What We Can Do: A Menu for Allies

Fund Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services directly (ATSILS Queensland; NATSILS lists every state and territory service). The independent review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership found funding drastically short of need, and services have frozen operations in regional courts for want of money.⁹

Support language revival and cultural camps run by First Nations organisations in your region. Ask the organisation what it needs before you give.

Back the justice campaigns First Nations organisations lead: Change the Record and Raise the Age.

Support cultural heritage defence directly: Save Victoria Park's legal fund and the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance.¹¹

Offer bridge funding to community organisations facing gaps between government funding cycles. A three-month gap closes a service; a bridge keeps the proof running.

Redirect the money your workplace or community group spends on symbolic reconciliation events to the organisations above, and say so publicly when you do.

File Right to Information applications on decisions a community body wants examined, and help interpret the results. The community body decides what gets published.

Draft or co-sign inquiry submissions and human rights complaints on specific policy failures, in support of a First Nations organisation's position.

Track the government's response to the Social Justice Report 2025 recommendation by recommendation, and to the racism inquiry report after 15 September 2026, and publish the scorecard through an organisation such as ANTaR Queensland.^{3, 8}

Help with enrolment drives and doorknocking in seats where First Nations justice is on the ballot, under the direction of the campaign.

Join court support or watch-house support rosters where communities ask for them.

Handle event logistics for community-led truth-telling and cultural events. Queensland's inquiry is gone; community truth-telling continues.⁵

Get your workplace, university, union, or professional body to sign the Allies for Uluru Statement of Commitment, and to attach a budget line to it.¹²

Advocate publicly for a national Human Rights Act through the Human Rights Law Centre campaign, and for a national action plan to implement UNDRIP, as the 2023 parliamentary inquiry recommended.^{13, 14}

Redirect institutional Reconciliation Week spending to the funding priorities in Section 1.

Write to your federal representative naming one Social Justice Report 2025 recommendation and asking for a written position.

Move union or professional-association resolutions in support of Raise the Age, treaty processes, and cultural heritage protection.

Press federal representatives on the scale of the National Justice Reinvestment Program, on publication of its evaluation results, and on the Auditor-General's findings about how the department awarded its grants.¹⁰

Escalate advocacy through institutions you already belong to rather than founding new ones.

Challenge racist media coverage of First Nations children and adults. Lodge complaints with the Australian Press Council and broadcasters, and cite the youth justice reporting guidelines that NAPCAN and Anglicare Southern Queensland publish.¹⁵

Support the National Anti-Racism Framework in public, and press for its implementation.

Volunteer as a legal observer at protests, hearings, and contested sites.

Support people through bail hearings and fines with practical logistical help.

Give visible testimony, at council meetings, in submissions, and in your networks, when doing so shields someone with more to lose.

Cede platform and speaking opportunities to First Nations voices.

Use the Passing the Message Stick research when you write or speak: it tests which framings of First Nations justice persuade the persuadable.

Offer to document removals of First Nations leaders from public boards and statutory bodies, and abolished bodies such as Queensland's Treaty Institute and inquiry, for a peak body or land council that wants the record.⁵

Help communities archive and interpret Right to Information disclosures.

Offer pro bono legal, design, or technical support to First Nations-led organisations.

Build the implementation tracker for the Social Justice Report 2025 and the racism inquiry report, and hand it to an organisation that will keep it current.

Provide communications, design, or web development support to campaigns and services.

Support data analysis, video production, and rapid media response for time-sensitive campaigns.

Give your first preference to the candidate with the strongest, most specific record on First Nations justice in your seat, whichever party fields them.

Rank hostile or dismissive candidates low regardless of party.

Use candidate questionnaires and public forums to get commitments on the record before you vote, then hold the winner to them.

Write to your MP between elections. Sustained pressure outside campaign season makes commitments stick.

Campaign for a Makarrata Commission, promised in 2022 and still undelivered, and for the standing constitutional commission Appleby and Davis propose.^{2, 7}

If you have contacts in Victoria, tell them that the November 2026 state election decides whether the first treaty between an Australian government and First Peoples survives its first year.⁶