Pay, conditions, and local market salary rate
All employment must comply with the Fair Work Ombudsman’s National Employment Standards.
- Pay and conditions should be no less than those of local Australian permanent residents and citizens working in the role.
- Pay must reflect local current market salary for the role.
This can be demonstrated by reference to the relevant enterprise agreement or industrial award, including the applicable salary level.
If no enterprise agreement or industrial award exists, an applicant should provide job advertisements from the past six months for similar positions, in the same region, from websites such as Seek, Indeed, CareerOne, along with either:
- Salary information from Hays Guides
- Information from Jobs and Skills Australia’s Jobs and Skills Atlas
- Salary survey data from Hays Guides or SmartMatch
The higher salary from either the submitted job ads or the salary survey/market insights will be relied upon to determine the applicable market rate.
What should you be include in total pay
Salary claims must be consistent with the amounts shown in an applicant’s employment contract, payslips, and salary deposits.
Salary claims include:
- base wages
- legal leave entitlements
- amounts deducted in a salary packaging arrangement.
Salary claims do not include:
- mandatory employer superannuation contributions
- allowances
- bonuses (including sign-on bonus)
- overtime
- commissions
- penalties for weekends, public holidays or work outside regular hours
- scholarships
- reimbursements.
Part-time work
Income cannot be combined from multiple part-time jobs. The payrate claimed should be from the highest paying job.
Casual employment
Casual employees use the base hourly rate before casual loading. This is the hourly rate before the 25 per cent casual loading is applied.
Claiming pay and salary priority attributes as an employee
To claim priority attributes related to pay or salary, an applicant is required to provide supporting evidence when lodging their application.
- Pay or salary can only be claimed from eligible employment.
- Pay and salary claims will not be accepted where the employment falls within the excluded employment categories, or the employment is under 20 hours per week (or nine hours per week during study periods).
- Supporting evidence must demonstrate the amount claimed for a minimum of the last three months.
- Your nomination application may be declined if you claim a higher amount than your actual earnings.