Registered Nurse Salary: Sydney vs Melbourne

What NSW pays a registered nurse, by year

The Public Health System Nurses' and Midwives' (State) Award 2025 sets NSW public hospital nurse pay. It was remade after the NSW Industrial Relations Commission's Full Bench handed down a three-year wage decision in 2025: 16% over three years for registered nurses and midwives (10% in the first year, 3% in each of the following two), 18% over three years for enrolled nurses, and 28% over three years for assistants in nursing. The rates below are the first-year step of that decision, effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2025, as published by the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association (NSWNMA) in May 2026.

Registered Nurse/Midwife, 1st year: $1,521.10 a week ($40.03/hour). 2nd year: $1,603.60. 3rd year: $1,686.40. 4th year: $1,775.20. 5th year: $1,863.30. 6th year: $1,951.00. 7th year: $2,051.30. 8th year and thereafter: $2,135.50 a week ($56.20/hour). A Registered Nurse on the Pre-Registration classification (before full registration comes through) sits lower, at $1,311.40 a week.

Casual nurses are paid a 10% loading on top of the ordinary hourly rate. Penalty rates apply on top of the base for evening, night, weekend and public-holiday shifts — the award publishes these as fixed percentages (10%, 12.5%, 20%, 50%, 75% and 150% loadings depending on the shift), so two nurses on the same base classification can take home very different weekly totals depending on the roster they work.

What Victoria pays a registered nurse, by year

Victoria's public-sector nurses and midwives are covered by the Nurses and Midwives (Victorian Public Sector) (Single Interest Employers) Enterprise Agreement 2024–2028, approved by the Fair Work Commission and taking effect 15 November 2024. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation's Victorian Branch (ANMF Vic) publishes the agreement's wage tables directly. The figures below are the rate that applied from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2024 — a full year earlier than the NSW figures above, which matters for the comparison in the next section.

RN Grade 2, Year 1 (graduate year): $40.16 an hour. Year 2: $41.18. Year 3: $42.36. Year 4: $43.66. Year 5: $45.13. Year 6: $46.61. Year 7: $48.71. Year 8: $50.68 an hour. On a standard 38-hour week that's roughly $1,526 a week in year one and $1,926 in year eight — figures the agreement itself states in hourly terms, not weekly, because Victorian public-sector nursing rosters are built around the hourly rate.

The 2024–2028 agreement schedules further increases in each of the following years through to 2028, so a wage table pulled today would show a higher figure than the one quoted here — this page states the 1 July 2024 rate specifically because that is the figure this research could verify against the union's own published document, not because it is necessarily still current by the time you're reading it.

Why these two numbers aren't quite comparable — and what is

$1,521.10 (NSW, 1 July 2025) and roughly $1,526 (Victoria, 1 July 2024) look almost identical, but they were set twelve months apart by two separate industrial processes, and Victoria's agreement has had at least one more scheduled increase since its 1 July 2024 figure that this page has not been able to verify to a specific dollar amount from a primary source. Presenting them as a same-day snapshot would overstate how close they actually are.

What can be said honestly: both states pay their most junior registered nurses in the same broad band — low $1,500s a week as of each state's own most recently verified rate — and both states have negotiated multi-year wage growth into their current agreements rather than a single flat rate. Anyone comparing take-home pay between the two states should check each state's own union pay calculator for the rate current at the time they're actually applying, not rely on a figure printed on a webpage months or years earlier — including this one.

What the pay figures don't show: rent

The Australian Bureau of Statistics tracks new and renewed lease rents across the country using an administrative dataset covering more than 600,000 private rental properties. Its most recent published capital-city figures, for April 2025, show median weekly rent at $650 in Sydney against $520 in Melbourne — a $130-a-week gap, or roughly $6,760 a year, between two cities whose entry-level nursing pay is within a few dollars of each other.

That gap alone would turn Sydney's slightly higher headline rate into a real disadvantage in disposable terms, before accounting for anything else — transport, groceries, or the fact that capital-city rents have been rising faster than regional rents since 2021 (ABS: capital-city rent inflation reached 8.5% annually by March 2024, against 5.4% in regional areas). None of this tells you what you would personally pay for housing, since rent varies enormously by suburb and property type within any city — it tells you what the two cities' overall rental markets looked like at a specific, dated point.

