An occupational award: it follows the nurse
Clause 4.1 covers employers in the health industry and — the part that catches care providers — any employer who employs a nurse or midwife principally engaged in nursing or midwifery duties within the award's classifications. There is no industry gate. An NDIS provider whose workforce sits on SCHADS still employs its clinical nurse under MA000034; a residential facility on the Aged Care Award still employs its RNs and ENs under the Nurses Award.
Since mid-2023 the award also contains a dedicated aged care employee stream (inserted by the Aged Care Work Value Case), with its own classification rates for nurses working in residential facilities and home care for aged persons — so the same RN title carries different rates depending on whether they're an aged care employee under the award's definition. The current dollar figures per classification are in the FWO pay guide for MA000034.
The nursing assistant carve-out (clause 4.4)
Here's the boundary rule that gets misapplied in both directions: the Nurses Award classifies nursing assistants (Schedule A.1) — but clause 4.4 excludes nursing assistants who provide care services to aged persons in the aged care industry or the home care sector. Those workers fall under the Aged Care Award (facilities) or SCHADS home care instead.
In practice:
- An AIN/nursing assistant in a hospital or general health setting → Nurses Award.
- A nursing assistant providing aged care in a facility → Aged Care Award.
- A nursing assistant providing aged care in private homes → SCHADS home care.
- An RN or EN in any of those settings → Nurses Award, in the applicable stream.
The title on the contract doesn't decide any of this — the duties and the setting do, the same principle as every award boundary. Our guides to the Aged Care Award vs SCHADS boundary and SCHADS classification cover the other two sides of the triangle.
Why this becomes a three-award payroll
A mid-sized provider running a facility plus community programs can easily hold:
- support workers under SCHADS (SACS or home care streams),
- facility care and hospitality staff under the Aged Care Award, and
- RNs and ENs under the Nurses Award —
three different weekend penalty structures, three overtime regimes, three sets of allowances, in one pay run. Every rule we've documented for SCHADS — weekend substitution, sleepover mechanics, minimum engagements — has a different answer under each instrument. Payroll systems configured with a single ruleset apply somebody's rules to everybody, and the errors run in both directions: overpaying where the assumed award is more generous, underpaying where it isn't.
The compounding factor in 2026: all three awards took the 4.75% Annual Wage Review increase from 1 July, the Aged Care and Nurses awards both carry Work Value Case restructures, and SCHADS home care classifications are rewritten again from 1 October 2026. Three instruments, three change calendars.
What to check if you employ nurses
- Coverage audit: list every clinically-qualified employee and confirm which instrument and stream they're paid under — especially AINs, who can sit under any of the three awards depending on setting.
- Aged care stream mapping: nurses caring for aged persons should be on the award's aged care classification rates, not the general nurse scale.
- Rate currency: post-1-July-2026 rates from the FWO pay guide, not last year's figures carried forward.
- Scenario testing: for a specific question — an RN's Saturday rate in home care, an AIN's overtime in a facility — our Awards Assistant answers from the actual text of MA000034, MA000018 and MA000100 with clause citations.