Practice Employer Changes 1 July 2026: Payday Super and Award Rise

Key Takeaways

• From 1 July 2026, employers must pay superannuation on the same cycle as wages, not quarterly, with contributions received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of each payday. Super is calculated on a new "qualifying earnings" base (ordinary time earnings plus commissions, salary sacrifice and more), so practices that currently hold super and remit quarterly must reconfigure payroll before the deadline.
• Wage theft has been a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act since 1 January 2025. Individuals face up to ten years imprisonment and fines of $1.56 million. Underpaying superannuation is captured. This is not new legislation - it is already in force.
• The Fair Work Commission's 2026 Annual Wage Review (decision 2 June 2026) lifts modern award minimum rates by 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Health care and social assistance is one of the most award-reliant sectors, so most practices are directly affected.
• The Fair Work Commission's earlier gender undervaluation review separately repriced significant roles under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020, including practice nurses, allied health assistants, and health information managers. The 4.75% increase applies on top of those rates. Practices that have not revisited classifications since 2022 may be underpaying staff.
• The right to disconnect applies to all employers in Australia as of 26 August 2025. Healthcare's informal culture of texting staff about shift changes, calling about patient queries, and expecting after-hours responses now carries compliance risk if employees exercise their right to refuse.
• Paid parental leave reached 26 weeks for births and adoptions from 1 July 2025. The scheme is now fully government-funded but employer obligations around continuity, super on PPL, and interaction with enterprise agreements require active management.

Employment law changes accumulate quietly until one of them hits your payroll run and the exposure is visible. For healthcare practice managers in 2026, the cumulative weight of changes since 2022 - repriced awards, criminal wage theft, right to disconnect, fixed-term contract reforms, and the impending payday super transition - represents the most significant compliance shift since the Fair Work Act itself came into force. This guide works through each change in practical terms and explains what your practice needs to have sorted before 1 July 2026.

The 1 July 2026 changes at a glance

Payday Super: What Changes on 1 July 2026

The Current Rule and Why It Is Changing

Under the current super guarantee rules, employers must pay superannuation contributions within 28 days of the end of each quarter: by 28 October, 28 January, 28 April, and 28 July. For many practices, this means super is accrued on payroll but held in a practice account and paid in bulk four times a year.

From 1 July 2026, this changes. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025 received Royal Assent with the start date confirmed as 1 July 2026, and it requires employers to pay superannuation at the same frequency as wages, with contributions received by the employee's super fund within 7 business days of each payday. If your practice pays staff fortnightly, super must also be paid fortnightly. Super is now calculated on a new "qualifying earnings" base, which brings together ordinary time earnings, commissions, salary sacrifice contributions and other amounts. See the ATO's payday super guidance for the detailed rules.

The policy rationale is protecting workers from the compounding losses that occur when employers hold super for extended periods or - in insolvency situations - never pay it at all. The ATO estimates approximately $5 billion in super goes unpaid each year, with healthcare and hospitality among the highest-risk sectors.

What This Means for Practice Cash Flow

The shift from quarterly to payday super has two practical implications that practice managers need to plan for.

The first is cash flow timing. A practice with, say, ten staff and a combined wages bill of $150,000 per fortnight currently has roughly $18,000 (12% SG) sitting in the practice account for up to 13 weeks before it must be remitted. From July 2026, that $18,000 leaves the account with each pay run. Practices that rely on those held super funds for operating purposes - which is common in smaller practices - will need to adjust working capital accordingly.

The second is payroll system configuration. Most modern PMS and payroll systems (Xero, MYOB, KeyPay, Employment Hero) will need to be updated to process super at payroll frequency rather than quarterly. Your payroll provider or bookkeeper should be working on this now, not in June. The ATO has indicated it will not provide a transition grace period for practices that fail to reconfigure their systems in time.

The Penalties for Getting It Wrong

Under payday super, contributions not received by the fund within 7 business days of payday trigger a redesigned super guarantee charge: the outstanding super, interest compounded daily, and an administrative uplift that can scale with the employer's compliance history. Critically, the SG charge is not tax-deductible, whereas correct super payments are. Getting this wrong is more expensive than making the payments correctly.

