For a list of allowances including their current dollar amounts, see the Building and Construction General On-Site Award [MA000020] Pay Guide on our pay guides page: Pay guides - Fair Work Ombudsman.

Use our Pay Calculator to find out the amount of an allowance in a pay rate.

Tip

Allowances in building and construction is a useful place to start for general information on allowances including information on accommodation and meals while living away.

Living away from home on distant work applies when the worksite is too far for the employee to return home each day.

Travelling time is calculated between:

• the central or regional rail, bus or air terminal nearest to the employee’s home
• the distant worksite.

Forward and return journey home

Employees living away from home on distant work are paid for both the journey to the distant job and the return journey home.

Employees are paid:

• the cost of a fare on the most appropriate form of public transport to the job, if the employer doesn’t provide transport
• the time spent travelling for up to 8 hours per day for each day of travel
• a per meal allowance for any meals while travelling.

Daily hire employees get an additional daily allowance to cover the cost of transporting their tools.

Employees getting the living away from home distant work pay don’t get the usual travelling time entitlements. These include:

• fares and travel pattern allowance
• distant work payment

Example: Living away from home – distant work

Belinda Jane is a carpenter working for a general construction business. She’s a full-time weekly hire employee.

She’s sent to work at a remote cattle station doing building work on a historic homestead. She’ll be there for 5 days and live on-site during the job. Accommodation and meals are provided.

There’s no public transport available to the job. Belinda Jane and two colleagues are given a work truck to travel there.

The trip takes 7.5 hours of driving each direction. All travel is completed within the spread of hours between 7am and 6pm.

For the travel, Belinda Jane is paid:

• the meal allowance for lunch
• her ordinary rate of pay for 7.5 hours travel time to the job on the first day and back from the job on her last day.

Travel from off-site accommodation

An employee may get the fares and travel pattern allowance to travel between their accommodation and the job site if:

• they aren’t living on-site, or
• they aren’t provided with transport.

The fares and travel pattern allowance is paid each day the employee travels to the construction site.

Example: travelling to job-site while living away from home

Brad is a civil construction employee.

He’s asked to work on highway repairs. The site is 7 hours’ drive away from home.

Brad uses his own car to drive to the worksite. He gets the living away from home distant travel entitlement for his journey to and from home to the distant job. He won’t get the fares and travel pattern allowance for these trips.

Brad lives away from home while working on this job. He gets free accommodation, but it’s located off-site. It takes him 10 minutes to travel from his accommodation to the work site each day.

Brad gets the fares and travel pattern allowance each day he travels from his accommodation to the construction site.