## Governing law

For most employees of a national-system employer, long service leave is governed by the **law of the State or Territory in which the employee is employed**, not by a single Commonwealth long service leave standard.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) does **not** set one national long service leave entitlement in the National Employment Standards. Section 113 preserves the operation of State and Territory long service leave laws. Therefore, being covered by the Fair Work Act does not make an employee’s long service leave entitlement uniform across Australia.

The relevant jurisdiction will usually be the State or Territory in which the employee ordinarily works or is based. An employer’s head office, payroll location or incorporation location is not necessarily decisive. Employees who work across borders, transfer between jurisdictions, work remotely, or have mobile roles require a jurisdiction-specific analysis.

## There is no Australia-wide figure

There is **no single long service leave figure that applies the same way everywhere in Australia**. The ordinary statutory benchmarks differ, for example:

| Employee’s relevant location | Ordinary statutory benchmark |
|---|---|
| New South Wales | 2 months’ leave after 10 years’ service (commonly expressed as 8.6667 weeks) |
| Victoria | 1 week for each 60 weeks of continuous employment; leave may generally be taken after 7 years (about 6.0667 weeks at 7 years) |
| Queensland | 8.6667 weeks after 10 years’ continuous service |
| Western Australia | 8.6667 weeks after 10 years’ continuous service |
| South Australia | 13 weeks after 10 years’ service |
| Tasmania | 8.6667 weeks after 10 years’ continuous service |
| Australian Capital Territory | About 6.0667 weeks after 7 years’ service |
| Northern Territory | 13 weeks after 10 years’ continuous service |

Those figures are not interchangeable. For example, an employee in South Australia or the Northern Territory does not have the same ordinary 10-year entitlement as an employee in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia or Tasmania; Victoria and the ACT have a different seven-year framework.

## How the entitlement is worked out

For the applicable State or Territory law, determine:

1. **The employee’s relevant jurisdiction**  
   Apply that jurisdiction’s territorial-coverage rules, particularly where work is performed in more than one place.

2. **Continuous service**  
   Count service under that jurisdiction’s definition. The treatment of breaks, casual service, unpaid leave, parental leave, seasonal work, transfers and related employers can differ between jurisdictions.

3. **The entitlement threshold and accrual formula**  
   Apply the local statutory rate and qualifying period. Some jurisdictions provide a full entitlement after 7 years; others generally use 10 years.

4. **Whether a pro-rata entitlement arises on termination**  
   Each jurisdiction has different rules about pro-rata payment after a shorter period of service and may distinguish resignation, redundancy, dismissal, incapacity, death, domestic necessity or other circumstances.

5. **The statutory payment calculation**  
   The applicable Act determines how leave is paid, including the relevant ordinary pay rate and treatment of particular pay components.

An applicable enterprise agreement, award, pre-modern instrument or federal-specific statute should also be checked. It may provide an additional or different entitlement to the extent legally effective. Commonwealth employees and certain other federally regulated employees can be subject to separate Commonwealth long service leave arrangements.

Accordingly, the correct answer is not a single national entitlement: it depends principally on **where the employee is employed and the long service leave law of that State or Territory**.