The ATO has signalled that it will use Single Touch Payroll data to identify non-compliance in near real-time from July 2026. The quarterly "catch-up" window that previously gave some tolerance for late payment will no longer exist. Practices with historically inconsistent super payment records should complete a reconciliation now and address any outstanding liability before the new regime starts.

What to Do Now

Confirm your payroll software is roadmapped for payday super by your vendor. If you use a manual payroll process or an older system, begin the transition to STP Phase 2-compliant software immediately. Review your cash flow projections for August 2026 to account for the change in timing. And if your practice has outstanding super liabilities from previous quarters, address them through the ATO's Voluntary Disclosure Service before the new regime makes non-compliance more visible.

The Health Professionals and Support Services Award: Repriced Roles and Classification Drift

The 2026 Annual Wage Review: A 4.75% Increase from 1 July 2026

The most immediate change is the Fair Work Commission's 2026 Annual Wage Review, handed down on 2 June 2026. It increases the national minimum wage and all modern award minimum rates by 4.75%, applying from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026. Because the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 and the Nurses Award 2020 are modern awards, the uplift flows through to practice nurses, enrolled nurses, allied health assistants, medical receptionists, practice managers on award rates, and allied health professionals engaged on award pay points.

This increase is separate from, and stacks on top of, the gender undervaluation repricing described below. A practice that updated its rates after the August 2024 stage still needs to apply the 4.75% from the first full pay period in July 2026. The lowest award rate for ongoing employment must be at least $1,004.90 per week ($26.44 per hour) once the increase applies. Run the adjustment in your payroll system before your first July pay run, not after.

Background: The Gender Undervaluation Review

The Fair Work Commission conducted a gender undervaluation priority review of the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 following the 2022 Secure Jobs, Better Pay legislation. The review found that the Award had historically underpriced roles predominantly performed by women, including enrolled nurses, allied health assistants, practice nurses, dental assistants, and health information managers.

The Commission issued its determination in stages: Stage 1 increases from 1 August 2022, Stage 2 from 1 August 2023, and Stage 3 from 1 August 2024. The cumulative increases to minimum award rates across the covered classifications ranged from 15% to 28%, on top of the annual minimum wage increases that applied in the same years.

The result is that a practice which locked in wage rates in 2021 or early 2022 and has not actively reviewed Award classifications since then may be materially underpaying staff on the Award, even if it believes it is compliant.

Which Roles Are Covered

The Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 covers a broad range of healthcare roles beyond clinical staff. It applies to health information managers, hospital and medical records clerks, medical secretaries, patient services staff, and allied health assistants at practices that do not have a separate enterprise agreement covering those roles.

Allied health professionals - physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists, dietitians, podiatrists - are covered by the Award at professional pay points that were also subject to the review. If your practice employs allied health staff on an Award basis rather than individually negotiated contracts above the Award, the repriced minimum rates apply.

The Health Professionals and Support Services Award does not cover GPs (who are typically engaged as contractors or employees under different arrangements), but it does cover most practice administration, nursing, and allied health roles in practices without enterprise agreements.

Checking for Classification Drift

Classification drift occurs when a staff member's actual duties expand over time but their Award classification - and therefore their minimum pay rate - does not move with them. In healthcare, this is common: a medical receptionist hired at a base level takes on patient record management, MBS item checking, ePIP reporting, and practice software administration without a formal reclassification.

The process for checking compliance is to map each Award-covered staff member's actual duties against the current Award classification definitions and confirm that the pay rate is at or above the current minimum for that classification. The Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool can assist, but Award classification decisions should ideally be reviewed with an employment lawyer or HR advisor given the complexity of healthcare role boundaries.

If you identify underpayment, address it through back-pay before an employee raises a complaint. Since January 2025, that back-pay calculation is now a criminal law matter if the underpayment is intentional - not just a civil recovery exercise.

Wage Theft: A Criminal Offence Since January 2025

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act introduced criminal penalties for deliberate wage theft that took effect on 1 January 2025. This is already in force. If you have not reviewed your payroll practices since then, it is worth understanding what the criminal standard covers.

