If you have been affected by any of the things discussed today, please contact 13 YARN (13 92 76) or lifeline (13 11 14). #firstpeoples #victoria #truthtelling

The hearing has now adjourned. That concludes this block of #yoorrook hearings. Thank you for following along. Yoorrook hearings on #health, #housing & #education will begin at the end of May 2024. Visit yoorrookjusticecommission.org.au for updates #firstpeoples #Victoria #truthtelling

"...We have had many expressions of genuine acceptance of the past, but no effective ways of addressing them, despite those good feelings. #Treaty is one answer. It is not the only answer. So I hope that my expectations of a change can come to fruition." 2/2 #firstpeoples

Commissioner North: "I am hoping, against hope, that this Commission will spur organisations like yours that have leadership of the conscience of our community to look...for ways of tangibly addressing [injustice]. 1/ #yoorrook #firstpeoples #churches

Bishop Genieve Blackwell (Anglican Church): "as the Christian #church we have been complicit in that injustice [against First Peoples], that at the same time want to move forward and be part of the solution." #firstpeoples #firstnations #victoria #truthtelling

"but acknowledges that that value does not include the value of buildings and improvements on the land." 2/2 #firstpeoples #victoria #churches

#yoorrook Commissioner Tony North: "So there is no provision for a financial reparation scheme to address the question of land acquisition?" Archbishop Comensoli (Catholic Church): "Not at this stage nationally" #firstpeoples #firstnations #victoria #truthtelling #churches

"Anglican church and First Nations Victorians." 2/2 #firstpeoples #firstnation #victoria #truthtelling #churches

Rev David Fotheringham (Uniting Church): "Treaty is very important and the Uniting Church in fact since 1981 has been advocating for #treaty. And I think ongoing advocacy by the church is certainly one thing that we can offer and will offer." #firstpeoples #truthtelling

"both Catholic First Peoples and non-Catholic First Peoples, for Catholics and non-Catholics." 2/2 #firstpeoples #churches #truthtelling

Rev David Fotheringham (Uniting Church): "[there is the quote] we [in the church] saw ourselves as 'smoothing the pillow for a dying race' and we acknowledge that to our shame, that this was what was occurring and was a reflection of the attitude at the time." #firstpeoples

Counsel Assisting Tim Goodwin: "The [Anglican] property trust holds an estimated 260.05 hectares of land in #victoria which is estimated to be worth approximately $1.49 billion. The diocese of Melbourne itself holds $1.38 billion worth of that total 1/ #firstpeoples #victoria

Mr Tim O'Leary (Catholic Church): "I would accept that the Archdiocese had been the beneficiary of land and other supports from governments in the context of dispossession...The church has made sincere efforts to translate those benefits into services for 1/ #firstpeoples #church

Bishop Richard Treloar (Anglican Church): "I think that the twin policies of segregation and assimilation [through the missions] both result in erasure, in disappearance [of language, culture and identity]. In different ways, but both absolutely reprehensible." #firstpeoples #vic

"So it is entirely true that the missions were disastrous in that regard." 2/2 #firstpeoples #firstnations #truthtelling #victoria #churches

Rev David Fotheringham (Uniting Church): "It is entirely true that the impulse to share the gospel [through missions] was completely entangled with the idea of the superiority of Western civilisation and certain social structures. 1/ #firstpeoples #firstnations #truthtelling

Bishop Richard Treloar (Anglican Church): "[the missions were] conceived on a premise that was fundamentally flawed, built on stolen land and what Henry Reynolds called, 'the original sin of #Australia's colonisation' namely a complete disregard for the rights of 1/ #firstpeoples

"[with] the loss of up to 300 #Aboriginal lives. And whatever else they were the missions were places of confinement, culturally, temporally and geographically. They contributed to segregation, to forced relocation, to assimilation" 3/3 #firstpeoples #church #truthtelling

Rev David James Fotheringham, Moderator of the Uniting Church, Synod of #Victoria and Tasmania opens by saying: "the Uniting Church acknowledges that it is a beneficiary of the dispossession of land from #FirstPeoples and that historical Crown grants of land were made with no 1/

"and now repudiated doctrine of discovery and its outworking in the morally bankrupt ideology of terra nullius." 4/4 #firstpeoples #firstnations #victoria