Long service leave in Queensland (2026–27): 8.67 weeks after 10 years

Accrued weeks and payout on $1,500/week

A seven-year pro-rata, but only on the employer’s initiative

Queensland sits between the two models. The Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) gives the full 8.67 weeks at 10 years like most of the country, and opens a pro-rata payment at 7 years — three years later than New South Wales, but conditional in much the same way. The payment is available when the employer ends the employment for a reason other than the employee's conduct, when the employee dies, or when the employee resigns for illness, incapacity or domestic necessity. A Queensland employee made redundant at eight years is paid roughly 6.93 weeks; the same employee resigning at eight years for a better job is paid nothing. Long service leave is one of the few entitlements in Australia where the reason for leaving changes the amount, and Queensland is where that gap is widest in the seven-to-ten year window.

The gap between the two payout columns opens at 7 years and closes at 10. That three-year window is the Queensland-specific risk: an employee who resigns inside it loses the accrued balance entirely, while a redundancy inside it pays in full. Before 7 years nothing is payable on either basis.

What Queensland pays, and when

After 7 years: pro-rata on termination for death, illness, incapacity, domestic or pressing necessity, or dismissal other than for conduct. After 10 years: any termination. The Industrial Relations Act 2016 also deals with the case the older statutes handle badly: an employee dismissed for reasons connected with conduct loses the pro-rata but not a vested entitlement. Queensland employees should note the interaction with the redundancy itself — the 7-year long service leave threshold and the ten-year drop in NES redundancy pay from sixteen to twelve weeks are separate scales that happen to meet in the same part of a career, and a restructure timed between them is worth modelling both ways.

Continuous service across Queensland employers

Queensland counts service with a related body corporate as service with the one employer, and preserves service through a transfer of business where the employee is retained. Periods of authorised unpaid leave do not break continuity but generally do not count towards the total, with parental leave treated more generously. Seasonal and casual employees accrue long service leave provided the engagement is regular and systematic, which in Queensland's tourism and agriculture sectors makes the calculation of "continuous" service the substantive question rather than the arithmetic of 0.8667 weeks a year. Where breaks between engagements exceed the period the Act allows, service restarts, and an employee close to 7 years should establish the position before a break rather than after.

QLeave and portable entitlements

QLeave administers portable long service leave for the Queensland building and construction industry and, separately, for the contract cleaning and community services sectors. Registration is the employee's responsibility in practice even though the levy is the employer's, and unregistered service can be recognised retrospectively if it can be evidenced. Where QLeave covers the work, the entitlement is claimed from the scheme rather than from the employer, and it survives a redundancy that the statutory entitlement would not — a construction worker changing employers every eighteen months accrues towards the same balance throughout.

The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission

Unpaid long service leave in Queensland is pursued through the Office of Industrial Relations, which can inspect and recover, or before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. Because the entitlement sits in the Industrial Relations Act 2016 rather than in a standalone statute, the Commission's jurisdiction over it is direct and the process is the same one used for other state employment entitlements. Employers must keep records sufficient to establish continuous service, and an employee is entitled to a statement of their accrued balance.

The rules common to all eight jurisdictions — what counts as continuous service, the rate of pay the leave is paid at, and how leave is taken while employed — are set out in the long service leave guide. The final pay calculator adds the result to redundancy, notice and annual leave.