Bupa Pay Rates 2026: Aged Care, Nurse & Support Staff Pay

Bupa employs around 20,000 people in Australia across health insurance, health services (dental and optical among them) and one of the country's largest private residential aged care operations. Two current agreements sit in our corpus: the Bupa Aged Care Australia, ANMF and HWU Victorian Enterprise Agreement 2024 (approved February 2025, nominal expiry 30 April 2027) covering Victorian aged care homes, and the Bupa Australia Enterprise Agreement 2024 (approved April 2024, nominal expiry 19 April 2027) on the corporate and health-services side. Aged care homes outside Victoria may sit under other state arrangements — check the document named on your payslip or contract.

The awards underneath: the Aged Care Award 2020 (MA000018) for carers and support staff in the homes, and the Nurses Award 2020 (MA000034) for RNs and ENs. Whatever agreement applies, these award floors are the minimum it must beat.

Direct-care classifications carry the aged care work-value increases (completed 1 October 2025). Adult minimums under the Aged Care Award from 1 July 2026:

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, rates operative from 1 July 2026 (hourly is the 38-hour equivalent). Casuals add 25% — a casual Level 1 floor is $40.76/hr. A Cert III personal care worker doing medication-support or wound-care assistance should be at Level 3, not Level 2.

Non-care roles in Bupa homes sit on the award's general stream. From 1 July 2026:

• Level 1: $27.77/hr
• Level 2: $28.87/hr
• Level 3: $29.98/hr
• Level 4: $30.34/hr
• Level 5: $31.36/hr
• Level 6: $33.05/hr — Level 7: $33.65/hr

The direct-care and general streams diverged with the work-value case, and some general classifications carry their own work-value-adjusted higher rates — check your exact classification on our Aged Care Award pay rates page. If you spend most of your shift on personal care but are classified on the general stream, you're on the wrong (lower) ladder.

Registered and enrolled nurses in Bupa homes sit under the Nurses Award's aged care classifications, which carry their own work-value increases — the aged-care nurse scales are materially higher than the award's other-than-aged-care scales, so make sure any comparison uses the right stream. Current figures by classification and pay point are on our Nurses Award pay rates page. The Victorian agreement's nurse rates must sit above that floor, and the ANMF is the union across both.

Aged care runs around the clock, and weekend, evening, night and public-holiday penalties apply on top of the base rates above — with the enterprise agreements setting their own penalty tables that must leave you better off overall than the award. Rather than guessing from a roster, price a specific shift with our penalty rates calculator and compare it against your payslip line by line.

The patterns worth checking:

• Stream misclassification — care work paid on the general stream, or Cert III qualified carers left at Level 2.
• Work-value uplift not flowing through — agreement rates must sit above the post-uplift direct-care floor, not the old one.
• Unpaid handover — clinical handover before and after shift is work time.
• Wrong instrument — Victorian homes are under the 2024 ANMF/HWU agreement; staff elsewhere should confirm which document actually sets their rates.

Price any gap with our back-pay calculator, raise it in writing with your manager or people team, and if unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost — up to six years back. The ANMF and HSU cover this sector. For how another large provider structures the same floors, see our Bolton Clarke pay rates 2026 page.