Are 'Welcome to Country' ceremonies overdone?

This will be my last post on this 

— because no matter how many facts are put out there, the racists just don’t get it. And let’s be honest: with that kind of deep, inbuilt prejudice, they never will. They refuse to understand the fight of Indigenous people to be recognised in their own country — and more importantly, the fact they’re still not recognised in the Constitution.

I’m proud to have voted YES — because even though it didn’t pass, it showed us exactly where the lines are drawn. The divide is real, and now it’s out in the open. For those still clinging to denial: history won’t remember you kindly

Yoorrook commission split over findings on injustices against Indigenous people

ByChip Le Grand and Daniella White

Updated July 1, 2025 — 12.08pmfirst published June 30, 2025 — 7.55pm

(Vic govt enquiry, report in The Age online, extracts0

Irreconcilable differences between Yoorrook commissioners have split Victoria’s truth-telling process, with a majority refusing to put their names to all the commission’s findings and boycotting the handover of its final reports.

The Victorian government will table in state parliament on Tuesday the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s final reports into systemic injustices perpetrated against First Peoples since European settlement and make public the findings and recommendations of a four-year inquiry established to inform the state’s treaty process.

This masthead can reveal that consensus on some of the findings broke down to the point where three of five commissioners – deputy chair Sue-Anne Hunter, University of Tasmania professor Maggie Walter and former Federal Court judge Anthony North – considered writing a dissenting report.

Instead, following a series of crisis meetings across Yoorrook and Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly and interventions by respected Indigenous community figures, an accommodation was reached to enable publication of the reports without formal dissent.

Under the compromise struck, the commission’s account of Victoria’s history of colonisation, as told by First Peoples to Yoorrook, carries a fine-print caveat that three commissioners do not support all findings contained in the report.

This caveat, which appears in a single line, does not identify findings on which the commission agreed and those that are subject to dispute. It also gives no indication of the depth of division that plagued the truth-telling process.

(Supppose many of us argue about history and / or its meaning)