The final instalment of aged care nurses’ pay rise has landed. Here’s what to check

Aged care nurses working under the Nurses Award have been receiving a pay rise in three instalments since March 2025. The third and final instalment took effect from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 August 2026, closing out a case the Fair Work Commission began after the Health Services Union and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation applied for a work value review in 2020 and 2021.

For most nurses, the headline question is straightforward: what’s different on my payslip. The honest answer is that it depends on your classification. It also depends, more importantly for many Tasmanian aged care nurses, on whether you’re paid under the Nurses Award directly or under an enterprise agreement that already sits above it.

What changed on 1 August

As of the second instalment, published minimum weekly rates for aged care nurses under the Award ranged from $1,446.50 for a graduate registered nurse at Level 1 up to $2,542.40 for a Level 5 registered nurse, with a full time enrolled nurse supervising other direct care employees moving to $1,409.60 a week. The final instalment builds on those figures again. Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool carries the exact new minimum for your classification, worth checking directly rather than relying on word of mouth about what the rise is worth.

If you’re paid under an enterprise agreement, this may not change much

A meaningful share of Tasmanian aged care nurses aren’t paid on the bare Nurses Award. Several private providers across the state have negotiated enterprise agreements with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation’s Tasmanian branch through 2026. Where those agreements already sit above the award, the 1 August increase may already be built in rather than landing as a fresh bump.

If you’re not sure which applies to you, your payslip and your employer’s enterprise agreement, if one exists, are the two places to check before assuming the award rate is your rate. It’s a five minute check that saves a lot of confusion when you compare notes with a colleague at another facility.

How to check your new rate

• Check your latest payslip against the classification you hold now, not the one you started on
• If you’re covered by an enterprise agreement, check whether it already exceeds the award, since the increase may not be separately visible
• Use Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool for the exact current minimum for your classification
• If something looks wrong, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the ANMF Tasmanian branch both take pay queries

Three pay rises in eighteen months are easy to lose track of. Checking your classification once is worth more than assuming the rise landed correctly.

The bottom line

This instalment closes out a pay case that has materially reshaped what aged care nursing pays in Australia since 2023. It doesn’t reshape every pay packet by the same amount. Nurses on the bare award are the most likely to notice a real difference. Nurses whose enterprise agreement already moved ahead of it will notice less, worth knowing before comparing notes with a colleague at a different facility.

If you’re a nurse and haven’t checked your classification against the current award since March 2025, this is a reasonable prompt to do it. It takes ten minutes and it’s the only way to know if you’re being paid what the case intended.

If you’re a facility leader, the practical task now is confirming your payroll system has applied the final instalment correctly and that any enterprise agreement obligations are reconciled against it, not assumed.