Victoria is reeling tonight after One Nation firebrand Pauline Hanson detonated one of the biggest political bombshells of the year, producing explosive classified briefing documents that prove the Allan Labor government deliberately concealed critical treaty details from every single MP – including members of its own party – when the Statewide Treaty Bill was rammed through State Parliament just weeks ago.
In a fiery press conference outside Parliament House this afternoon, Hanson brandished a redacted but still devastating 47-page “Ministerial Briefing Summary” prepared for Treaty Minister Natalie Hutchins in August 2025.
The document, marked “Cabinet-in-Confidence” and “Not for Circulation”, had never been shown to backbench MPs before they voted on the historic treaty legislation on 19 November.
Most explosive of all: the hidden briefings reveal that two unnamed Victorian Indigenous corporations have already been quietly handed settlement packages “in the order of $80–100 million each” as part of secret pre-treaty negotiations, deals that were never disclosed to Parliament or the public.
Even more incendiary: the documents outline a permanent “Enhanced Compensation Pathway” that will allow First Nations groups to lodge claims for additional billions in future payments through a new, quasi-judicial “Treaty Advancement Commission” once the treaty framework is fully in place.
“Labor hid these documents because they knew the moment Victorians found out they were signing a blank cheque worth potentially hundreds of millions – if not billions – they would revolt,” Hanson thundered.
“You lot are so loyal to the party that you’ll happily bleed the taxpayers dry and live like kings on their money while pensioners choose between heating and eating. This is the biggest rort in Victorian history.”
The leaked summary, obtained through a whistle-blower inside Spring Street, shows:
Two pre-treaty “economic empowerment” settlements, one believed to be with the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation and another with a Gunditjmara entity, were finalised in September and October 2025 with combined value “approaching $200 million”.
The new Treaty Advancement Commission will have the power to award “enhanced compensation” above and beyond existing native title processes, with no upper limit specified. Legal advice attached to the brief warns that “future claims under the enhanced pathway could exceed $1 billion within the first decade”.
A deliberate strategy to withhold the full financial modelling from Parliament “to minimise public and opposition scrutiny ahead of passage”.
The Statewide Treaty Bill passed the Lower House 54–31 and the Upper House 30–8 on 19 November, with only a handful of Labor MPs reportedly given access to heavily redacted versions of the costings.
Several backbenchers are now privately furious, with one telling this reporter: “We were told it was just a framework. Nobody said anything about nine-figure secret payouts.”
Premier Jacinta Allan and Minister Hutchins have gone to ground. A spokesman for the Premier issued a two-line statement claiming the documents were “draft and speculative” and that “all appropriate disclosures were made”.
When pressed on why the $100 million packages were never mentioned during the three-month committee stage, the spokesman refused to comment further.
Opposition Leader John Pesutto has called for an immediate suspension of the treaty process and a full judicial inquiry.
“This is not just incompetence, this is deliberate deception,” Pesutto said. “Victorians were sold a treaty of ‘truth-telling and healing’. What they got was a secret slush fund for Labor’s hand-picked Indigenous corporations while the rest of the state drowns in debt and cost-of-living pain.”
The scandal could not come at a worse time for the Allan government, already battered by the Suburban Rail Loop blowout (now heading for $200 billion), hospital waiting-list disasters, and the highest per-capita debt in the nation.
Ratepayers are furious. Talkback lines across 3AW and SEN have been jammed all afternoon with callers describing the secret payouts as “legalised theft” and “reverse racism paid for by battlers”.
One Nation’s Victorian Senate candidate Rikki, speaking alongside Hanson, went further: “This is what happens when you let a woke, bankrupt government negotiate in secret with activists while keeping elected representatives in the dark. Victorians can’t afford another cent of this treaty madness.”
Hanson has vowed to table the full unredacted documents under parliamentary privilege when the Senate resumes next year and has called on the Victorian Ombudsman and the state’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) to launch immediate investigations.
As of 9 p.m., the hashtag #SecretTreatyScandal is the number-one trend nationwide, with tens of thousands of Victorians sharing images of their latest power bills alongside screenshots of the leaked brief.
For a government that campaigned on transparency and “treaty truth”, tonight’s revelations have delivered anything but.
Victorians went to bed asking one simple question: If Labor was proud of these deals, why did they hide them from the very people elected to represent us?
And how many more hundreds of millions – or billions – are still buried in the fine print?