The criminal wage theft provisions apply where an employer intentionally engages in conduct that results in an employee not being paid an amount they are owed. This includes base wages, penalty rates, allowances, overtime, and superannuation. The maximum penalty for an individual is ten years imprisonment and a fine of $1.56 million. For a body corporate, the fine reaches $7.825 million or three times the underpayment amount, whichever is greater.

The word "intentionally" matters. Honest mistakes that result in underpayment remain a civil matter under the Fair Work Act. But a practice that systematically underpays casual staff on weekend penalty rates, fails to apply the correct classification to a group of employees, or withholds super contributions while treating them as operating cash is at risk of the criminal threshold if the pattern is deliberate.

Healthcare practices with high numbers of casual, part-time, and locum staff are structurally more exposed than single-employer businesses with stable full-time workforces, because the complexity of managing shift patterns, penalty rates, and Award classifications across variable rosters creates more opportunities for error - and more opportunities for a pattern of errors to be characterised as intentional.

A payroll audit by your bookkeeper or HR advisor, covering the past two years of payroll records against Award minimum rates, is the practical first step. If errors are found, the Fair Work Ombudsman's voluntary self-disclosure process is available and generally results in better outcomes than an inspector-initiated investigation.

The Right to Disconnect and Healthcare's On-Call Culture

The right to disconnect provisions in the Fair Work Act have applied to all Australian employers since 26 August 2025 (they applied to large employers from 26 August 2024). Under these provisions, employees have the right to refuse to monitor or respond to contact from their employer - or from a third party on their employer's behalf - outside their working hours, unless the refusal is unreasonable.

Healthcare has a distinctive relationship with after-hours contact. Practices routinely text or call staff about the next day's roster, contact employees about patient queries outside business hours, and operate informal escalation chains where practice managers are expected to be reachable by GPs or supervisors in the evening. None of these practices are automatically prohibited by the right to disconnect. But they are now subject to a reasonableness test, and employees who choose to disengage from them cannot be disciplined for doing so.

The Fair Work Commission considers a refusal unreasonable where: the contact is urgent, the employee's role involves managing emergencies or safety situations, the employee is compensated (including through additional pay or flexibility) for being available, and the impact on the employee's personal circumstances is minimal. In general practice settings, a practice nurse who receives an urgent patient safety query has stronger grounds for characterising a refusal as unreasonable than a receptionist who receives a roster change message at 9pm.

The practical response is to formalise what was previously informal. Identify which roles genuinely require after-hours availability, document that expectation in contracts or position descriptions, and ensure those roles are compensated appropriately for it - either through allowances or reflected in base pay. For roles that do not require after-hours availability, establish business hours communication protocols and use rostering systems that push updates during working hours where possible.

Casual Employment and Fixed-Term Contracts

Casual Conversion

Casual employees who have worked regularly and systematically for at least six months can request conversion to permanent employment under the National Employment Standards. The employer must respond within 21 days and can only refuse on specified grounds - that the role is genuinely casual, that there are not sufficient hours for a part-time or full-time position, or that the conversion would not suit the employee's position.

In healthcare, the genuinely casual ground is often invoked for staff whose hours genuinely vary based on patient volume. That assessment should be accurate and documented. Refusing conversion without valid grounds is a breach of the NES and now carries wage theft exposure if the employee could show they were being denied entitlements they would have accrued as a permanent employee.

Fixed-Term Contract Limits

Since 6 December 2023, fixed-term contracts cannot exceed two years (including any extensions or renewals), and employers cannot engage the same employee on consecutive fixed-term contracts for the same role if the total exceeds two years. Exceptions exist for specific project funding, apprenticeships, and roles that are genuinely fixed-term by nature.

Healthcare practices that engage practice nurses, allied health staff, or administrative staff on rolling fixed-term contracts - often as a cost management measure - should review whether those arrangements comply. A contract that has been rolled over two or three times for the same person in the same role may now be at or beyond the permitted limit. The remedy is conversion to ongoing employment, which carries its own costs and obligations but is preferable to an unfair dismissal claim when the practice declines to renew.

What Your Practice Should Be Doing Now

Ahead of 1 July 2026, the immediate priorities for practice managers are: confirm your payroll software vendor has a payday super implementation plan and a go-live date, build a cash flow model that accounts for super paying out with each pay run rather than quarterly, and complete any outstanding super reconciliations now.

