Most of what you will be paid is settled before you say a word. The band was approved by a remuneration committee, benchmarked against a peer group you did not choose, and signed off in a budget cycle that closed months ago. Base is the least movable part of an executive offer.

What is movable is the structure — how much sits in fixed pay, what actually triggers the bonus, what happens to unvested equity when you leave, how long your notice period runs, and whether you are paid anything for the restraint you are about to sign. That is where the money is, and almost nobody negotiates it.

The numbers you are arguing inside

Average weekly ordinary time earnings for full-time adults were $2,083.70 in May 2026, up 3.7% over the year — the slowest annual growth since November 2022 (ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, released 13 August 2026). The wage price index rose 3.3% in the year to March 2026 (ABS, released 13 May 2026). When a chief executive tells you the increase budget is 3.5%, they are describing the market accurately rather than opening a haggle.

At the top of the market, ACSI’s annual study of ASX 200 chief executive pay (published 15 July 2026, covering FY25) put median fixed pay for an ASX 100 chief executive at $1.83 million, up 4% on the FY24 median. Median total realised pay — what actually landed, including vested equity — was $4,800,898, against $4,153,555 the year before. The gap between those two numbers is the whole argument. Fixed pay is a modest fraction of what a large-cap executive is eventually paid, and it is the smaller half of the negotiation.

Price the bonus properly

The at-risk component is not a lottery, and treating it as one costs candidates money in both directions.

In FY25 the median bonus outcome for an ASX 100 chief executive was 70.7% of the available maximum. That is not a good year — it is a normal one. Across the eleven years ACSI has tracked bonuses as a proportion of maximum, the median has landed between 60% and 77% every single year except FY20, the first year of COVID. ACSI’s own summary of the pattern is blunter than anything we would write: an ASX 200 chief executive is more likely to depart than to receive no bonus at all.

So when you are offered a smaller base in exchange for a larger bonus opportunity, do the arithmetic at two-thirds of maximum, not at maximum. And weigh the fact that fixed pay is what compounds: superannuation is calculated on it, redundancy is calculated on it, and it becomes the benchmark the next employer starts from.

Ask for the plan document, not the summary in the offer letter. You want the gateway conditions, the assessment period, whether board discretion can reduce an earned outcome, and what happens if you resign after the performance period ends but before the payment date.

Superannuation stops, and nobody tells you

The superannuation guarantee is 12%. It is not payable on everything.

For 2026–27 the maximum contribution base is $270,830, and since payday super commenced on 1 July 2026 it applies across the financial year rather than quarter by quarter (ATO, QC18123, updated 17 April 2026). Once your qualifying earnings pass that figure, your employer has no legal obligation to contribute another dollar. Whether they do anyway is a term of your contract, and it is worth low five figures a year.

Two related numbers: the concessional contributions cap is $32,500 for 2026–27, up from $30,000 (ATO, QC18123, updated 24 April 2026), and a package quoted as “$X inclusive of super” is a materially different offer from “$X plus super”. Get it in writing which one you have been sent.

Negotiate the exit while they still want you

The genuine redundancy tax-free amount for 2026–27 is $13,598 plus $6,801 for each completed year of service, and the ETP cap is $270,000 (ATO, QC18123, updated 17 April 2026). Those are the concessional limits your termination payment will be measured against.

More useful than the tax treatment is what your contract says about the event. Notice period, whether the company can pay it out or require you to serve it, good-leaver and bad-leaver treatment of unvested long-term incentives, and whether a change of control accelerates anything. An executive who negotiates twelve months’ notice instead of six has usually won more than they would have from arguing over base.

The restraint clause is still yours to negotiate

The Government announced in the 2025–26 Budget that it would ban non-compete clauses for low- and middle-income workers, with effect from 2027 following consultation and legislation. Treasury’s competition review page (updated 7 October 2025) still describes the reform in those terms; it was not law as at August 2026.

Read the threshold carefully. The ban as announced applies to workers earning below the Fair Work high income threshold — a figure that is re-indexed every 1 July, so check the current one rather than trusting any number you read in an article. If you are reading this page, you are almost certainly above it. Your restraint will continue to be governed by common law reasonableness, which means its scope, its duration, its geography and whether you are paid during it are all negotiable — and they are far easier to negotiate before you sign than after you resign.

You are allowed to ask what other people earn

Pay secrecy terms have had no effect since 7 December 2022. Section 333B of the Fair Work Act makes it a workplace right to disclose, or not disclose, your remuneration, and a separate workplace right to ask another employee about theirs — including someone at a different employer. Section 333C voids any contract term inconsistent with that. Section 333D makes it a contravention for an employer to put such a term in a new contract at all, and it is a civil remedy provision. The right survives the job: s 333B(3)(b) preserves it after you cease to be an employee, and s 341(3) extends workplace rights to prospective employees — so you may ask before you are hired.

Use that, and use disclosed data. Listed companies publish key management personnel remuneration in their annual reports under section 300A of the Corporations Act. Two remuneration reports from the company you are joining will tell you more about the band than any salary aggregator, because aggregators have almost no reliable Australian data above general management level.

One piece of context on your own position: job mobility fell to 7.2% in the year to February 2026, from 7.7% the year before (ABS, released 31 July 2026). Fewer people are moving. The person across the table knows that.

What we would do

Name a range, and name the reason for it — a peer company’s disclosed band, a scope difference, a specific piece of the P&L you carry. Do not name your current salary; it anchors the offer and you are under no obligation to disclose it.

Then spend your negotiating capital on the structure rather than the headline. Get the incentive plan rules, the treatment of unvested equity on exit, the notice period and the restraint terms settled in writing before you accept. Those four things are worth more than the 3% you were going to argue about, and unlike the 3%, they are usually still open.

If you want the case for the band made properly in the document that arrives before you do, that is the work we do.

Sources: ABS, Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2026 (13 August 2026); ABS, Wage Price Index, Australia, March 2026 (13 May 2026); ABS, Job Mobility media release (31 July 2026); ACSI, CEO Pay in ASX200 Companies (published 15 July 2026, FY25 data), and the accompanying media release, acsi.org.au; ATO, Key superannuation rates and thresholds — maximum contribution base, contributions caps and employment termination payments, QC18123 (updated 17 April 2026 and 24 April 2026); Treasury, Non-compete clauses and other restraints (updated 7 October 2025); Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) ss 333B, 333C, 333D and 341(3), pay secrecy provisions in force 7 December 2022, read via classic.austlii.edu.au; Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) s 300A.
Most recent source consulted: 18 August 2026