More than 180 resignations triggered the original allowance - now it has been rolled over again
The 10% retention allowance keeping psychiatry staff specialists in New South Wales public hospitals just got a second life.
The NSW Industrial Relations Commission has extended the temporary attraction and retention allowance for psychiatry staff specialists, making a new interim award effective from October 4, 2026. Both the Health Secretary and the doctors' union, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers' Federation (ASMOF), consented to the extension - which will stay in place until the Commission hands down its ruling in a much larger dispute covering all doctors employed by NSW Health.
That bigger case has been grinding along for months. The Full Bench sat through 32 days of hearings between November 26, 2025 and May 26, 2026, with final submissions wrapping up on June 26, 2026. The decision is still pending.
The backstory is worth knowing.
The original interim award kicked in on October 3, 2025, granting psychiatry staff specialists a temporary 10% allowance on top of their base salary, Special Allowance, and Level 1 Private Practice Allowance. It was always meant as a stopgap - a bridge to hold things together while the broader doctors' case played out.
What forced the Commission's hand was blunt. More than 180 psychiatry staff specialists had walked out of public hospitals across the state en masse. The Commission found that their departure was driving an acute shortage, one that was degrading both working conditions for remaining staff and the quality of mental health care across the NSW public system.
That 10% interim award was designed to sit on top of a separate 10% allowance the Health Secretary was already paying under a 2024 determination - an earlier retention measure aimed at persuading psychiatrists to delay or withdraw their resignations. Together, the two produced a combined 20% uplift.
With the original award's 12-month term about to expire on October 3, 2026, the Commission's Registrar wrote to both parties in August proposing to wind it up. ASMOF moved fast, filing an application on September 18, 2026, to keep the allowance going - either indefinitely or at least until the broader doctors' award was settled.
The Health Secretary did not fight the extension. In correspondence to the Commission, the Health Secretary's position was that continuing the allowance "maintains the existing industrial framework and may mitigate the potential for industrial disharmony that could otherwise arise in the interval between the expiry of the interim award and the Commission's decision in the substantive arbitration." The Health Secretary did, however, stop short of agreeing that the psychiatrist shortage still persists.
After a conciliation conference on September 28, 2026, the parties settled on a replacement interim award in almost identical terms to the original, with updated allowance rates. Those rates reflect interim pay increases agreed during the broader arbitration and publicly announced on February 5, 2026.
The Commission found special circumstances justified the new award on three grounds: it preserves stability while the substantive decision is pending, it matches the original intention of providing temporary relief, and it removes any legal doubt about whether an interim award can keep running beyond its 12-month term under New South Wales industrial relations law.
The replacement award carries its own 12-month term, but both parties accept it will be pulled once the Full Bench delivers its substantive ruling on the broader doctors' award.
Allowance rates under the new award range from $22,951 annually for postgraduate fellows to $37,607 for senior staff specialists, calculated on a full-time equivalent basis.
For HR leaders in healthcare and the public sector, the case shows how temporary pay measures can become semi-permanent fixtures when the substantive proceedings they were designed to bridge stretch well beyond their intended timeline.
The decision was made with the consent of both parties. The Full Bench's ruling on the broader doctors' award - which will set pay and conditions for all staff specialists employed by the Health Secretary - remains pending.
