Update, 1 August 2026: dated, not relative. Published on 31 July, this story said the pay rise landed “tomorrow”, in the headline and again in the text. That was accurate for one day and false on the second, so both now say 1 August. Nothing else changed: the date was always stated in the standfirst, and the three practices the regulator names are exactly as published. A relative word attached to a real-world event is a defect with a fuse on it.

Correction, 1 August 2026: the wrong award. This story said the 1 August increase goes to registered and enrolled nurses covered by the Aged Care Award, following the regulator's bulletin, which says exactly that. It is the wrong award: the increase is made by determination PR812118 into the Nurses Award 2020, and the Fair Work Ombudsman confirms aged care nurses are covered by that award, while nursing assistants moved to the Aged Care Award in January 2025. The headline, standfirst, description and body have been corrected and the Fair Work instruments added as sources. This masthead's own earlier report of the same increase had it right, which is the uncomfortable part and the reason the correction is spelled out rather than quietly patched. The three unacceptable practices are unchanged.

The Fair Work Commission has changed three aged care awards over recent years: the Aged Care Award, the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) Award and the Nurses Award. Most of those changes have already been made, including several pay rises since 2022. The 1 August increase is the last of the agreed increases for aged care nurses, and it is written into the Nurses Award 2020, not the Aged Care Award. The bulletin says otherwise; see the correction below.

The Commission’s framing of what follows is careful and worth repeating exactly: when awards change, providers may need to change their business and pricing models, but they can’t make changes that have a negative effect on the quality and safety of care and services to older people receiving funded aged care services. Price may move. Care may not shrink to fund it.

The three practices, and what each looks like on your paperwork

1. Minimum service times as a standard rule. The Commission names minimum service times, such as 2-hour shifts, in service agreements as unacceptable. Its reasoning is that you should only provide and charge for services for the time needed, and while sometimes 2-hour services are appropriate, but they should not be a standard minimum requirement and must be based on the person’s assessed needs.

That is the distinction to check. A two-hour visit because two hours of care was assessed is fine. A two-hour minimum applied to everyone, including someone whose assessed need is forty-five minutes, is not, and it converts unused time into billed time.

2. After-hours rates on standard-hours work. The Commission names charging incorrectly for services that extend across standard and after-hours periods, and is specific about the fix: You must charge for time worked during standard hours at the standard rate, not the higher after-hours rate.

In practice that means a visit straddling the boundary should be split, not rounded up to the more expensive rate. If a service began before the after-hours threshold, the earlier portion is standard-rate time.

3. Blaming the award for longer minimum visits. The third is the one that is hardest to see from the outside, and the Commission calls it what it is: using misleading terms and conditions, such as claiming that changes to an award mean you need to apply longer minimum service times. Its answer is a single sentence that does a lot of work: Award changes might affect staffing costs and pricing, but they don’t change the amount of care a person needs.

An award sets what a worker is paid per hour. It says nothing about how many hours a particular older person requires. Any explanation that runs from the first to the second is, on the regulator’s own account, misleading.

What the Commission says it will do

If we find providers doing any of these, we will take action to protect older people. That is the whole of its stated enforcement position on the point, and it is worth noting it is written to providers in a provider bulletin rather than announced to the public.

Our view, labelled as such: publishing this before the pay rise rather than after it is the useful part, and it is a better piece of regulation than an enforcement action would be. The three practices are precisely the ones a provider under genuine cost pressure would reach for first, and each can be dressed as an administrative necessity. Naming them in advance removes the excuse. Whether it removes the practice depends on whether anyone checks their service agreement, which is why they are set out here.

If something on your agreement or invoice matches one of the three, the Commission’s complaints line is 1800 951 822. Its own guidance elsewhere is that every complaint is assessed and can inform regulatory action.

Correction: the bulletin names the wrong award, and it matters

The Commission's bulletin says, in terms, that registered and enrolled nurses covered by the Aged Care Award will receive the final agreed pay increase on 1 August 2026. We repeated that. Checked against the Fair Work instruments, the award is wrong.

