MSS Security Pay Rates 2026: Guard, Airport & Site Pay

MSS Security is one of Australia's largest security providers, employing around 8,000 people across aviation screening, government sites, casinos and corporate properties. The award floor is the Security Services Industry Award 2020 (MA000016) — it classifies officers by the complexity of the work, from static guarding through monitoring, screening and supervision.

Much of the MSS workforce sits on site- and state-based enterprise agreements above that floor. Current agreements in our corpus include:

• MSS Security Canberra Airport Enterprise Agreement 2026–2030 — approved February 2026, nominal expiry 27 February 2030.
• MSS Security Perth Airport Enterprise Agreement 2025–2028 — approved April 2026.
• MSS Security Crown Casino Security Employees Enterprise Agreement 2025 — nominal expiry 30 June 2028.
• MSS Security Queensland Enterprise Agreement — approved October 2025, nominal expiry 30 October 2029.
• MSS Security Aviation QLD Enterprise Agreement 2024–2028.

Your site determines your agreement — and if no agreement covers your site, the award rates below are your floor.

Adult minimum hourly rates under MA000016 from 1 July 2026:

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, rates operative from 1 July 2026 (Level 1 is $1,080.10 for a 38-hour week). The full ladder with weekly and casual figures is on our Security Award pay rates page. Your level follows your actual duties — an officer operating screening equipment or monitoring multiple systems is not Level 1, whatever the roster calls the post.

Security runs on penalty hours, and the award prices them. For full-time and part-time officers (dollar figures at Level 1):

• Overtime: 150% for the first two hours, 200% after — $56.84/hr at the 200% rate
• Saturday: 150% — $42.63/hr
• Sunday: 200% — $56.84/hr
• Public holiday: 250% — $71.05/hr

Casual penalty rates add the 25% loading on top: Saturday 175% ($49.74/hr at Level 1) and Sunday 225% ($63.95/hr). Shift loadings also apply to rostered afternoon and night work. Airport and casino rosters are built almost entirely from these hours — model your actual roster with our penalty rates calculator rather than assuming the flat rate covers it.

Security rosters lean on long shifts, rotating patterns and short-notice fills, and the agreements linked above restructure award penalties into site rates and shift allowances to suit — which is lawful, provided the package leaves you better off overall than the award for the roster you actually work. The test worth running once a year: take one full roster cycle, price it at award rates including overtime, weekend and shift penalties, and compare it with what you were paid.

Also watch the boundaries: time spent on pre-shift briefings, equipment issue and handover at post is work time, and a shift extended because your relief didn't arrive is overtime — not goodwill.

The patterns we see in security pay questions:

• Level creep downward — officers doing screening, monitoring or in-charge duties on Level 1 pay.
• Unpaid handover — the 10-15 minutes at each end of a shift adds up to hours each month.
• Wrong agreement (or none) — being paid a site rate from a different contract, or award minimums on a site that has an agreement.
• Allowances missed — first-aid, firearm and other licence-based allowances under the award and agreements.
• Flat casual rates — an all-in hourly that doesn't reach the loaded penalty rates for the weekend-heavy hours actually worked.

Keep your rosters and sign-on records alongside six months of payslips, and price the gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with your site or operations manager; the UWU covers much of the security sector and can act on agreement matters. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost — up to six years back, which matters in an industry built on penalty hours.