Parental leave is for employees who have or will have responsibility for the care of a child.

See Parental leave and responsibility for the care of the child for more information.

To access parental leave, employees including regular casual employees, need to:

• have at least 12 months of continuous service with their employer, or
• will have at least 12 months of continuous service with their employer when the parental leave starts.

Regular casuals are casuals who have been employed on a regular and systematic basis for at least 12 months and have a reasonable expectation that they’d continue regularly working for their employer on that basis.

For more information see Casual employees.

The employee's continuous service is calculated up to the expected date of birth for:

• birth related leave starting before the birth of the child
• unpaid special parental leave.

For other types of unpaid parental leave, continuous service is calculated up to the date the leave starts.

The rules about continuous service apply in the same way to employees taking:

• continuous unpaid parental leave
• flexible unpaid parental leave.

See Entitlements while pregnant and Parental leave for more information.

Leave, continuous service and qualifying for parental leave

Service refers to the total amount of time that an employee has worked for their employer.

Continuous service is an unbroken period of service and can include periods of leave.

Paid leave

All paid leave counts towards continuous service. This includes paid sick leave and paid annual leave.

See Taking annual leave and Paid sick and carer's leave for more information on accessing these leave types.

Unpaid leave

Only unpaid leave authorised by the employer counts towards continuous service for the purposes of accessing parental leave.

If the unpaid leave isn’t authorised by the employer, such as a period of industrial action, the period of leave won't count towards continuous service when working out if an employee is eligible for parental leave.

While unapproved absences won’t count towards an employee’s continuous service, they also won’t break an employee’s period of continuous service.

See Unpaid leave for more information.

Parental leave

Unpaid parental leave is treated in the same way as other unpaid leave when counting continuous service.

Service and continuous service are counted in different ways for different entitlements.

Service as a casual employee

If a casual has converted to part-time or full-time employment under the National Employment Standards, the time they worked as a regular casual still counts as part of their continuous service for parental leave.

Periods worked as a casual that weren’t regular aren’t counted as part of continuous service.

See Becoming a permanent employee for more information.

Taking parental leave

Employees can take up to 12 months unpaid parental leave for:

• the birth of a child of the employee or the employee's spouse or de facto partner
• adoption of a child under 16 years of age.

The 12 months of unpaid parental leave must be taken within the first 24 months from when the child is born or adopted.

Parental leave changes from 1 July 2023

Before 1 July 2023, if an employee wanted to take parental leave and they were part of an employee couple, at least one member of the employee couple had to start their parental leave no later than the date of birth or adoption of the child.

After 1 July 2023 parental leave doesn’t have to start from the date a child is born or adopted. Instead, parents can access unpaid parental leave later than the date of birth or adoption.

This can also be after a period of approved leave by agreement with the employer.