The short version: From the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, award wages rise 4.75%. If you are a registered or enrolled nurse working in aged care, a separate Work Value increase lands on 1 August on top of that. Both apply in Tasmania in full.
Two pay changes are about to hit Tasmanian aged care nurses within a month of each other, and they come from different places. Confusing them is easy, so it is worth separating them cleanly. One is the annual across-the-board award increase that every award-covered worker gets. The other is the tail end of a multi-year correction specific to aged care nursing. If you work in aged care, you are in line for both.
The 1 July award increase
The Fair Work Commission handed down its 2026 Annual Wage Review with a 4.75% increase to modern award minimum wages, effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. This flows through the Nurses Award and covers registered nurses, enrolled nurses and assistants in nursing working for award-reliant employers, which describes most small private aged care providers in Tasmania. Because modern awards are federal, there is no Tasmanian carve-out. The increase applies here exactly as it does everywhere else.
The 1 August work value increase
Separately, the Aged Care Work Value Case has been correcting a long-standing undervaluation of aged care work. Nurses have already received increases in March 2025 and October 2025, and the final tranche for registered and enrolled nurses working in aged care takes effect on 1 August 2026. This one is specific to aged care nursing and sits on top of the 4.75% award rise, which is why an aged care nurse comes out ahead of a nurse doing comparable work in a setting the Work Value Case did not cover.
| Change | Effective | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Annual award increase, 4.75% | First full pay period on or after 1 July 2026 | All award-covered nurses (RN, EN, AIN) |
| Work Value Case final tranche | 1 August 2026 | RNs and ENs working in aged care |
| Earlier Work Value tranches | 1 March 2025 and 1 October 2025 | Already in your pay if you were eligible |
For once, the financial logic points toward aged care rather than away from it, and that is a genuine shift in a sector long treated as the lower-paid option.
What to actually do about it
Check that the increases land. Award increases are not always applied promptly by smaller employers, particularly the Work Value tranche, which has more eligibility detail than a flat percentage rise. Look at your first August payslip against your July one and confirm both changes are reflected. If your pay has not moved, that is a conversation to have, and the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the updated pay guides you can check against.
It is also worth understanding what this does to the wider picture. Aged care nursing has spent years as the option people took reluctantly on pay grounds. The combined effect of the Work Value Case and the annual increase has narrowed that gap considerably. If you ruled aged care out a few years ago purely on money, the numbers are worth a fresh look.
**If you are a nurse** weighing your next move, the pay case for aged care is the strongest it has been in a long time, and the new staffing rules mean demand for your registration is high. **If you are an operator**, these increases are now the baseline you compete on, not a differentiator, so the question becomes what else you offer.
If you are a Tasmanian nurse weighing up a move into or within aged care and want a clear read on where the roles and the pay are, Community Health Connect can talk it through.
Get in touch