In an era where historical grievance increasingly trumps civic unity, the Yoorrook Justice Commission stands as a troubling monument to the transformation of Australia from a nation of equal citizens into a confederation of racial claims. Established in Victoria as a formal "truth-telling" body, Yoorrook is the latest expression of the "Voice, Treaty, Truth" agenda that has gripped Leftist progressive political elites. But beneath its carefully calibrated language of woke healing and racial "justice" lies a radical revision of history, law, and national identity, one that many Australians, particularly from a conservative nationalist position, reject outright.
At the heart of Yoorrook's rhetoric is the claim that colonisation constituted genocide. This assertion is not simply a moral judgment; it is a legal and political grenade. Citing the United Nations definition of "genocide," which includes not only killing but cultural destruction, the Commission portrays the entire project of European settlement as an act of extermination. Yet this framing conveniently ignores a raft of historical realities: that many early settlers coexisted peacefully with local Aboriginal communities, that inter-tribal warfare was endemic long before 1788, and that assimilation policies, however flawed by today's standards, were not born of genocidal intent.
The commission's claims are not merely retrospective; they are instrumental. They pave the way for demands that cut to the core of Australia's sovereignty. The most explosive is the assertion that all land in Victoria is stolen. On this basis, Yoorrook demands that Crown land be returned to Aboriginal control, and that Aboriginal groups be given co-management rights — or even veto power — over public land use. This would amount to the creation of a racially exclusive landowning caste, empowered not through merit or legal process, but through ancestry and grievance. In essence, Yoorrook is calling for the creation of a parallel sovereignty within the Australian state.
From there, the logic of reparation intensifies. The Commission has advocated for Aboriginal control of natural resources, including revenue-sharing arrangements for mining, forestry, and public lands. The implication is that the state owes ongoing economic tribute — royalties, taxes, or both — to Aboriginal groups as compensation for past wrongs. This is not restorative justice; it is the institutionalisation of permanent economic dependence, underpinned by racial entitlement.
Further demands include the rewriting of school curricula to foreground the "truth" of colonial genocide, mandatory memorialisation of alleged settler atrocities, and a full suite of cultural reparations — from the return of artefacts to state-funded Aboriginal governance bodies. In the long term, these are intended to culminate in treaty negotiations that would enshrine these claims in law. Should this proceed, Victoria would find itself bound to a series of legal and financial obligations outside the scope of normal democratic oversight, guided not by the will of the people, but by the dictates of a commission operating under the shadow of inherited guilt.
We conservatives must view this with deep unease. The Yoorrook narrative is not an act of reconciliation, but of historical inversion. It asks Australians to accept a version of their past in which European civilisation brought only destruction and dispossession, and to accept a future in which civic equality is replaced by racial partition. It seeks to turn the nation into an ethnic checkerboard of overlapping sovereignties, where common law is displaced by identity-based legal exceptionalism. This is not justice,it is the death of the liberal nation-state.
There is no denying that some past Aboriginal Australians have endured hardship and injustice, just as most working white Australians have as well. But to frame the entire national project as a genocidal enterprise is to poison the well of public trust and civic unity. A nation cannot survive on permanent apology. Nor can it thrive while one segment of the population is encouraged to view itself as perpetual victims entitled to land, money, and power based on ancestry.
Yoorrook represents the triumph of postcolonial ideology over historical complexity, and of grievance over gratitude. It is a separatist project dressed in therapeutic language, a quiet revolution cloaked in the robes of justice. Australians who believe in equality under the law, in shared history, and in national unity must recognise the danger and respond with clarity. Reconciliation, if it is to mean anything, must start from truth, not a myth of genocide, but the truth that Australia belongs to all its citizens, equally, without exception or apology.