Family First exists to restore Australia by restoring the primacy of the family in public policy. This will be achieved through a grass roots political party which raises courageous voices in our nation’s parliaments. More details are available on our website: https://www.familyfirstparty.org.au/
KEY FACTS:
• Gellung Warl, Victoria's taxpayer-funded Treaty body established by the Labor Government, is advertising for a chief executive with a salary package of up to $470,000, pitched at just under $500,000 in the job ad (Herald Sun, 13 August 2026)
• That figure eclipses the $451,000 salary of Deputy Premier and Minister for Treaty and First Peoples Gabrielle Williams
• The chief executive role is open to non-Indigenous applicants, sparking internal backlash, while casual roles are advertised specifically for “Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people”
• Gellung Warl has installed its second interim chief executive in as many months: Daniel Miller, on a $400,000 package, replacing Elly Patira, who received $467,000 plus superannuation before returning to the Essential Services Commission
• Insiders told the Herald Sun the revolving door at the top is a reflection of deeper problems within the organisation
• Victoria became the first Australian state to sign a Treaty, less than three years after Victorians voted No at the 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament
• Background: the Herald Sun's 13 August report on the Treaty body's CEO salary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
13 August 2026
Half a Million for a Job Victorians Never Voted For: Foreman
Family First's Jane Foreman says revelations that Victoria's taxpayer-funded Treaty body is advertising its incoming chief executive role on a salary package of up to $470,000 — and pitched at just under $500,000 in the job ad — more than the state's Deputy Premier earns, prove exactly why Family First opposed this process from the start: Victorians rejected this kind of costly, divisive bureaucracy at the ballot box, and Labor pushed ahead with it regardless.
Mrs Foreman says the Herald Sun's revelation that Gellung Warl, the Treaty body established by the Carroll Labor Government to oversee the rollout of Victoria's Treaty, is offering its incoming chief executive up to $470,000 — eclipsing the $451,000 salary of Deputy Premier and Minister for Treaty and First Peoples Gabrielle Williams — shows exactly what Victorians are being asked to fund for a process most of them never asked for.
The role is Gellung Warl's second interim chief executive appointment in as many months, with Daniel Miller stepping in on a $400,000 package after predecessor Elly Patira received $467,000 plus superannuation before returning to the Essential Services Commission. Insiders have told the Herald Sun the revolving door at the top reflects deeper problems inside the fledgling organisation.
“Victorians voted No to the Voice at the 2023 referendum precisely because they didn't want a new layer of taxpayer-funded, race-based bureaucracy,” said Mrs Foreman. “Labor ignored that result, signed Australia's first state Treaty anyway, and now we learn the price tag — half a million dollars for one chief executive, sitting on top of a revolving door of interim bosses who've already banked hundreds of thousands more between them.”
“Victorian families are being told there's no money to ease their cost of living, while this government hands out pay packets bigger than the Deputy Premier's to run a body most Victorians never voted for,” said Mrs Foreman. “You cannot look struggling mums and dads in the eye and tell them to do more with less while writing cheques like this for Treaty bureaucracy. This is exactly the kind of pointless, divisive spending Family First warned Victorians about.”
Family First is calling on Premier Ben Carroll and Ms Williams to publicly justify Gellung Warl's salary structure, freeze any further executive appointments pending a full value-for-money review, and give Victorians a genuine say on the future of Treaty funding rather than proceeding on the say of an unelected body.
Mrs Foreman says the CEO salary revelation is further proof Victoria needs Family First's genuinely independent voice holding this government to account in the Legislative Council after November — because Labor has shown, again, that it will keep spending taxpayers' money on ideology the public never endorsed.
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