The registration step neither city changes

Whichever state you work in, practising as a registered nurse in Australia requires registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia through AHPRA (the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency). This is a national scheme — a NSW registration and a Victorian registration are the same registration, and neither state issues its own separate nursing licence the way some trades require a state-specific building or electrical licence. What changes between states is which public health service employs you and what that service's own enterprise agreement or award pays, not whether you're allowed to practise.

Migratio's guide to the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council assessment process at /blog/anmac-nurse-assessment-guide and its overseas-qualified-nurse guide at /blog/how-to-move-to-australia-as-a-nurse cover the registration and skills-assessment steps in detail. This page is deliberately about pay and cost of living once you're through that process, not the process itself — Migratio doesn't hold the current AHPRA registration fee figure to a standard it can verify from this environment, so it isn't repeated here; check ahpra.gov.au directly for the current amount.

The occupation code and visa reality

Several nursing ANZSCO codes sit on Australia's Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List (MLTSSL) and the Skills in Demand 482 visa's Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL) — including Registered Nurse (Critical Care and Emergency), Registered Nurse (Aged Care), Registered Nurse (Medical) and several others, each assessed against its own specific ANZSCO definition by ANMAC. Migratio's occupation page for /occupations/254415-registered-nurse-critical-care-and-emergency lists which visas (186, 189, 190, 407, 482, 485, 491, 494) and which assessing body currently apply to that specific code — worth checking against the ANZSCO code that matches your actual clinical area, since "nurse" covers more than a dozen separate codes with slightly different list memberships.

Whether a particular applicant qualifies for any of those visas depends on individual circumstances this page cannot assess — that's a MARA-registered migration agent's job, not a pay comparison's.

What this page can't tell you

It can't tell you what you would actually be offered — individual health services negotiate above the award in some cases, and shift mix changes real take-home pay substantially. It can't tell you which city is "better" to move to, because that depends on family, specialty, visa pathway and dozens of things a wage table doesn't capture. And it can't tell you whether you're eligible for any particular visa — that assessment is what a MARA-registered migration agent does, and what a nursing skills assessment through ANMAC establishes on the qualifications side.

If you're weighing a move as a registered nurse and want to talk through the visa side specifically, Migratio can match you with a MARA-registered agent who works with nursing and healthcare cases.

Is Sydney or Melbourne pay higher for registered nurses?

As at each state's own most recently verified rate, they're close: NSW's first-year RN rate (from 1 July 2025) is $1,521.10 a week; Victoria's first-year rate (from 1 July 2024, with scheduled increases since) was about $1,526 a week. The dates differ by a year, so a same-day comparison isn't possible from what's publicly verifiable — check each state union's current pay calculator for the live figure.

Does rent wipe out the pay difference between Sydney and Melbourne?

ABS data for April 2025 puts median weekly rent at $650 in Sydney against $520 in Melbourne — a $130/week gap that's larger than any pay difference between the two cities' entry-level nurse rates. On the published figures, Melbourne's lower rent outweighs any Sydney pay edge for an equivalent nursing role.

Do I need a different nursing registration for each state?

No. AHPRA and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia run one national registration scheme. A registration obtained through that process lets you practise nursing anywhere in Australia — it isn't reissued per state the way some trade licences are.

What does a registered nurse actually get paid per hour in NSW vs Victoria?

NSW's award-published hourly rate for a first-year RN (1 July 2025) is $40.03. Victoria's enterprise-agreement rate for a first-year (graduate-year) RN (1 July 2024) was $40.16. Both rise with years of service — NSW to $56.20/hour at 8th year and beyond; Victoria to $50.68/hour at 8th year.

Are penalty rates the same in every state?

No — each state's award or agreement sets its own penalty-rate percentages for evening, night, weekend and public-holiday work, on top of the base classification rate. NSW's award publishes specific percentages (10% to 150% depending on the shift type); Victoria's agreement does the same under its own clause. Check the specific award for the state you're comparing.

Is nursing on Australia's skilled occupation list?

Several nursing ANZSCO codes are, including most Registered Nurse specialisations, which sit on the MLTSSL and the Skills in Demand 482 visa's CSOL. The exact code matters — check the specific code matching your clinical background against Migratio's occupation pages, since list membership and eligible visas vary by code.

Where can I check the current rate rather than the one on this page?

For NSW, the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association publishes an updated pay calculator PDF whenever rates change. For Victoria, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation's Victorian Branch does the same for its public-sector agreement. Both are the primary source this page used, and both update more often than any third-party salary site.