NSW Labor will establish a treaty recognising traditional Indigenous ownership of the state if elected to government in 2019.

A treaty would acknowledge the wrongs of the past and help put things right for the future, says Opposition leader Luke Foley, who will attend the 80th anniversary of the “Day of Mourning” held by the Aboriginal community in Redfern on Australia Day on Friday.

“As a society, we must come to terms with the dispossession of the Indigenous people and the consequences of that dispossession,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “Only down this road will we find fulfilment.”

The contents of a treaty would be determined by negotiation with NSW’s Aboriginal people but could cover recognition of historic wrongs, land claims, health and education, economic development and language preservation.

“A treaty will provide a truthful and honourable basis for our reconciliation with the state’s first people,” Foley said.

Labor governments in Victoria and South Australia have already committed to signing a treaty with Indigenous peoples, with the first to be signed within two months.

SA has appointed a treaty commissioner, Roger Thomas, to consult with Aboriginal communities and help negotiate individual clan-based treaties.

Thomas told Guardian Australia in December that he hoped the first three treaties, with the Ngarrindjeri, Narungga and Adnyamathanha peoples, would be signed before the state election in March.

Major Sumner, a Ngarrindjeri elder from Australia. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

SA opposition leader Steven Marshall has promised to scrap the treaty-making process if his Liberal party forms government, describing it as a “cruel hoax”.

Victoria has also appointed a treaty commissioner, Gunditjmara woman Jill Gallagher, who will oversee the development of an elected representative body which will negotiate with the Victorian government on behalf of Victoria’s Aboriginal peoples.



Gallagher said Victoria had not determined if it would sign a single statewide treaty or a number of different treaties with different clans, and that would be a matter for Aboriginal people.

• Australian Associated Press contributed to this report