‘Culture of grievance': Sky News hosts tear into the Yoorrook Commission's 'incredibly divisive' findings for the Victorian govt

Sky News AU

16 hours ago

A trio of Sky News hosts have torched the Yoorrook Commission's "incredibly divisive" recommendations which they claim seek to sow a "culture of grievance" rather than heal the nation.
The commission found the First Peoples of Victoria have been subjected to genocide and that the state had been illegally occupied.
Included in the final report, the Yoorrook Commission made 100 recommendations covering policy areas such as education, criminal justice, housing, and employment.
The findings from the four-year inquiry into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples recommended the Victorian government hand over a portion of the government's 'land, water and natural resource-related revenues' to First Nations Victorians.
The report also recommended the government negotiate with the First People's Assembly to secure the ongoing funding streams needed for the 'nation-to nation' transition.
'All major political parties, whether in government or in opposition, have perpetuated and compounded the trauma, injustice and suffering of First Peoples,' the report states.
'First Peoples have demonstrated that with secure access to their lands, waters and resources, they are better able to provide for the social, economic and cultural needs of their community than government or industry.'
The inquiry said it expected the Allen government to 'immediately commence work' on the 'urgent recommendations' in order for them to be achieved within 12-24 months.
Sky News host James McPherson hit out at the commission's report on Wednesday night, calling it 'so ambitious even Santa Claus would have thought twice about drafting this list'.
'The report says, and I quote, 'the taking of country and resources was violent as First Peoples were displaced and massacred by European settlers… the legacy of colonisation is still manifest in every aspect of life'. And no, they're not referring to roads, plumbing or electricity,' McPherson said.
' The report recommends that Indigenous Victorians should be exempt from taxes, rates and charges relating to water because, as the report notes, the resources belong to them in the first place.
'So their plan, as I understand it, is to heal the nation by breaking it up into smaller ones. Can't you just feel the reconciliation?
'Reconciliation - that noble sounding term which I always took to mean, you know, coming together but now apparently translates to invoices. Lots and lots of invoices.'
McPherson said Premier Jacinta Allen's remarks about the recommendations were 'highly contested', after she said the report's finding were 'incredibly challenging because they tell the truth'.
' I'm not so sure the majority of Victorians will find the Commission's recommendations particularly just. They read less like a plea for justice than like a shopping list drawn up by opportunists holding someone else's credit card,' he said.
Labor went to the last election promising to spend $27 million setting up a Makatratta Commission, $5.8 million of which was put aside in their first budget to set up the organisation.
The truth-telling commission was one of the three planks of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, with the others being a treaty with Indigenous Australians and the Voice to Parliament, which more than 60 per cent of Australians rejected in 2023.
Sky News host James Morrow said the Victorian Labor government was the 'hardest left government' in the whole of Australia and torched the Yoorrook report as 'incredibly divisive' and 'absolutely untenable'.
'It stems out of this whole settler-colonist mentality, which is this whole hard-left doctrine that Australia is essentially an illegitimate nation,' he said.
'It is making demands of the government that are not the demands of citizens trying to come together on an issue. They are almost like they've inverted history.'
Sky News host Caroline Marcus said if the Victorian government picked up the recommendations of the commission other states and territories would eventually 'fall into line'.
Marcus said the report was not only divisive, but 'dangerous' due to its approach to education, recommending Indigenous children be excluded from attendance requirements at school.
'We already know that attendance levels for Indigenous children fall well below the rest of the population as it is… How is this going to help in closing the gap?' she said.
'The whole thing stinks, and it just sets up further this culture of grievance among Indigenous Australians. We have had enough of that.'