By Carly Williams,Kris Flanders

Copyright abc

The country’s first treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples provides a historic opportunity to help close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, First Nations leaders say.

Legislation passed in Victoria’s Parliament on Tuesday establishes the treaty and sets up the First Peoples’ Assembly as a permanent authority, now named Gellung Warl.

For Thomas Mayo, Indigenous author and former Yes campaigner, the legislation marks an emotional and deeply important moment for Australia and First Nations peoples.

“I’ve got deep feelings of respect for everyone involved,” Mr Mayo told the ABC’s Indigenous Affairs Team.

“It’s the result of a lot of hard work that sets up the foundation for treaty and measures that will ultimately close the gap.”

Indigenous Australians on average die much younger than other Australians, take their lives at a much higher rate, have poorer health and are grossly over-represented in prisons.

Mr Mayo said the advice to government provided by Victoria’s Gellung Warl will help address the dire statistics.

“What we’re seeing is an institution for self-determination to ensure that the Aboriginal people of Victoria have a say about legislation and policies in the state,” he said.

“These are the key tenets to closing the gap. It’s what’s been missing.”

The treaty will also advance truth-telling, he said, by including more First Nations history integrated into the high school curriculum, drawing on source material from the landmark Yoorrook Justice Commission.

“All of these things are a great foundation for outcomes,” he said.

The expanded assembly will also form an independent accountability mechanism, as required by the National Agreement on Close the Gap.

Mr Mayo called the legislation “a giant leap forward” but said it was a “great shame” the state opposition was not supporting it, having withdrawn bipartisan support last year.

“Sometimes it’s like one step forward, two steps back in Indigenous affairs … it can be extremely frustrating,” he said.

“You can feel like there isn’t hope but Victoria shows the rest of the nation that we can achieve these things with the determination and the courage.”

What does this mean for a national treaty?

Australia remains the only major Commonwealth country without a treaty with its First Peoples, despite former prime minister Bob Hawke’s commitment to establishing a national agreement as early as 1988.

The road to treaty has taken 10 years of work in Victoria, which former minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney said is a reasonable timeline.

“Anyone that thinks that treaty-making is a quick process is deluding themselves,” she said.

“It was always going to take this long.”

Ms Burney called Victoria’s treaty a “turning point” in Indigenous affairs, and said her view is treaties are best negotiated at the state and local level.

“When you have a look around, in reality there are many local and statewide agreements,” she said.

She pointed to Western Australia’s 2018 Noongar settlement, a native title deal covering 200,000 square kilometres of Crown land in the state’s south-west, as a “very good example” of local agreement-making.

But treaty-making legislation has stalled or has been repealed in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Tasmania.

The South Australian government says it’s still committed to restarting treaty negotiations, but it was unlikely any agreements would be signed before the next election in nine months’ time, while New South Wales will begin treaty talks with custodians later this year.

Ms Burney said Victoria’s treaty provides a model for the rest of the country.

“(It’s a) symbol to those places like Queensland and the NT, that when you work in good faith you get good outcomes,” she said.

“They are putting themselves back a very long way.”

In a statement on social media, Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy called the Victorian treaty a “big step forward”.

“Treaty isn’t the start or the end of a process. It’s a mutual coming together and recognition of respect. It’s an acknowledgement that both sides want to work with each other into the future,” she said,

Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Kerrynne Liddle said there were “many unanswered questions” about treaty, including how it would interact with native title laws and affect language groups that cross state borders.

“If the Albanese Government is intending to progress a federal treaty the PM should have said so prior to the election,” she said in a statement.

“The Coalition will continue to advocate practical action over symbolic gestures because that matters most to those who need help the most.”

‘Tell it as it happened’

Kungarakan elder and human rights campaigner Professor Tom Calma also backed Victoria’s process as a blueprint for other states and territories, including on how Indigenous history is taught in schools.

“We can have truth-telling that’s able to be understood from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective, instead of having our history being edited and vetted out by non-Indigenous Australians.

“We need to be able to tell it as it happened.”

Mr Calma said treaty offered a historic opportunity to put Indigenous Australians in the “box seat of driving change”.

“[We will be] able to work with governments, not take on government’s role, but to work with governments to make sure that the most effective and efficient programs are being delivered,” he said.

“We want equality, and we want to do it in a way that’s empowering … and sustainable, and in a way that’s being directed and delivered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

Having spent more than 40 years championing Indigenous rights, Mr Calma said Indigenous people have been fighting for treaty ‘for generations’.

“We’ve talked about this for decades,” he said.

“I think this is a great opportunity for all Victorians to come on board [and] understand that this is going to be a benefit to the whole of society, something we can all be proud of.”