Long service leave in South Australia (2026–27): 13.00 weeks after 10 years

Accrued weeks and payout on $1,500/week

Thirteen weeks at ten years — the most generous accrual in Australia

South Australia accrues long service leave at 1.3 weeks per year of service, where six of the eight jurisdictions use 0.8667. At 10 years that is 13 weeks of paid leave against 8.67 in New South Wales — a third more, on the same salary, for the same career. Only the Northern Territory matches it. On a $1,500 weekly rate the difference between a South Australian and a New South Welsh employee made redundant at ten years is about 6,500 dollars, paid as leave in the final pay. It is the clearest case on this site of a state border being worth real money on an otherwise identical employment.

Every figure in the accrued-weeks column is a third higher than the equivalent page for New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia or Tasmania — that is the 1.3 weeks per year at work. The payability columns follow the ordinary pattern: the redundancy column from 7 years, the resignation column from 10.

When South Australia pays out

After 7 years: pro-rata on termination for any reason except serious and wilful misconduct. After 10 years: 13 weeks. The generosity of the accrual makes the 7-year threshold correspondingly more important in South Australia than elsewhere: an employee who resigns at six years and eleven months for an ordinary reason forfeits 8.97 weeks of pay, the largest forfeiture available anywhere in the country at that length of service. Where a resignation is genuinely caused by illness, incapacity or domestic necessity, the reason should be recorded at the time — the same evidentiary point as in New South Wales, with more money resting on it.

Which state's law applies when you work across borders

The 1.3-week accrual makes the choice-of-law question worth asking in South Australia more often than elsewhere. Long service leave follows the employment, and the applicable Act is generally that of the state with which the employment has the closest connection — the place of work, the place from which the employee is directed, and the terms of the contract all bear on it, and the contract's own choice of law is not conclusive. An employee based in Adelaide working for a Melbourne employer on South Australian sites has a genuine argument for the South Australian Act, and at 1.3 weeks a year the argument is worth having before the employment ends rather than after.

The construction industry fund

Portable Long Service Leave South Australia — the Construction Industry Fund — administers the entitlement for building and construction workers, funded by an employer levy and accruing across employers. The scheme uses its own service rules and its own rate of accrual, which do not necessarily mirror the Long Service Leave Act 1987 (SA), so a worker moving between covered and uncovered work should treat the two periods separately. Registration matters: unregistered service can usually be recognised on evidence, but the fund's records are the starting point and reconstructing a decade of subcontract work after the fact is considerably harder than registering at the time.

SafeWork SA and recovery

SafeWork SA administers the Long Service Leave Act 1987 (SA) and handles complaints about unpaid long service leave, with recovery available through the South Australian Employment Tribunal or the Magistrates Court. Because the South Australian entitlement is larger than the national norm, underpayments are also larger, and employers operating across state lines sometimes apply the wrong state's rate to a South Australian employee. Checking the accrual against 1.3 weeks per year rather than the more common figure is the quickest way to spot it.

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.