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From the Editor
Hey!
It has been longer than two weeks. The break is over, and this one is worth the wait.
Australia is competing for your skills harder than any other English-speaking country right now. Relocation packages up to $20,000. Visa sponsorship. A shortage that is structural, not seasonal.
This issue: the salary data by state, the registration pathway step by step, including the part most guides leave out and the part that will decide your timeline, and six questions to ask before you sign anything.
Seven minutes. Let's go.
— Dr Yassir A Shuaib
Career Intel
Why Australia Right Now
New graduates earn AUD $65,000–$80,000. Experienced vets earn $80,000–$130,000. Referral specialists go past $150,000. The shortage driving those numbers is national, not just rural.
State | Mid-career base | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Queensland | $80k–$130k | Strongest rural and mixed-practice demand |
New South Wales | $85k–$140k | Sydney premium, offset it against Sydney rents |
Victoria | $80k–$130k | Melbourne referral centres pay above range |
South Australia | $80k–$150k | Top of range is senior associate, DOE |
Western Australia | $85k–$150k | Perth specialist roles advertised higher |
⚠️ READ THESE AS BASE SALARY
Superannuation is paid on top, 12% since July 2025, with no further rises legislated. Ads quote it inconsistently:
"$100,000 + super" → $112,000 total.
"$100,000 package" → $89,286 base.
Same headline. $12,000 apart. Always ask which one you're being offered.
The previous issue put typical relocation packages at $5,000–10,000. VetPartners, below, sits at the top of that market, not the middle.
Check your state's live salary data here → SEEK, from actual job ads
Read the AVA Workforce Survey here → free PDF, remuneration section
The Vet Service Salary Report 2026 → recruiter-published; cross-check before you negotiate
The Power Move
Seven Questions Before You Sign
Ask all seven in writing. Employers rarely volunteer the maximum.
What is the sign-on bonus?
What is the tenure bonus at 12 and 24 months?
What is the relocation package, and is there a clawback if I leave inside 12 or 24 months?
Is that a figure base or a package including super?
Is the salary guaranteed base or production-based?
What are the on-call and after-hours arrangements, and how are they paid?
What is the non-compete radius and duration, and is there a separate non-solicitation clause?
📋 KNOW YOUR FLOOR FIRST
Australian vets are covered by a modern award, the Animal Care and Veterinary Services Award (MA000118). It sets legal minimum rates, classifies veterinary surgeons across Levels 1A to 4, and has on-call provisions written specifically for vets. Rates update every 1 July.
Find your classification level before you negotiate. No recruiter will tell you it exists.
Read the award summary here → · Download the current pay guide →
⏳ WHY QUESTION 7 IS URGENT THIS YEAR
Australia plans to ban non-compete clauses from 2027 for anyone earning under the Fair Work high-income threshold, $183,100 in 2025–26, indexed each July. Almost every associate vet sits below that line.
But the ban is expected to apply only to contracts signed after the law commences. A non-compete you sign in 2026 may outlive it. Negotiate the clause now; do not sign it, assuming the reform will rescue you.
Non-solicitation clauses are not part of the ban, and employers are already being advised to lean on them harder instead.
Read the Treasury position here →
Migration Hack
How to Get Registered in Australia
The Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) is the only assessing authority approved by the Australian Government for Veterinarian, ANZSCO 234711. Veterinarian is on the Core Skills Occupation List, which keeps subclasses 189, 190, 491, 482, 186, and 494 open.
The sequence matters, and most guides get it wrong.
Step 1: Does your degree qualify? This decides your entire timeline. Graduates of AVBC-recognized schools go straight to registration. Everyone else must first pass the Australasian Veterinary Examination (AVE).
⚠️ IF YOUR DEGREE IS NOT ON THE LIST, READ THIS FIRST
The AVE is your real timeline, not the visa.
All 2026 Preliminary (MCQ) places were allocated by July 2025, and new eligibility applications were paused. The next MCQ sitting is 16 April 2027, with applications closing on 25 January 2027.
