Australia now has just over six years to go to decide on how it will answer the United Nations’ demands to fully empower our estimated 900,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples in accordance with its declaration to ensure that all Indigenous clans throughout the globe are awarded some form of treaty, sovereignty and/or compensation by the year 2030.

This world organisation also intends by this date to have all “vulnerable people” helped to attain full prosperity by being awarded their full national rights, where these are applicable.

Also included in this vulnerable category are foreign migrants, those citizens living in serious poverty, all AIDS and HIV sufferers and youngsters in poor communities having to live below the breadline.

This particular aspect of the U.N.’s current urgent agenda is, however, only one of 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” and “one of 169 other specific targets” it has for attainment in only 73 months’ time.

In its official documentation on the subject, the world body warns that it and its 193 different country members, both big and small, have already  resolved, if necessary, to ” take further effective means and actions in conformity with international law” to remove all obstacles and constraints to strengthen its support for these people — and particularly for those living in “areas affected by humanitarian problems,” as perceived by its Charter signed for by the Australian Government shortly after the Second World War.

From what many U.N. observers in Australia can see, this international plan involves serious urgent discussions on just how the U.N. demands should be met and how they can be implemented to enable our Aboriginal and T.S.I fellow countrymen to be compensated, when and if that is to be decided on by 2030.

The big question so unexpectedly and unfortunately raised before King Charles ll on his recent visit to Canberra and Sydney suggested a perceived initial need for a treaty, based on the principles of sovereignty, to be drawn up in consultation with all relevant interests throughout the whole country.

This, of course, leads us to wonder just what should happen to ensure that all Black and White interest groups are justly satisfied with any outcome that may arise.

With this question in mind, I researched a variety of authorities on the subject. And the following is what I came up with.

I first investigated the use of a treaty between the Australian Government and recognised Aboriginal representatives as seen by constitutional experts and the Law department of the University of Technology in Sydney, together with other similar authorities.

From what I can see and deduct, Aboriginal and T.S.I. people have called in recent years, as we all know, for a formal treaty to recognise their perceived and, not as yet, legally established sovereignty.

There is no doubt about the fact that, when the first British people arrived on Australian soil, they did not negotiate a treaty with the “First Peoples” who originally migrated here from Africa.

This was patiently due to the fact that the original Australian Aboriginals lived in small separate clans dotted around the country with no central authority with whom to negotiate a sovereign treaty, if that was ever thought of. This set of circumstances can only be a guess as there is no written Aboriginal history from those early days and word -of-mouth has no legal standing.

Without an established history of treaty-making, the concept of what a precise treaty for 2030 is — or involves — has to remain vague until negotiations are actually in full swing.

To some Australians, a treaty could mean a ‘marriage’ between White Australia in general and Aboriginal and T.S.I. Australia to bring the two parties together in a spirit of goodwill on both sides.

A possible stumbling block to this is that the Aboriginal and T.S.I. lobby believe –as the U.N. does — that such a treaty must also award them full sovereignty and self-government with due compensation over their Australian lands.

Australian Governments have already signed up over time with the U.N. to a range of international legal documents dealing, among other things, with the legal rights of our Indigenous people. In the words of the U.N., a treaty with Indigenous Australia must acknowledge that these people are a distinct homogenous political community different to all other Australians.

A treaty to be of any practical use involves both sides totally committing to a wide range of responsibilities, promises and principles that hold the parties together in an everlasting relationship of mutual obligation and shared responsibility. But it can only be truly effective if the, as yet, undiscovered sovereign right of all Aboriginal and T.S.I. citizens has been established.

The biggest stumbling block of all for a successful treaty, which has possibly still to be overcome, is for the hundreds of different Aboriginal clans to come together to agree to the word-by-word details to be contained in a treaty based on sovereignty. They also face the major task of them having to bring all clans together to create an actual all-encompassing sovereign authority to represent them all in their treaty negotiations.

In law, there is considerable doubt whether the Uluru Statement prepared for the failed ‘Voice’ referendum can be considered a sovereign document expressing the wishes of all Indigenous people.

Things today might be very different if, when the first White settlers arrived here, the diverse Aboriginal people had been represented by some form of government authority, chieftain or king standing up for their land ownership and sovereignty.

Australia is the only ‘colonial country’ I know of which did not possess an organised government or head of state to negotiate any settlement proposals with the first British newcomers. If the ‘First Peoples’ had such a standing, I would not have had a need to be writing this article today.