The determination that makes this increase is PR812118, issued by a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission on 15 July 2026, and it varies the Nurses Award 2020. Its own subject line reads work value – aged care industry – Nurses Award 2020 – final increase. The Fair Work Ombudsman is equally plain, listing among the employees receiving these increases Enrolled and Registered Nurses working in Aged Care who are covered by the Nurses Award.

The coverage actually runs the other way from what the bulletin implies. From 1 January 2025, nursing assistants who had been under the Nurses Award moved to the Aged Care Award or the SCHADS Award. Nurses stayed in the Nurses Award. So the Aged Care Award is the right award for the wrong staff group in that sentence.

Why it is worth a correction rather than a shrug: a provider or a family checking their obligation against the named award would be reading an instrument that does not contain these rates. The rates are in the Nurses Award, and from 1 August 2026 they are $1,571.60 a week ($41.36 an hour) for a first-year registered nurse in aged care, rising to $2,711.30 a week ($71.35 an hour) at level 5, with $1,542.00 a week ($40.58 an hour) for an enrolled nurse supervising other direct care employees. The determination also states that it does not affect an employee until the start of their first full pay period beginning on or after 1 August, so for most staff the money arrives a little after the date.

None of this changes the substance of the story. The three practices the regulator names as unacceptable are quoted exactly as published and stand entirely unaffected.

How we sourced this

The three changed awards, the statement that most changes are already made including several pay rises since 2022, the bulletin's statement that the 1 August 2026 final increase goes to registered and enrolled nurses covered by the Aged Care Award (which we have corrected against the Fair Work instruments; see below), the principle that providers may change business and pricing models but not in ways that negatively affect quality and safety of care, all three named unacceptable practices with the Commission’s reasoning quoted, and the enforcement statement are from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s Aged Care Quality Bulletin #7-2026, read on 31 July 2026.

We have not read the award instruments themselves, so the description of what the Fair Work Commission changed is the regulator’s summary rather than our reading of the awards. The worked explanations of what each practice looks like on an invoice are ours, drawn from the Commission’s stated reasoning; they are illustrations rather than legal advice, and no claim is made about any provider. The paragraph beginning “Our view” is opinion built on the sourced facts above it.

Primary sources

  1. Fair Work Commission, Determination PR812118, Nurses Award 2020 [MA000034], signed 15 July 2026 (downloaded and read 1 August 2026): that the final work value increase for aged care nurses varies the Nurses Award 2020 and not the Aged Care Award, the full minimum rate table from $1,542.00 for a supervising enrolled nurse to $2,711.30 for a registered nurse level 5, the 1 August 2026 operative date, and the provision that it does not affect an employee until their first full pay period starting on or after that date.
  2. Fair Work Ombudsman, Aged Care Work Value Case: changes to awards (read 1 August 2026): that enrolled and registered nurses working in aged care are covered by the Nurses Award, and that from 1 January 2025 nursing assistants previously under the Nurses Award are covered by the Aged Care Award or the SCHADS Award.
  3. Fair Work Ombudsman, Changes to minimum pay rates in the Nurses Award (read 1 August 2026): that the additional increases for registered and enrolled nurses take effect from 1 October 2025 and 1 August 2026.
  4. Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, Aged Care Quality Bulletin #7-2026 (read 31 July 2026), and in particular its article “Aged care awards change”: the three awards changed by the Fair Work Commission, its statement that the 1 August 2026 final agreed pay increase goes to registered and enrolled nurses under the Aged Care Award, which the Fair Work sources below show is the wrong award, the limit on changing business and pricing models, the three unacceptable practices covering minimum service times, after-hours charging and misleading terms and conditions, and the statement that the Commission will take action.
  5. The Long View, From 1 August, aged care nursing pay rises for the last time under the work value case: our earlier reporting on the increase itself.

Spotted an error? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited sources and log the outcome here.