The final (clinical) exam runs in Queensland only, five days, typically in June and November. It must be attempted within three years of passing the MCQ and passed within five.
Fees: eligibility A$508 (valid three years) · MCQ A$3,460 · Final Clinical A$9,325 all by direct deposit, card surcharges on top.
Step 2: State registration. Registration is state by state, not national. Contact the board in your destination state early; full registration without conditions is required before AVBC can complete your skills assessment.
Step 3: English. IELTS Academic 7.0 in every band, OET Grade B, or PTE Academic 65, unless exempt. Your state board and your visa may set different thresholds; check all three.
Step 4: AVBC skills assessment. Transcripts, proof of registration, and English evidence.
Fee: from A$620 for overseas applicants paying by direct deposit. GST is added only if you are an Australian resident for tax purposes. Card surcharges apply on top of 1.7% domestic and 3.5% international and overseas direct deposits, adding A$15 in bank fees.
Allow up to five weeks. Your assessment stays valid for three years.
Step 5: Visa. 189, 190, and 491 are points-tested. 186 is employer-sponsored permanent. 482 Skills in Demand: The core skills stream is what most sponsored vets actually arrive on and what clinics mean when they say they'll sponsor you.
💰 THE NUMBER THAT DECIDES WHETHER A CLINIC CAN SPONSOR YOU
Employer-sponsored nominations must meet the Core Skills Income Threshold of A$79,423 from 1 July 2026, up from A$76,515. It excludes superannuation, bonuses, and non-cash benefits. It is a base salary floor.
Read that against the graduate range above. A clinic offering $70,000+ super cannot sponsor you; the nomination fails no matter what the market rate is. They must lift base pay past the threshold, or the move doesn't happen.
Thresholds are indexed every 1 July and differ by subclass. Confirm the current figure before anyone lodges
One more thing: partner work rights differ sharply between these subclasses. If you're moving with a spouse who intends to work, confirm their rights before choosing a route. This decides more relocations than salary does.
NOT IMMIGRATION ADVICE
Reporting on public official sources. Immigration assistance in Australia is regulated for your own case; use an agent registered with the Migration Agents Registration Authority (mara.gov.au) or an Australian legal practitioner. Verify everything with Home Affairs, the AVBC, and your state board. Rules, fees, and exam dates change without announcement.
Industry Power
Australia's Corporate Wave Arrived Late and Fast
Three groups now control a significant share of Australian veterinary practice. All three are privately owned.
VetPartners has 270+ practices across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore and 5,000+ staff. Acquired by BPEA EQT from National Veterinary Associates in January 2024, reported at around AUD 1.4 billion. EQT never disclosed the figure.
Greencross: TPG Capital, since 2019.
Apiam: the rural and livestock specialist, 80+ clinics. Taken private by Adamantem Capital and delisted from the ASX in February 2026.
Now follow the thread. EQT is also the largest shareholder in IVC Evidensia, the 2,600-clinic European group. The previous issue covered the fact that it was assembled by buying Evidensia in 2014 and IVC in December 2016, merging them in May 2017. So the same investor sits behind the largest group in Australia and the largest in Europe.
The UK consolidation took roughly fifteen years. Australia is running a recognisable version of the same playbook, about a decade behind.
What it means for you: groups competing for vets is exactly why the relocation packages and sign-on bonuses exist right now. The UK experience says production targets and tighter contracts follow. Both can be true, and the window where the first exists without the second is the window you are in.
Research Radar
44% of Regional Vacancies Sit Unfilled for Over a Year
The Australian Veterinary Association's seventh Veterinary Workforce Survey found 36.8% of veterinary vacancies nationally take 12 months or longer to fill. In regional areas that rise to 44%. The AVA describes the profession as being in its eighth consecutive year of workforce shortage.
What that changes: a regional practice advertising for a year is not choosing between candidates. It is waiting for one.
