NT Nurse & Midwife Pay Rates 2026 — NT Public Sector Nursing Pay Scales

NT nurse pay rates 2026 at a glance

Base rates in force from 19 August 2025 (first full pay period on or after 9 August 2025) under the Northern Territory Public Sector Nurses and Midwives' 2022–2026 Enterprise Agreement; the next scheduled change is none in force — the agreement passed its nominal expiry on 9 August 2026; an offer of 3% a year from 13 August 2026 depends on a successful ballot and approval of a new agreement. Tap a classification for every pay point, or a salary to see it after tax.

What a registered nurse earns in Northern Territory

On the Nurse 2 (Registered Nurse / Registered Midwife) scale, the bottom step (2.1) pays $80,665 a year and the top step (2.8) pays $107,800. NT Health publishes those annual figures directly. Base pay is only part of the picture: nursing is a rostered, round-the-clock job, and shift and weekend loadings routinely add a double-digit percentage on top.

Those buttons go to the nearest published take-home page, which is rounded to the closest $5,000. For your exact figure — including HECS-HELP, salary packaging and extra super — use the take-home pay calculator.

What makes NT different

• Nurse 2 (registered nurse or midwife) starts at $80,665 and reaches $107,800 at pay point 2.8, from 19 August 2025.
• Enrolled nurses (Nurse 1) are paid $71,359 to $81,479, and Nurse 1 Advanced Practice up to $83,561.
• Nurse practitioners sit in Nurse 6, paid $149,765 to $157,329.
• The agreement's nominal expiry was 9 August 2026. The government's 6 August 2026 offer proposes 3% a year from 13 August 2026 if a new agreement is voted up.
• The NT pays nurses and midwives on one combined scale rather than separate ladders.

NT Health nursing and midwifery pay scales

Each table below uses the classification names the instrument itself prints. Classifications are not the same between states and this page does not translate them: a Queensland Nurse Grade 5 and a Tasmanian Registered Nurse Grade 3 are both entry registered nurse roles, but they are not the same classification and they are not on the same money.

Which agreement covers you

Nurses Award 2020 vs the NT agreement

The Nurses Award 2020 (MA000034) is a federal minimum wage instrument, not a pay scale for public hospital staff. It sets the floor below which no nurse in Australia may lawfully be paid. Almost nobody in Northern Territory's public health system is actually paid on it, because the instrument above pays well over the floor. The award is what governs pay in private hospitals, GP and specialist clinics, aged care and agency work where no enterprise agreement applies.

Award rates above are the minimum rates operative from 1 July 2026 (PR799315) for employees other than aged care employees. The award now carries a second, higher set of minimum rates for aged care nurses, operative from 1 August 2026 (PR812118) — an aged care registered nurse level 1 in their first year is on $1,571.60 a week, well above the $1,219.50 general rate. If someone quotes “the Nurses Award rate” without saying which of the two streams they mean, the number is unusable.

Full award pay-guide style tables for other awards are on the award pay rates page.

Shift penalties and weekend loadings in Northern Territory

Nursing pay is penalty-driven. A nurse on a rotating roster with regular nights and weekends can be paid materially more than the base rate on this page, and the difference does not show up in any “average nurse salary” figure. Check these against your payslip line by line.

To model a specific roster — a fortnight of nights, a weekend block, an overtime call-back — use the overtime pay calculator, and read the overtime and penalty rates guide for how loadings interact with ordinary hours.

Moving up a step, and what each step is worth

Two different things move nursing pay. Within one classification you move through increments — usually annually for full-time staff, and by accumulated hours for part-time and casual staff. Between classifications you move by being appointed to a position, not by time served: nobody becomes a clinical nurse consultant or a unit manager by waiting.

The increments are worth checking. On the NT registered nurse scale, the gap between consecutive steps is a real pay rise every year that you should be able to see land on a specific pay period. If your increment date has passed and the rate has not moved, that is a payroll question worth asking. Use the pay rise calculator to see what a step is worth after tax, and the back pay calculator if the increment was applied late.

Salary packaging, and why it changes your take-home but not your grade

Public hospital employees can salary package living expenses out of pre-tax income under the public hospital fringe benefits tax exemption. On a nursing salary that is worth several thousand dollars a year in extra take-home pay, and it is one of the largest single differences between public and private sector nursing pay once you look past the base rate.

What it does not do is change your classification, your increment or your gross pay. It changes how much of your gross pay is taxed. That distinction matters when you are comparing a public hospital offer against a private one, and when you are checking whether your payslip has the packaging deduction applied correctly. The mechanics, caps and eligibility are in the salary packaging guide; the salary sacrifice calculator shows the effect on a specific salary, and the state pay calculator nt shows the take-home figure on any NT salary before packaging.

What this page does not show

This is a money page, so it says what it left out rather than filling gaps with estimates.

Published, but not reproduced here

These rows exist in the source and can be read at the link in the sources below:

• RUSON/RUSOM (registered undergraduate student of nursing/midwifery) rates in Tables 2 and 3.

Not published anywhere we could verify

Nothing below appears on this page in any form. No figure here has been estimated, interpolated or carried across from another state:

• Shift, weekend and public holiday penalty rates, and the income-related allowances in Table 4 — not transcribed for this page.
• An hourly rate for any NT classification — the agreement publishes annual salaries only.
• Rates under a replacement agreement — the Commissioner's 6 August 2026 offer (3% a year, first increase from 13 August 2026, and a restructured Nurse 2 scale) depends on a ballot and Fair Work Commission approval, and no new agreement was recorded as approved when this page was checked on 24 September 2026.
• Bulletin 4 lists the "current" Nurse 2.1 rate as $81,479, while the agreement's Table 1 and the OCPE rates page both show $80,665. We publish $80,665; check your payslip if you are at Nurse 2.1.

Nurse pay in the other states

Every state runs its own classification structure and its own agreement. Comparing the raw numbers across states is misleading unless you also compare the classifications and the penalty structures.

Frequently asked questions