V2 — Independent Fact Verification: Labour Cost & On-Costs

Governance Standard v3.7 · class STANDARD · REQ-SYS-05, REQ-CON-01 Verifier run date: 2026-08-20

Default posture: every claim starts NOT CONFIRMED and is moved only on documented primary-source evidence.

C1 — FWC Annual Wage Review 2025-26: 4.75% increase, effective 1 July 2026, [2026] FWCFB 3500

VERDICT: PARTIALLY CONFIRMED

Evidence obtained (primary, fwc.gov.au):

• Fetched https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/resources/annual-wage-review-2026-decision-announcement.pdf (Fair Work Commission, Annual Wage Review 2026 decision announcement). Extracted text: "Modern award wage rates shall be increased by 4.75 per cent, effective from 1 July 2026." This confirms the 4.75% figure on a primary FWC document.

• A WebSearch of the fwc.gov.au domain surfaced the underlying full-bench decision file itself, titled on-site as "Fair Work Act 2009 s.285—Annual wage review Annual Wage Review 2026" at https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/sites/wage-reviews/2026/2026fwcfb3500.pdf. The file name 2026fwcfb3500 is consistent with FWC's citation-naming convention (cross-checked against a known prior example, 2022fwcfb3501.htm = decision [2022] FWCFB 3501), which supports — but does not, on its own, prove — that the citation is [2026] FWCFB 3500.

What is NOT confirmed:

• The decision PDF and the decisionssigned/html mirror of it were both blocked by robots.txt when fetched directly, so the exact citation string, and the exact statutory "first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026" wording, could not be read verbatim from the operative decision text itself. The announcement PDF I could read says "effective from 1 July 2026," not the "first full pay period on or after" phrasing in the claim — these may be materially different (award increases conventionally take effect from the first full pay period on or after the date, but I have not verified that phrasing appears in this decision).

What would change the verdict to CONFIRMED: successful fetch of 2026fwcfb3500.pdf or its HTML mirror (currently robots-blocked to this tool), showing the citation line "[2026] FWCFB 3500" and the exact operative-date clause.

C2 — SCHADS MA000100 SACS Level 2 casual $45.28, Level 3 casual $50.61, from 1 July 2026; classification stream

VERDICT: PARTIALLY CONFIRMED (rates) / PARTIALLY CONFIRMED (classification stream)

Rates

• Primary source located: Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide document, found via search with metadata "Award Code: MA000100 Effective: 01/07/2026 Published: 24/06/2026" at https://portal.fairwork.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/872/social-community-home-care-and-disability-services-industry-award-ma000100-pay-guide.pdf.aspx. This is a genuine primary FWO document reference (confirms an MA000100 pay guide effective 1 July 2026 exists), but attempting to fetch it redirected to https://calculate.fairwork.gov.au/payguides/fairwork/ma000100/pdf, which itself returned only the Pay and Conditions Tool (PACT) homepage — no PDF text was retrievable by this tool (JS-rendered / dynamically generated document).

• Secondary corroboration obtained from https://fairworkmate.com.au/tools/pay-rates/schads (a payroll calculator site, "last verified 19 July 2026," citing MA000100): Level 2 base $36.22/hr, casual $45.28/hr; Level 3 base $40.49/hr, casual $50.61/hr. This numerically matches the claim exactly. However, per method rules this is a LOCATING source only, not a primary confirmation.

• Casual loading: fairworkmate's own figures are consistent with a 25% loading ($36.22 × 1.25 = $45.275 ≈ $45.28; $40.49 × 1.25 = $50.6125 ≈ $50.61), which is arithmetically self-consistent.

What would change the verdict to CONFIRMED: a readable copy of the actual FWO/FWC pay guide PDF or awardviewer.fwc.gov.au page (both attempted, both failed — see failed-URL log).

Classification stream

Fetched https://www.fairwork.gov.au/find-help-for/disability-support-and-aged-care-services/understanding-schads/working-in-the-schads-sector (Fair Work Ombudsman, primary). Extracted text states the Social and Community Services stream covers work "providing personal care (including therapeutic care), and domestic and lifestyle support to a person with a disability. This can be in a community or residential setting." This directly supports a community-based disability support/personal-care worker sitting in the Social and Community Services (SACS) employee stream, consistent with the claim.

However, the same page states classification levels/streams are set out in "Schedules B, C, D and E of the award" without identifying which specific schedule or clause governs the SACS-vs-Home-Care-vs-Disability-Services boundary for this role. I could not pin down the specific clause number (the prior pass's gap remains partly unresolved) because ma000100.pdf (fwc.gov.au) and library.fairwork.gov.au were both inaccessible (robots-blocked / 404 respectively — see failed URLs). Based on general SCHADS structure, Schedule B (Social and Community Services Employees) is the applicable schedule, but this is NOT CONFIRMED against the award text itself.

What would change the verdict to CONFIRMED: direct read of MA000100 Schedule B (or equivalent) clause text.

C3 — Casual weekend/penalty rates and sleepover allowance

VERDICT: NOT CONFIRMED

No primary source (fairwork.gov.au pay guide, fwc.gov.au award text, or awardviewer) could be read (all blocked — robots.txt, 404, DNS failure, or JS-rendered content; see failed-URL log).

Secondary source (fairworkmate.com.au/tools/pay-rates/schads) returned figures, but they are internally inconsistent and could not be reconciled by simple arithmetic against the same source's own base rate, which is itself a red flag rather than a confirmation:

• Claimed: Saturday $41.33/hr described as "1.5x base" — but $36.22 × 1.5 = $54.33, not $41.33. The two numbers do not reconcile.

• Sunday $55.10/hr "2x base" — $36.22 × 2 = $72.44, also does not reconcile.