What it means for you: that is the strongest negotiating position available to an international vet in Australia right now, and it is strongest in exactly the places the relocation packages are aimed.
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
Read that 44% again. Nearly half of regional positions go unfilled for more than a year.
Now ask why. Some of it is genuinely distance. Some of it is on-call rosters, isolation, and single-vet practices where you are the after-hours service seven days a week. A job that has been open twelve months is telling you something, and the relocation package is what the market pays to stop you from asking what.
The opportunity is real. So is the reason it exists. Get the seven questions answered in writing the on-call one, especially before your visa is tied to an employer.
Opportunity of the Week
VetPartners International Recruitment Programme
Up to $20,000 relocation assistance, paid in your local currency, AUD or NZD. Visa coverage for you and your family, plus a dedicated visa agent. Roles in small animal, mixed practice, emergency, and specialist work.
Who: vets whose primary qualification is already recognized for Australian registration. If yours isn't, read the Migration Hack above first. The AVE queue, not the job market, is your timeline.
Deadline: rolling.
We named VetPartners in Industry Power as the region's largest PE-owned group. Both are true: it has the strongest international package on the market, and it is exactly the contract to read twice. No fee taken for this listing.
AI Tool of the Week
Vetology Published Its Own Accuracy Data. Read What That Does and Doesn't Mean.
Vetology runs AI radiograph screening for canine and feline thoracic, abdominal, and musculoskeletal imaging, alongside board-certified teleradiology that covers a wider range of species.
In March 2025, the ACVR and ECVDI published a joint position statement in JAVMA concluding that no commercially available veterinary imaging AI meets the required standards for transparency, validation, or safety. Vetology responded. Its public dashboard now reports eleven metrics for each of 89+ classifiers: sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, AUC, confidence intervals, and radiologist agreement rate among them, with 31 models revalidated against fresh consensus reads as recently as February 2026.
Here is the part to hold onto. The colleges asked for unbiased third-party evaluation and peer-reviewed publication. Vetology published its own figures. That is more disclosure than the category norm, and it is still self-reported. Vetology's own president puts it carefully: "As far as we can tell, nobody else is publishing it."
Use it as screening and triage with a vet in the loop, which the position statement asks for regardless of vendor.
Where to Look
Live search pages, not individual adverts. Australian vet roles turn over weekly, so a link to one listing would be dead before you clicked it. Filter for visa sponsorship and relocation support once you're on the page.
The professional body's own board careerconnect.ava.com.au
SEEK, the largest Australian board, 576 veterinary roles seek.com.au/veterinary-jobs
The Vet Service, built for international candidates, has 188 roles at thevetservice.com/jobcountry/australia/
Register once, get matched thevetservice.com/work-abroad/
Vet Record Jobs, Australia vetrecordjobs.com/jobs/australia/
Two of these belong to the recruiter behind the salary report above. We link them because they're built for overseas applicants; the AVA and SEEK boards carry more volume. No fees taken from anyone listed here.
One Number
A$84,640
The median student debt of a recent Australian veterinary graduate - more than three times Australia's average HECS debt of $26,494 and up from a median of $5,000 for those who graduated in the 1980s and 90s.
That is why the shortage exists and why it will not fix itself from the inside. Australia cannot graduate its way out of this. It has to recruit.
Verified across the AVA's media release, its advocacy page, Mirage News, and Vet Practice Magazine, four sources, none of them selling anything.
That means for every $1 you earn in year one, you owe $1.40 before your first shift.
The debt-to-income ratio for new vet graduates entering full-time employment in the US. Similar ratios exist across the UK, Australia, and Germany. You owe more than a full year's salary before your career has properly started.
You cannot outwork that ratio on a standard associate salary. You have to out-strategize it.
Reader Voice
Have a salary story, a career question, or something the profession will not say out loud? Reply to this email. Anonymity guaranteed, and the best replies run here in the next issue.
Last Word
Your salary is not a gift. It is a reflection of your leverage. Act like it.
See you next time.
— Yassir