Short answer: answer the salary expectations question with a range, make it a researched one, and quote it the way Australian employers do, which is base salary plus superannuation unless you say otherwise.
The thing worth knowing before any of that: if you are applying through SEEK, the ad already has a salary range attached to it. You just cannot see it. That changes what the question is actually asking.
Every SEEK ad carries a pay range, shown or not
When an employer posts a job on SEEK they are prompted for a currency and a pay range before they can proceed. According to SEEK's own advice to employers, that range is used to index the ad so candidates can search for jobs by their preferred salary, and it is not automatically shown on the ad. Displaying it takes two further steps: switching off a “Hide salary on your ad” control, and filling in a separate free-text field for what the ad actually says.
So “salary not disclosed” does not mean the employer has not thought about money. It means they entered a range and chose not to show it. It also means your own salary filter is doing more than you think: set a minimum, and you stop seeing ads whose hidden range sits below it, including ones where the real budget was negotiable.
The honest limit on that.The indexed range is what makes the ad appear in a filtered search. It is not a published budget, an approved band, or a promise, and an employer can enter a wide range precisely so the ad appears in more searches. Treat it as evidence the role has been priced, not as the price. Anyone telling you they can show you an employer's real budget is overselling what that field is.
How to research a salary range in Australia
Most advice on this question sends you straight to a recruitment firm's salary guide. Those are genuinely useful and every guide in this category names them: Hays, Robert Half, Michael Page and others all publish an annual Australian survey, broken down by role, city and seniority.
Use them, and use them knowing what they are. They are surveys of the clients and candidates of a business that earns a percentage of the salaries it places, published as marketing. That does not make the numbers wrong. It does mean they are one source, not the source.
The one almost nobody mentions is free, neutral and Australian. Jobs and Skills Australia's occupation profiles publish median weekly full-time earnings for each occupation, drawn from the ABS Employee Earnings and Hours survey, alongside employment size and how much of the occupation works part time. It is a government statistical series rather than an industry survey, and it is the right thing to sanity-check a recruiter's figure against.
It reports a weekly median, so multiply by 52 to compare it with an advertised annual salary, and remember a median sits in the middle of everyone doing that job nationally, including people far junior to you and far outside your city. It is a floor and a reality check, not your number.
If the role is covered by an award or an enterprise agreement, there is also a legal minimum for it, which the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes. Much corporate work is award-free and paid well above any minimum, so this matters more at the entry end, but it is worth two minutes to know whether a floor exists.
Base, package, and the superannuation trap
This is where Australian offers get genuinely confusing, and where two people can agree on a number and mean different amounts of money.
Employers must pay superannuation on top of ordinary earnings, at 12% since 1 July 2025, the final step of a legislated schedule. Some employers quote the base salary and add super to it. Others quote a “total package” or “TRP” with super already inside the number. The gap between those two readings of the same figure is more than a tenth of your pay.
So state which one you mean, every time, and ask which one they mean. “$X base plus super” is unambiguous. “$X” on its own is not, and the ambiguity is not usually resolved in your favour.
How to answer “what are your salary expectations”
The question turns up in three places, and they want different things.
- A free-text field on an application form.A range, with the basis named: “$X to $Y base plus superannuation, depending on the full scope of the role”. The width should be real but not evasive. A range so wide it answers nothing reads as a dodge.
- A required single number. Some forms will not accept a range or a sentence. Put a figure you would genuinely accept rather than an aspiration or a lowball, because this one can be filtered on. A number you would resent is worse than no application.
- A recruiter asking on the phone. Fine to ask what the range for the role is first, once, without making it a standoff. They often know and will tell you, because a mismatch wastes their time too. If they hold the line, give your researched range and move on.
Two things not to do. Do not put your current salary when you were asked for your expectation, because they are different questions and answering the wrong one anchors you to your old employer's pay decisions. And do not leave it blank on a form that requires it, hoping to raise it later. These fields sit alongside the other application questions that quietly do the eliminating, and an empty or absurd answer is the kind of thing a recruiter can filter on before anyone reads a word of your resume.
The honest caveat
There is no answer to this question that cannot cost you something. Name a number above their band and you may be screened out without a conversation. Name one below it and it becomes the ceiling for the negotiation and often for your first few years there. Refuse to answer and some employers move on to a candidate who did. Anyone selling a script that avoids all three is selling you certainty that does not exist.
What research changes is not the risk, it is what you are risking. A range you took from a government earnings series and an industry survey is one you can explain if asked, adjust knowingly if you decide to, and recognise as low when an offer lands under it. A number you guessed does none of that.
Once you have the number, the rest of the application still has to reach a human. The Australian resume format guide covers the conventions that differ here, and how long it takes to hear back explains what the silence after you send it usually means.