Animal Care & Veterinary Award pay rates 2026/27

Pick a classification, an employment type and a day to see the rate that applies. The calculator uses the current Fair Work pay guide for MA000118 and applies the penalty structure in clause 21.

Rates below are the minimum ordinary hourly rates for adult employees working ordinary hours (Monday to Friday, 6.00am–9.00pm). Casual rates include the 25% casual loading.

MA000118 covers the veterinary surgery industry and the animal care industry — two quite different workplaces under one award. A boarding kennel, a grooming salon, an RSPCA inspectorate and a 24-hour emergency vet hospital are all inside it, and they roster very differently.

The Animal Care and Veterinary Services Award 2020 (MA000118) sets the minimum pay and conditions for employees in the veterinary surgery industry and the animal care industry across Australia. It replaced a patchwork of state instruments and is the award most private veterinary practices, animal shelters, boarding and grooming businesses operate under.\n\nIts defining feature is structural: it carries three separate classification streams — support and practice staff, veterinary surgeons, and animal care industry inspectors — each with its own ladder. Most award guides describe a single progression. Getting the stream wrong is the most consequential error you can make here, because it changes the whole rate.

Coverage is set by clause 4. The test is the industry of the employer, not the individual job title — a receptionist in a vet practice is covered by MA000118, while a receptionist in a medical centre is covered by the Health Professionals Award.

Clause 15 splits the award into three streams. An employee sits in exactly one, and the stream determines the rate before any level does.

Ordinary hours are an average of 38 per week (clause 13). Every other figure in the award is built off the minimum hourly rate for the employee’s stream and level.

Clause 13 sets ordinary hours at an average of 38 per week, with a maximum shift length of 10 hours, worked between 6.00am and 9.00pm Monday to Sunday.

That Monday-to-Sunday span is the detail that surprises people. A Sunday shift can be ordinary hours under this award — it attracts the Sunday penalty rate, but it is not automatically overtime. Practices that treat every Sunday hour as overtime overpay; practices that treat it as plain time underpay.

Clause 21 sets penalties for non-shiftworkers. The Saturday structure is unusual: nothing before 1.00pm, then two tiers after it.

Clause 21.2 covers employees engaged as shiftworkers, and their loadings do not come from the weekend table above:\n\n- a shift finishing after 8.00pm — 115%\n- a shift with the majority of hours between midnight and 8.00am — 130%\n- a shift commencing at or before 6.30am — 115%\n\nEmergency and 24-hour practices usually have both categories on the payroll at once, which is where misclassification costs money.

Clause 16 sets the named allowances. The on-call allowance is the one most often missed, because after-hours cover is so normal in this industry that practices forget it is separately payable.

Leave comes from the National Employment Standards rather than anything specific to this award: four weeks of paid annual leave per year for full-time employees (pro rata for part-time), 10 days of paid personal/carer’s leave, and the usual parental and compassionate leave entitlements. Casuals accrue none of it — that is what the 25% loading is for.\n\nWhere an employee qualifies as a shiftworker under the NES definition, annual leave is five weeks rather than four. See shift work for the two different definitions that apply.

Five steps, in order. Most underpayments in this industry come from step one being wrong, so the later steps compound the error.

Write down, for each person: the stream (support staff, veterinary surgeon, or inspector), the level, and the duties that justify it. This is the foundation — a wrong stream makes every downstream calculation wrong.

Decide who is engaged as a shiftworker under clause 21.2 and who is a non-shiftworker on weekend penalties. In a 24-hour practice you will have both, and they are paid from different tables.

Do not leave the 1.00pm boundary and the three-hour step-up to payroll to reconstruct. Build them into the roster so the cost is visible when you decide the shift.

On-call is paid per period, and periods are easy to forget once the week has passed. Capture them alongside the roster, not in a separate notebook.

Emergency work overruns. Pay from the timesheet, not the roster, or you will systematically underpay the shifts that ran long.

Saturday before 1.00pm is ordinary time under this award. Practices that apply a blanket weekend penalty overpay every Saturday morning consult.

Ordinary hours run Monday to Sunday. A rostered Sunday shift is penalty-rated at 200%, not overtime — unless it exceeds the ordinary-hours limits.

The 175% and 225% casual overtime rates are already loading-inclusive. Stacking another 25% is the most frequent arithmetic error here.

After-hours availability is so routine in veterinary work that the allowance gets absorbed into “that’s just the job”. It is separately payable, and it is per period.

A practice manager, a veterinary surgeon and a welfare inspector sit in three different ladders. Mapping a practice manager onto the veterinary surgeon scale — or the reverse — misprices the role from the first pay run.

• MA000118 covers both the veterinary surgery industry and the animal care industry, with three separate classification streams.\n- Ordinary hours are an average of 38 per week, max 10 hours per shift, between 6.00am and 9.00pm Monday to Sunday.\n- Saturday penalties start after 1.00pm, then step up again after three hours.\n- Shiftworkers are paid from clause 21.2, not the weekend table.\n- Casual loading is 25%, minimum engagement is 3 hours, and casual overtime rates are loading-inclusive.\n- The on-call allowance is separately payable and differs for veterinary surgeons.