The Aged Care Award Payroll Guide: What MA000018 Actually Requires

MA000018 covers employers providing accommodation and care for aged persons in hostels, nursing homes, independent living units, serviced apartments, garden settlements, retirement villages and other residential facilities — to the exclusion of any other modern award (clause 4.1). Nurses performing nursing duties sit under the Nurses Award instead, and care delivered in private residences falls under SCHADS home care — the boundary is covered in our Aged Care Award vs SCHADS guide. Classifications run in two streams (general and direct care), with the direct-care structure reshaped by the Aged Care Work Value Case increases phased through 2023–2025.

Clause 23 sets the weekend rates for ordinary hours:

• Saturday (midnight Friday to midnight Saturday): 150% for full-time and part-time employees.
• Sunday (midnight Saturday to midnight Sunday): 175% — time and three quarters, not the double time many systems assume from SCHADS habits.
• Casuals: 175% Saturday and 200% Sunday — and these rates are in substitution for the casual loading, not on top of it (clause 23.3). Adding 25% loading to the casual weekend rate is a common overpayment; paying permanents 200% on Sunday is another.

Weekend rates substitute for shift premiums (clause 23.1) — they don't stack with evening/night loadings.

Clause 22.9 gives facility sleepovers their own regime, quite different from SCHADS:

• The span is not less than 8 and not more than 10 hours per night.
• The allowance is 5.2% of the award's standard rate per night (the standard rate is the general level 6 minimum — the current dollar figure is in the FWO pay guide), plus free board and lodging and a separate room with a bed.
• Only emergency work may be required during a sleepover — an unplanned occurrence requiring prompt action. All time worked during a sleepover counts as time worked: full-timers are paid overtime rates for it; part-timers are paid ordinary pay plus applicable penalties, with overtime once daily or weekly thresholds are crossed (clause 22.9(g)).
• An employee directed to perform non-emergency work during a sleepover is paid the appropriate hourly rate from the start of the sleepover to the end of that work (or start of work to end of sleepover, whichever is less) — on top of the allowance (clause 22.9(f)). Rostering "just a few tasks" into a sleepover converts a large chunk of it into paid hours.

Clause 22.7: full-time employees receive a minimum payment of 4 hours per engagement; part-time and casual employees 2 hours. Except for meal breaks, hours on any day must be continuous — unless a broken shift is worked by mutual agreement (clause 22.8). Broken shift pay is ordinary rates plus applicable penalties, with shift allowances determined by the broken shift's commencing time; work beyond a 12-hour span is double time. Note what's absent: unlike SCHADS, there is no broken shift allowance — importing the $21.81/$28.87 SCHADS allowances into facility payroll is an error in the other direction.

Clause 25.1 for full-time employees: 150% for the first 2 hours and 200% thereafter Monday–Friday, 200% for all weekend overtime, and 250% on public holidays — in substitution for shift premiums. Casuals are paid the same overtime rates. As with SCHADS, the traps are the boundaries: overtime measured against rostered ordinary hours, weekend overtime jumping straight to double time, and sleepover work feeding the overtime clock for full-timers.

All MA000018 minimum rates rose 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026 (Annual Wage Review), on top of the Work Value Case increases already phased in for direct care classifications. The authoritative dollar figures per classification are the FWO's MA000018 pay guide — payroll systems still carrying pre-July rates are now underpaying every hour, and because the sleepover allowance is a percentage of the standard rate, it moved too.

Aged care providers face the same enforcement environment as NDIS providers — Fair Work names the care sector a priority, and the record-keeping burden (7 years, employer carries the onus) is identical. The audit-preparation method in our SCHADS audit checklist transfers directly: itemised pay categories, actual clock times, sleepover disturbance logs, and a documented self-audit. The rules being tested just come from MA000018's clauses instead. For specific scenario questions — coverage, a sleepover interruption, a broken-shift span — our Awards Assistant answers from the award text with clause citations, for the Aged Care Award as well as SCHADS.