On Award compliance, first apply the 4.75% Annual Wage Review increase from your first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Then review the pay rates of every Award-covered employee against current Health Professionals and Support Services Award minimums. If your last full classification review was before August 2023, you should assume rates need to be updated. Run the review with your bookkeeper and an employment lawyer if you have multiple Award-covered classifications.

On wage theft exposure, any practice that has not conducted a payroll audit since January 2025 should do so. Focus on penalty rates for weekend and public holiday shifts, the correct classification of casual and part-time staff, and super payment timing and amounts.

On right to disconnect, document which roles require after-hours contact, ensure those roles are compensated, and put business-hours communication protocols in place for roles that do not.

How ClinicComply Helps

Employment law compliance sits alongside clinical and regulatory compliance in most healthcare practices, and the pattern of non-compliance that tends to accumulate over time is the same: obligations are identified, action is planned, and then the busy day-to-day of running a practice means reviews never happen.

ClinicComply's compliance framework includes employment and HR obligations alongside RACGP accreditation, privacy, and Medicare requirements. You can assign employment compliance tasks - payroll audits, Award reviews, contract updates - to the relevant team member, set review dates, and track completion alongside the rest of your practice's compliance activity.

If your practice needs a structured way to stay across the 2026 employment law changes and reduce exposure to payroll audits, wage theft investigations, and Fair Work complaints, start your free trial at cliniccomply.com.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does payday super start in Australia?

Payday super takes effect from 1 July 2026 under the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025. From that date, super must be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of each payday, calculated on a new qualifying-earnings base. The current system, which allows super to be paid quarterly within 28 days of each quarter's end, will no longer apply. Late contributions trigger a redesigned super guarantee charge (the shortfall, interest compounded daily, and an administrative uplift) that is not tax-deductible.

Is wage theft a criminal offence for healthcare employers in Australia?

Yes. Since 1 January 2025, intentional wage theft is a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act. The maximum penalty for an individual is ten years imprisonment and a fine of $1.56 million. For a body corporate, the maximum fine is $7.825 million or three times the underpayment amount, whichever is greater. Underpaying superannuation is included. Honest payroll errors remain a civil matter, but a systematic or deliberate pattern of underpayment can meet the criminal threshold.

What are the right to disconnect rules for healthcare practices in Australia?

Since 26 August 2025, all Australian employers - including healthcare practices - must comply with the right to disconnect provisions in the Fair Work Act. Employees can refuse to monitor or respond to contact outside their working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable. Unreasonable factors include urgency, safety responsibilities, and whether the employee is compensated for availability. Practices should document which roles genuinely require after-hours contact and ensure those roles are appropriately compensated.

Has the Health Professionals and Support Services Award changed recently?

Yes, twice over. First, the Fair Work Commission's 2026 Annual Wage Review (decision 2 June 2026) raises all modern award minimum rates by 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Second, the earlier gender undervaluation review repriced specific roles under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 in stages across August 2022, 2023 and 2024, with cumulative increases of 15% to 28% for many classifications. The two are separate and the 4.75% applies on top. Practices that have not reviewed Award classifications and minimum rates since 2022 may be underpaying covered staff, including practice nurses, allied health assistants, medical secretaries, and health information managers.

Can I still use fixed-term employment contracts for healthcare staff in Australia?

Fixed-term contracts are permitted but now subject to limits. Since 6 December 2023, fixed-term contracts cannot exceed two years including extensions, and employers cannot use consecutive fixed-term contracts for the same employee in the same role beyond that limit. Exceptions apply for specific project funding, apprenticeships, and genuinely temporary roles. Healthcare practices that have been rolling over fixed-term contracts for administrative or nursing staff should review whether those arrangements comply with the current rules.

What is the superannuation guarantee rate in 2026?

The super guarantee rate is 12%. It reached its final legislated level of 12% on 1 July 2025 and stays at 12% for 2026-27, with no further increases scheduled (see the ATO super guarantee rates). The change on 1 July 2026 is not the rate, which is unchanged, but the payment timing: payday super requires super to be paid with each pay run and received by the fund within 7 business days, instead of quarterly. Reflect the payday-super timing in your payroll configuration before 1 July 2026.