Fair Work has re-issued MA000027 with the 1 October changes written in. Nothing was decided this week — the rules are now printed where people look for them.
Fair Work has re-issued the Health Professionals and Support Services Award with the 1 October 2026 changes written into it. It went up on 24 September 2026, seven days before those changes commence.
If you have been following this since December, this is the last piece. Everything that was decided now sits in one document, with a clause number you can put in front of a payroll provider, an accountant or an employee. If you have not been following it, start here. This page is the whole story in order, and the detail on each part is one click away.
Nothing was decided this week. What changed is that the rules are now printed where people look for them.
The October classification walk-through
REBUILD runs this sequence against your own staff list, one person at a time.
If you already know the shape of it and what you need is the per-employee work, REBUILD is the walk-through: your own contracts, duties and payroll history, one person at a time, ending in a register you can hand to a payroll provider.
Why this is happening
This is not a normal wage rise. It is the result of a multi-year Fair Work Commission review that found the work of health professionals had been undervalued on gender grounds, and ordered the rates and the classification structure corrected. The decisions came in stages between December 2025 and September 2026, and the operative instrument, determination PR814029, was made on 7 September 2026.
Until this week, an owner working out how their clinicians would be classified in October had to read that determination beside an award that did not yet contain it. That is what has ended.
The background, the decisions and what the review found are in the 2026 award changes field guide.
What the change is
Two pay changes land in the one financial year. The 4.75% annual wage review increase applied from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. The second is the one this page is about: a rebuilt classification structure with the first stage of new rates from 1 October 2026, phasing in over four further steps to 30 June 2030.
The structural change is at Level 1, the level a clinician enters the award at. The old pay points are gone from the classification structure — they survive only as a rate floor, which is the second trap below. A Level 1 health professional is now classified by two things: the AQF level of the qualification their profession requires, and their years of experience in that profession. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists and exercise physiologists are AQF 7; psychologists, osteopaths and chiropractors are AQF 9; some professions are listed at more than one level, and there clause B.2 uses the qualification the employee actually holds to pick between them. The full list is in the AQF level for every profession named in the award.
Above Level 1 the structure is reshaped rather than rebuilt. A clinician who was Level 3 on 30 September has three possible destinations, and Level 1 is not one of them. That is worked through in can you move a Level 3 clinician to Level 1 on 1 October?
Reception, admin and cleaning staff are not reclassified by this determination. Their classifications and minimum rates sit in a different part of the award and are not on the list of clauses it varies. Admin and receptionist rates under MA000027 covers that side.
How it rolls out
It starts on 1 October, but for most staff it starts later. The determination takes effect for each employee from the start of their first full pay period beginning on or after 1 October 2026. 1 October 2026 is a Thursday, so a cycle that happens to begin that day starts on the 1st. On a weekly cycle starting on a Monday, it is 5 October. On a monthly cycle it can be most of the month later.
Every health professional classified under the award on 30 September translates. The classification a person held on that day decides which rule picks them up: clause J.4.1 for a previous Level 1 or Level 2, clause J.4.2 for a previous Level 3 or Level 4. For a previous Level 1 or Level 2, the award does the translation for you, in fourteen tables at clause J.4.1(a)–(n) — one per AQF level and qualification entry pathway. Take the table for the AQF level your clinician's profession carries and the pathway they entered on, then read across from the classification and pay point they held on 30 September. Where that pay point does not reflect their years in the profession, the clause's own words govern and the table's answer has to be checked against them. A previous Level 3 or Level 4 is translated instead on the roles and duties they actually perform. Each person lands on a new classification, and the new rate follows from it.
Nobody's award minimum drops. Clause J.4.3 sets a floor. For anyone classified under the award on 30 September, the new award minimum is the higher of two figures: the minimum for their translated classification, and the minimum that applied to their old classification on 30 September. It compares two award minimums. It does not compare against what you actually pay someone, which is a matter for their contract.
Then you tell them. Clause 12.2 requires employers to advise employees in writing of any change to their classification, and the translation clauses are written as classification changes. Working out where each person lands is half the job. Putting it to them in writing, dated, is the other half.