• Public holiday $68.88/hr "2.5x base" — $36.22 × 2.5 = $90.55, also does not reconcile.

• Afternoon/night shift loadings ($30.99, $31.68) and their stated multipliers (1.125x, 1.15x) are likewise not arithmetically consistent with the $36.22 base or the $45.28 casual rate.

• Sleepover allowance: not found at all — the secondary source explicitly did not provide one.

Given these internal inconsistencies, I am not carrying these numbers into the on-cost table as even partially confirmed. This is a genuine gap: the claim that weekend penalties were "extrapolated, not sourced" is confirmed as a valid concern — I was unable to source real, arithmetically-consistent SCHADS casual penalty rates or the sleepover allowance from any source, primary or secondary, within this pass.

What would change the verdict: a readable MA000100 pay guide PDF or awardviewer clause page showing clause numbers for Saturday/Sunday/public holiday penalties (typically clause 25, "Penalty rates," and clause 26/27 area for shift allowances in past MA000100 versions — clause numbers NOT verified this pass) and the sleepover allowance (historically clause 25.8 area in MA000100 — NOT verified this pass).

C4 — Superannuation guarantee 12.00% for FY2026-27

VERDICT: CONFIRMED

Fetched https://www.ato.gov.au/tax-rates-and-codes/key-superannuation-rates-and-thresholds/super-guarantee (Australian Taxation Office, primary). Table row quoted verbatim: "1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027 | 12.00." This directly confirms the claim.

Publisher: Australian Taxation Office. Source date: current ATO published rate table (accessed 2026-08-20).

What would change the verdict: nothing further needed — primary regulator source, unambiguous, current.

C5 — Fully-loaded labour cost: completeness of on-costs, Victorian on-cost stack

VERDICT: REFUTED (the claim that super + casual loading alone = "fully loaded" cost)

The $50.71/hr figure (base $36.22 + 25% casual loading = $45.28, ×1.12 for super = $50.71) is arithmetically correct as far as it goes, but it is not a fully-loaded Victorian employer cost. At minimum, Victorian employers of casual support workers also bear:

1. WorkSafe Victoria WorkCover premium — confirmed via primary source.

1. Portable long service leave levy (community services) — confirmed via primary source, and confirmed applicable to NDIS-funded disability support work.

1. Payroll tax — threshold-dependent; NOT CONFIRMED via primary source this pass (SRO pages inaccessible), but near-certainly not payable by a 5–15-casual-worker NDIS provider given typical scale (see table).

1. Leave loading — not applicable to casuals (casuals do not accrue annual leave, so no leave loading on-cost applies to a casual employee's own hours; this is a genuine "N/A," not a gap).

Details below, per component, with sources.

CORRECTED ON-COST TABLE

Payroll-tax threshold reality check (directional only, not a confirmed figure): using the secondary-sourced ~$1M threshold, a provider running 5–15 casual support workers at typical part-time casual hours (e.g., 15–25 hrs/week each) and a ~$45–51/hr casual rate would generate roughly $350,000–$1,000,000 in annual Victorian taxable wages — i.e., it would sit at or below, not clearly above, the threshold, and would very plausibly not be a payroll-tax payer at that scale, though a provider running the same headcount at closer to full-time-equivalent hours could cross it. This is an estimate, not a confirmed determination, because the threshold figure itself is NOT CONFIRMED against a primary SRO source this pass. It is excluded from the per-hour cost calculation below on that basis, and flagged as a scale-dependent risk rather than a fixed on-cost.

CORRECTED FULLY-LOADED HOURLY COST

Base figures used (Level 2 SACS casual — see C2 for confidence level: PARTIALLY CONFIRMED, not CONFIRMED):

• Base rate: $36.22/hr

• Casual loaded ordinary rate: $45.28/hr (= $36.22 × 1.25)

Weekday (ordinary hours)

This is $1.57/hr higher than the originally claimed $50.71/hr (base+loading+super only) — a ~3.1% understatement of true cost from omitting WorkCover and portable LSL alone, before payroll tax is even considered.

Weekend (Saturday/Sunday/public holiday)

NOT CALCULATED — NOT CONFIRMED. Per C3, no arithmetically-consistent, sourced casual weekend penalty rate could be obtained from any source (primary or secondary) this pass. Presenting a weekend figure built on the unreconciled fairworkmate numbers would itself be an unsourced extrapolation, which the charter prohibits. Action required before this model is used for weekend-heavy rostering: obtain the actual MA000100 pay guide PDF (readable copy) and re-run this calculation with confirmed Saturday/Sunday/public holiday/sleepover figures.

Margin against NDIS price limit ($73.58/hr)

The corrected margin is $1.57/hr lower than claimed — an erosion of about 6.9% of the previously claimed margin — from adding just two on-costs (WorkCover average + portable LSL) that the prior pass omitted entirely. This does not yet include: (a) any industry-specific WorkCover loading above the 1.8% state average, (b) payroll tax exposure if the provider scales past the ~$1M threshold, or (c) any correct (currently unobtainable) weekend/public-holiday/sleepover premium — all of which would further reduce margin on weekend-heavy rosters, which are typical in disability support.

URLS ATTEMPTED AND FAILED

EXIT GATE CHECK

• File exists at /home/claude/ndis/02_Work/scratch/V2_wage_verification.md. ✔

• All five claims (C1–C5) carry an explicit verdict with either evidence or a documented failed-URL trail. ✔

• On-cost table has no empty cells (N/A and NOT CONFIRMED are explicit, not blank). ✔

• Corrected margin figure stated with full arithmetic ($73.58 − $52.28 = $21.30/hr, 28.9%). ✔