According to the federal government’s new aged care workforce compact, 350,000 workers would receive supplementary payments from a $1.2 billion package.

Aged care providers have raised doubts about the impact of the spend which will be redirected from other parts of the aged-care budget.

Catholic Health Australia chief executive Martin Laverty doesn’t believe all workers would receive a pay rise, because not all providers can afford to sign up to the compact.

"There's going to be a gap between the rhetoric and reality for many aged-care staff who find they miss out because their particular aged-care provider is not able to fund these new targets," said Mr Laverty.

Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) agreed and said the compact would be a "non-event", unable to achieve the government's stated goal of boosting the aged-care workforce.

"Currently we've got 350,000-odd workers in aged care - we need to triple that out to 800,000 or 900,000," said LASA chief Patrick Reid (pictured), adding that the government’s plan was ‘just dressing up wages’.