Our newsroom acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands across Victoria where this story is reported, and we pay our respects to Elders past and present. We acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission was Australia’s first formal truth-telling inquiry. Established by the Victorian Government as a Royal Commission in 2021, it heard testimony from Aboriginal Elders, families, and witnesses about the systems — colonial, legal, child protection and policing — that shaped Aboriginal life in this state. Tom Whitford has been following Yoorrook’s work since the early hearings, and what follows is a stocktake of where the Commission’s recommendations sit in early 2026.
Yoorrook’s two final reports — Yoorrook for Transformation and the final Yoorrook Truth Be Told — were tabled in the Victorian Parliament on 1 July 2025. Together with the earlier Yoorrook for Justice interim report (September 2023), they make 100 recommendations across criminal justice, child protection, land justice, health, housing, education and economic life.
What the Commission found
The findings of fact in Yoorrook’s reports are detailed and are now part of the public record. The Commission found that systemic injustice in Victoria’s criminal-justice and child-protection systems continues to disproportionately harm Aboriginal people. It found that this overrepresentation is not the natural product of demographics but of structural features of those systems. It found, on the evidence given to it by Elders and community witnesses, that colonisation in Victoria included acts that meet the international-law definition of genocide.
Those findings have been the subject of public commentary and political pushback. Our newsroom does not relitigate them here. We point readers to Yoorrook’s reports themselves and to the Hansard record of the Government’s response in Parliament.
The 100 recommendations: where they land
The 100 transformation recommendations are organised across volumes covering land, water and resources; the criminal-justice system; child protection and family services; health and wellbeing; housing; education; and economic empowerment. A number of recommendations cut across volumes. The Commission’s central proposition is that piecemeal reform has not worked and that durable change requires structural transfer of decision-making to Aboriginal communities, supported by treaty-based agreements.
Policing reform inside the recommendations
Policing reform sits inside the criminal-justice volume and in several cross-cutting recommendations. The Commission has recommended that Victoria establish and adequately resource a new independent police oversight authority headed by a statutory officer who has not previously been a Victoria Police officer. That recommendation goes beyond the existing functions of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) and would represent a structural change to oversight in the state.
Other criminal-justice recommendations include amending the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) to prohibit racial discrimination in the administration of state laws and programs (including by Victoria Police, Corrections Victoria and child protection authorities); raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 years without exception; prohibiting the imprisonment of children under 16; and implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) to prevent abuse in places of detention.
What the Government has accepted, deferred or rejected
The Allan Government’s published response to Yoorrook for Justice’s 46 interim recommendations accepted four in full, accepted others in principle or in part, deferred some pending further work, and rejected three. The rejections most often cited in public commentary include changes to bail law and changes to the minimum age of criminal responsibility and detention.
The Government has indicated it will take time to consider the further 100 recommendations in the final reports, and has signalled that responses will be sequenced alongside treaty negotiations. That sequencing is contested. The Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations and several Aboriginal-controlled organisations have called for faster, more comprehensive acceptance.
Where treaty fits in
Treaty negotiations in Victoria proceed under a framework established by the Advancing the Treaty Process with Aboriginal Victorians Act 2018 (Vic), with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria as the elected representative body for negotiations. The treaty process and the Yoorrook process are formally separate but politically and practically intertwined. The truth-telling work feeds the evidence base; the treaty work is the vehicle for some of the structural reforms Yoorrook has recommended.
Statewide treaty negotiations are ongoing in 2026. The Victorian Government and the First Peoples’ Assembly have flagged that early traditional-owner-group treaties may emerge alongside or before a statewide framework. Our newsroom will continue to track milestones in those negotiations rather than speculate on outcomes.
What has actually changed on the ground
Tracking implementation is harder than tracking announcements. The Victorian Government’s published implementation progress report on Yoorrook for Justice catalogues steps taken — funding allocations, agency-level reviews, machinery-of-government changes, training rollouts. The honest assessment from community organisations our newsroom has spoken to is that the picture is mixed. Some of the funded streams are doing the work the Commission described. Others are slower, smaller in scale, or sit at the level of internal review rather than structural change.
For policing specifically, the most visible operational changes through 2024 and into 2026 have been:
- Continued growth of the Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer footprint and structured engagement with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations.
- Cultural-awareness training, with revised content and a stated focus on operational decision-making rather than information-only modules.
- Reviews of bail decision-making practices in the wake of widely-reported individual cases, with mixed outcomes for Aboriginal women in particular.
- Continued work on custody notification protocols.
None of those steps, individually, amount to the structural change Yoorrook has recommended. That is not our newsroom’s contested judgment — it is the position taken by the Commission itself in its final reports, by the Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations, and by independent legal-policy bodies including the Human Rights Law Centre.
What the next year should reveal
Three things to watch through 2026:
- The Government’s formal response to Yoorrook’s 100 transformation recommendations, including which are accepted, which are deferred, and on what timeline.
- The progress of statewide treaty negotiations and the substance of any traditional-owner-group treaties signed during the year.
- Coronial findings and IBAC investigations involving Aboriginal Victorians, which will continue to test whether existing oversight structures are doing the work the Commission identified as necessary.
How to engage
Yoorrook’s reports are public. The First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria publishes regular updates on treaty negotiations. The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission accepts complaints under existing frameworks. Aboriginal community-controlled organisations across the state — the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Djirra, the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria, among others — are central to the work.
If you are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Victorian and you are struggling, 13YARN (13 92 76) is a 24-hour culturally safe crisis support line. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service is on 1800 064 865. In a life-threatening emergency, ring triple zero. Lifeline (13 11 14) and 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) remain open around the clock.
