It isn't a matter of "should" there be a truth and justice commission at the Commonwealth level, but "how", a senate inquiry has heard.
There remains a cultural load of families who submit their deeply personal stories to the truth-telling process, National Justice Project campaign lead Chloe Fragos said at hearings in Sydney this week.
"Much of what any truth-telling commission will hear is already known by First Nations Peoples and the Australian public, if not in the specific then certainly in the general," she told the Inquiry into Truth and Justice Commission Bill.
Contrasting last year's Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children with Canada's own inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Ms Fragos said the difference in recommendations was stark.
Whilst Australia's report outlines only 10 recommendations, none of which, Ms Fragos said, hold institution and systemic injustices to account, the Canadian report included 231 recommendations.
"The [Canadian] report also spoke to genocide and colonisation as a tool for gendered oppression. The inquiry included after-care support post the inquiry," she said.
Ms Fragos highlighted this "stark contrast" and the respect afforded to those who "ultimately have to commit to any truth-telling process".
"The end goal must be that people believe any commission operates from a place of care and respect with a genuine vested interest to having truth-telling. Actions will always speak louder than words in this process," Ms Fragos said.
The Truth and Justice Bill has set a time frame of four years before the commission submits its final report. It is intended to establish a Commission to inquire into and make recommendations to Parliament on matters relating to historic and ongoing injustices against First Peoples in Australia.
Victoria already has a truth-telling inquiry, which has heard from Stolen Generations survivors, relatives of colonisers, experts, government bodies and the Premier.
A similar body was shut down by Queensland's LNP government last year.
Appearing alongside Ms Fragos, Jumbunna Institute senior research fellow Alison Whittaker asked the inquiry: What is possible when "we are freed of the constraints of conventional fact-finding models?"
She called for the committee to think "boldly" and utilise community consultation and partnerships, whilst not being constrained by previous and conventional fact-finding bodies.
"We have here the rare opportunity to do something differently in honouring truth, we need not follow the inquiry formulas that mob have been failed by before," she said.
Ms Whittaker also urged "consideration" for members to be appointed in other ways than just through the Attorney General and Minister for Indigenous Affairs, noting there was an "overarching concern with the bill that these things need to be driven by community design".
"Ultimately, how members are appointed is going to be a matter for the communities that this commission would serve," she said.
Jumbunna expressed their concerns about penalties imposed on people who give 'misleading or false' evidence, arguing truth-telling is often dealing with "contested information".
"What we're trying to design here… is a truth-telling and not a fact-finding institution," Ms Whittaker said.
"In a truth-telling institution, it is open to that institution to hold multiple truths and to think about the desirability of whether or not it needs to reach findings about contradictory information where it might not necessarily be relevant to what its inquiring into."
Questioned by Senator Kerrynne Liddle about what recourse there would be for people who were falsely criticised in a historical record, Ms Whittaker said an individual "should be able to seek recourse" but said she didn't believe this would be "remedied by the creation of a criminal offence".
"Indeed, it wouldn't actually address your concern, in correcting the record, it would just criminalise the person who has done it," she said.
