The last term of government has finally made significant progress towards Closing the Gap, the head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body says.
Maurice Walker and his colleagues authored a report, published last year, that revealed the ACT was only on track to meet four of 22 Closing the Gap targets, with seven worse than when they were committed to in 2018.
"We've had a Labor government for seven years and it's been really slow in changing the way the ACT government and our public service work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," Mr Walker said on Friday.
"I feel that we've had more progress in this term ... than any other period.
"From our point of view, we're tracking pretty well at this stage in relation to how we're happy with the government's approach."
Freedom of information requests published earlier this year revealed that former senior ACT public servant, Brendan Moyle, had repeatedly expressed concerns that the ACT would not meet its targets.
In emails, Mr Moyle expressed how difficult it was for staff to be held responsible for government failures by their own community.
Mr Walker said the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community had become more open to working with the elected body.
"The government has always taken the elected body in a serious nature and [as a] representative of people from our community, but we didn't have that ... support and confidence from our community [until this term]," he said.
The upcoming 2026-27 budget will include $754,000 over two years to go towards the initial process of designing a truth-telling commission for the ACT.
There will also be money for a culturally informed perinatal mental health service, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workforce, and implement recommendations from the Jumbunna review.
Two independent justice advisers will be appointed, and more funding will support the capacity of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body.
Last year, the body revealed that the ACT was only on track to meet four of 22 Closing the Gap targets.
Truth is one of the three pillars of the Uluru Statement of the Heart, an agreement made by First Nation leaders across Australia in 2017 on what was needed to progress Indigenous affairs.
It refers to a process where First Nations people and other Australians gain a shared understanding of Australia's history.
While the federal government has not agreed to a Makarrata, a national truth-telling, state governments, councils and other organisations have held their own processes.
For example, the City of Fremantle in Perth began a truth-telling process in 2024, holding backyard sessions on different topics - like the Stolen Generations and racism - music events and a film festival.
The United Ngunnawal Elder's Council has called for truth-telling and the use of Ngunnawal names on local ACT landmarks.
When the ACT government announced the new Acton Waterfront park on Lake Burley Griffin would be called Ngamawari, Ngunnawal Elder Caroline Hughes said the naming was a form of truth-telling.
"There is so much Ngunnawal history in this place that has not been told such as the limestone caves that have been hidden by Lake Burley Griffin at a time when Ngunnawal were excluded from the conversation and development of Canberra," Dr Hughes said.
In May 2025, speaking in support of a board of inquiry into the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, Minister for Corrections Marisa Paterson said there was no way to move forward without recognising the past.
"There has not been truth-telling in the ACT. There has never been an established shared understanding between our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and the state," Dr Paterson said.
"Thirty years on from the royal commission, with countless other reports and inquiries conducted nationally and here in the ACT all recommending similar things, the disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people remains the same."
Victoria's Yoo-rrook Justice Commission had a broad mandate to report on historical and ongoing systemic injustice experienced by First Peoples in Victoria in all areas of life since colonisation.
First Nations people told their own stories and those of their ancestors through written submissions, speaking at public hearings, artwork, and sharing historical records.
It found that before colonisation, there were about 60,000 people in Victoria from 300 to 500 clans speaking more than 40 languages.
By the end of the 1860s, there were at least 50 recorded massacres across Victoria killing nearly 1000 First Nations peoples.
"In the 20 years that followed the arrival of Europeans in Victoria, the number of Victorian First Peoples is estimated to have dramatically reduced by more than 90 per cent from 15,000 to just 1907," the Yoo-rrook Commission said.
First Nations peoples were expelled from most of their land through pastoral expansion, and from the 1850s were forced onto reserves and missions. Legislation from 1886 marked the beginning of the Stolen Generations.
The Australian government did not recognise First Nations peoples as human until a referendum in 1967.
"The consistent and overwhelming theme of this evidence is that the legacy of colonisation is still manifest in every aspect of life," the committee said.
The final report made 100 recommendations.
