truly valued and respected for our knowledge and own communities. Treaty is about putting Aboriginal people at the front of decision-making about our own futures.
“I could get more technical and complex about it but truly, it is just about Aboriginal people being heard.”
