Victoria’s Aboriginal ‘Treaty’ will undermine its democracy

On Tuesday evening, my six-year old’s suburban Melbourne primary school staged a wonderful concert, an all-school celebration of contemporary song, dance and collaboration.

It was, however, preceded by an elaborate Acknowledgement of Country and Aboriginal Australians, in which a group of children led incantations to the ‘Old Ones’ that the rest of the school echoed in a mystical Gregorian-like chant. For the audience, it turned the theatre into a cathedral, as if we were witnessing a sacred rite – which, to the primary school children inculcated in its sacredness, it was.

The 65,000 people who identify as Aboriginal, out of over seven million Victorians, will be given rights, privileges and institutions setting them above the rest of the population

Earlier the same day, it was finally