Overview

• After four years of inquiry, the Yoorrook Commission presented its final report on July 1, 2025, formally declaring that European settlers perpetrated genocide against Aboriginal Victorians.
• The findings detail mass killings, forced child removals, sexual violence, disease outbreaks and systematic cultural suppression under colonial policies.
• The commission calls for comprehensive reparations, including financial compensation and the return of ancestral lands to Indigenous communities.
• Premier Jacinta Allan said Victoria’s government will scrutinize the commission’s recommendations as federal and state legislators weigh policy responses.
• The inquiry links present-day gaps in life expectancy, health outcomes and incarceration rates directly to colonial-era exclusion and advocates measures to address these enduring inequities.