Then it keeps moving. Further rate stages are set for 30 June 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030. The classification you settle now is the starting point those stages run off.
Two things to be careful of in the week between publication and commencement. Clause 17 of the re-issued award prints only the October rates, so it is not where this week's minimums are; the old pay-point minimums survive at clause J.4.3(b), printed as a floor rather than as a rate table. And the award's standard rate, the base every wage-related allowance is a percentage of, is redefined on 1 October, from $1219.50 to $1308.80. The allowance percentages were re-based at the same time so the dollar amounts hold, which means a payroll system that stores them as a percentage of a standard-rate field will overpay by 7.32% if the base is updated and the percentages are not.
The dates, the rates and what the stack does to a wage bill are laid out in your second pay rise hits October 1. For what it does to your margin in particular, how exposed is your clinic to the 2026 award changes?
What is now in the award itself
| What | Where it is now |
|---|---|
| The new Level 1 rate structure (AQF level × years of experience) | Clause 17 |
| Definition of standard rate | Clause 2 |
| Classification definitions | Schedule A, clause A.2 |
| Which AQF level each profession sits at | Schedule B, clause B.3 |
| Summary of hourly rates | Schedule C, clause C.2 |
| Translation of existing Level 1 and Level 2 staff | Clause J.4.1 |
| Translation of existing Level 3 and Level 4 staff | Clause J.4.2 |
| The retained-minimum floor | Clause J.4.3 |
| Existing annualised wage arrangements for Level 2 staff | Clause J.4.4 |
Each amended clause carries a bracket naming the instrument that changed it, but the award prints only the new text. To see what a clause used to say, the determination is still the place.
The award: https://www.fwc.gov.au/document-view/awards/modern/MA000027
The determination, PR814029: https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/awardsandorders/pdf/pr814029.pdf
Check the as-at line on page 1 before trusting anything else in it. It should read incorporates all amendments up to and including 1 October 2026 (PR814029). If it says 1 April 2026 you are on the previous version, and the two give different health professional rates.
Where the lookups end
Some of this is a lookup. Which AQF level a profession carries, where the award lists only one. What the new rate is for a given level and band. Which date it applies from on your pay cycle. Those take ten minutes with the document open.
The rest is not, and it is where the money is.
Which level applies where a profession is listed at more than one. Which entry pathway a clinician came through, because the same 30 September pay point lands in a different band depending on it. Whether the pay point they were sitting on actually reflects their years in the profession — which is not how many years they have had with you, and which for someone who came through a different pathway or a different employer is a fact you have to establish rather than read. What a Level 3 actually does day to day, and for how long they have done it, because the same title translates to different places depending on the answer. Whether the floor bites for a particular person or not. What to write to them, and when.
Each of those is decided once per person. Then it is carried across an entire payroll and into each stage to 2030, unless someone goes back and corrects what was written down in October. A wrong answer for one clinician is a small number; the same wrong answer applied to a team of fifteen and compounded over four years is not. That is the gap between reading the award and being right about your own staff list, and it is the part no general guide can answer, because the answer is different in every clinic.
The October classification walk-through
Run the sequence above against your own staff list.
REBUILD is built for that gap. It takes the sequence above and runs it against your own contracts, duties and payroll history, one person at a time, and the workbook builds itself into a single register as you go: one row per person, the classification, the date it applies from, and the facts each answer rests on.
The series, in reading order
- The Health Professionals Award hub: dates, rates and every source in one place.
- The 2026 award changes field guide: why the review happened, what it found, and every number sourced to the decisions.
- Your second pay rise hits October 1: the two changes in one year, the six dates, and the two jobs to do first.
- The AQF level for every profession named in the award: all 47 professions, including the 14 with more than one level.
- Is this clinician Level 2?: the question that decides the most money.
- Can you move a Level 3 clinician to Level 1 on 1 October?: what the transition does and does not settle.
- How exposed is your clinic to the 2026 award changes?: the margin question.
- Admin and receptionist rates under MA000027: the Support Services side, which this determination does not reclassify.
- New-grad physiotherapy wages: where the new ladder starts.
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