In the news

Estimates of the value of Victorian churches belonging to Catholic, Uniting and Anglican institutions have been revealed by the state’s truth-telling inquiry. Church leaders have warned the figures, which were calculated using different methodologies, should be carefully interpreted.

After starting as a cadet journalist, Bridget Brennan has been at the ABC for over 15 years, and is now a host of the National News Breakfast program. Most recently, she was behind the ground-breaking Four Corners investigation into Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission as it uncovers Australia’s colonial past.

How do Australians feel about knowing the territory we inhabit was violently stolen from First Nations people? In Unsettled, Kate Grenville explores this through her own feelings. “I’ve been circling this book for years,” she writes.

A Commissioner of Victoria’s truth-telling body will embark on foot across 370km of the state from the first-point of colonisation in the state to Parliament House in an effort to share, listen and learn.

It’s called Yoorrook, the Wemba Wemba word for “truth”. This truth-telling inquiry has spent years collecting testimony from hundreds of First Nations and non-Indigenous people, revealing the scale of atrocities and the failure of governments to reckon with the past.

More than $21 million in federal funding is announced as an Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into justice responses to sexual violence is tabled.

The laws, introduced in March last year after a long fight by advocates in the aftermath of the death of Indigenous woman Veronica Nelson in 2020, partly wound back the 2018 changes introduced in response to the Bourke Street attack and which saw the number of Aboriginal women in custody nearly double within a year.

As First Peoples of these lands with an ongoing connection to Country that goes back tens of thousands of years, it is heartbreaking to know our children are still being taken from us in large numbers” – Yoorrook Deputy Chair, Sue-Anne Hunter

Despite the fallout from the failed federal referendum last year, in Victoria 2024 has been a remarkable year, filled with powerful moments – via National Indigenous Times

First Peoples homelessness in Victoria is twice that of the national average, new data has revealed – via National Indigenous Times.

Uncle Charles Pakana from Victorian Aboriginal News catches up for an exclusive yarn with Commissioner Sue-Anne Hunter.

Keicha Day often has to fight back a rising wave of resentment when driving down the Henty Highway in western Victoria to visit her elderly mother – via The Age.