Not a standalone Act, and that matters
Every other state and territory on this site runs long service leave through its own dedicated Act. Queensland doesn’t: the entitlement is Division 9 of Chapter 2, Part 3 of the Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld), sitting alongside the rest of the state’s general employment standards. The practical effect is the same (a real entitlement, checked the same way), but if a search for “Queensland Long Service Leave Act” comes up empty, that’s why: there isn’t one.
The numbers, and the QLD-specific detail
A full entitlement of 8.6667 weeks accrues on completing 10 years of continuous service, and, unlike a state that resets to a new rate at 15 years, Queensland keeps accruing at the same 0.8667-weeks-per-year rate indefinitely for every year served after that. From 7 years, a pro-rata payment is available on termination, but only for a defined set of reasons: the employee’s death, resignation because of the employee’s own illness or injury or “a domestic or other pressing necessity,” an employer terminating for illness or for a reason other than the employee’s conduct, capacity or performance (which is where redundancy sits), an unfair dismissal, or ending “because of the passing of time” where the employee reasonably expected the job to continue to 10 years. From 10 years, the reason stops mattering. Pro-rata is payable on any termination, plain resignation included.
Continuity by exception, not by rule
The Act doesn’t list what breaks continuous service. It lists what preserves it, and anything outside that list is where the gap sits. Continuity survives a transfer of business (including a dismissal up to a month before the transfer, provided the new employer re-employs the worker within 3 months), an apprenticeship or traineeship followed by re-employment within 3 months, being lent or hired out to another employer, employer-approved leave with no stated cap on length, termination due to illness or injury followed by re-employment (as long as there was no other job in between), any termination followed by re-employment within 3 months, and interruptions caused by an employer trying to avoid its obligations, an industrial dispute, or slackness of trade. A stand-down counts as a “dismissal” for the business-transfer rule specifically.
Ordinary pay, and the commission formula
Pay is calculated at whichever is higher: the employee’s ordinary rate immediately before taking leave, or a higher rate they were on shortly before that if it was cut to avoid this obligation. The Act specifically bars an employer from reducing someone’s pay just ahead of long service leave to lower the payout. For employees paid by commission, the Act sets an exact formula: total commission paid in the year before leave, divided by 52.179, multiplied by the number of weeks of leave being paid, a level of statutory precision most other states leave to guidance notes rather than the Act itself.
In practice
A worker who reaches 10 years and is then let go for genuine redundancy is simple under s95(3). The reason doesn’t matter once the milestone is passed. The interesting case sits between 7 and 10 years: an employee at 9 years who resigns to move interstate, with no illness, no domestic necessity and no employer-initiated ending, gets nothing under s95(4) despite being one year short of an entitlement most people would assume applies by then. The “passing of time” limb is the one most easily overlooked in that gap. It covers a fixed-term or expectation-based role that simply isn’t renewed at the 10-year mark, provided the employee reasonably expected it to continue and was prepared to keep working. That’s a narrower and more specific test than it sounds, and it’s worth reading s95(4) directly rather than assuming it covers any near-miss resignation.
No new rate at 15 years, unlike some neighbours
Worth stating plainly, because it’s easy to assume otherwise if a business has staff or an accountant familiar with a milestone-table state: Queensland doesn’t step the rate up or down at 15, 20 or any later anniversary. Section 95(2) sets 0.8667 weeks a year and keeps it there for every year served past the 10-year mark. Compare that with the way NSW, Western Australia and Tasmania structure their own Acts, granting the initial two months at ten years and then a further month for every five years after. The end result across a full career lands close to the same place either way, since all of them work out to roughly the same 8⅔ weeks per decade. But the Queensland version is the simpler one to explain to a long-serving employee asking what their balance looks like at, say, 22 years: multiply the years by the rate, done, no checkpoints to track.
Because it’s an IR Act, not a standalone one
Long service leave sits outside the National Employment Standards everywhere in Australia, Queensland included, and the Fair Work Ombudsman is clear that a modern award or a federal enterprise agreement can’t undercut the entitlement a state law already provides. That general rule matters a bit more in Queensland than it does in a state running its own dedicated Act, precisely because LSL here is one chapter inside a much bigger piece of general industrial legislation that also covers awards, agreements and the QIRC’s own dispute powers.
In practice, that means a Queensland industrial instrument registered under the state’s own system sits alongside the Chapter 2 entitlement rather than replacing it, and neither a state award nor a federal one can write long service leave out of an employee’s contract. If an agreement or a contract says something different to what’s in the Act, the Act is the floor, not the agreement. Worth checking the actual instrument rather than assuming a clause about leave in an enterprise agreement has quietly replaced Chapter 2.
The mistake: forgetting labour hire still counts
One continuity provision gets skipped over more than it should: an employee lent or hired out to another employer doesn’t lose service with the original one. It still counts. For a Queensland business that occasionally hires staff out to another site, or brings on workers through a labour hire arrangement of its own, this is worth checking both ways. Time spent on secondment elsewhere generally keeps counting toward the ten-year mark with the original employer, and it’s a detail that’s easy to lose track of when someone’s payroll record shows a gap that looks, on the surface, like a change of employer.
A one-month window before a business changes hands
Queensland’s transfer-of-business protection has a detail worth its own mention: it covers a dismissal up to a month before the transfer takes place, not just employment that runs straight through the sale. A worker let go a few weeks ahead of a business changing hands, and then taken on by the new owner within 3 months, still has that earlier service protected. That’s a wider window than it might look on a quick read, and it’s worth checking against the actual dates on both sides of a sale rather than assuming a gap around settlement day resets everyone’s clock.
The flip side matters for the buyer in a business sale. Long-serving staff coming across with the business bring their accrued Chapter 2 entitlement with them, and it doesn’t show up as a line item in most sale contracts unless someone thinks to check the payroll history for anyone approaching the 7-year or 10-year marks. Worth doing that check before settlement, not after.
Who enforces it in Queensland
Because the entitlement sits inside the Industrial Relations Act rather than a standalone law, a dispute over it goes through the same body that handles Queensland’s wider industrial relations system: the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. There’s no separate long service leave tribunal to hunt for. A worker who believes they’re owed a payment, and an employer who wants certainty before paying one out, both end up at the same door.
Keeping the record straight
Reconstructing that commission formula by hand for every long-tenured employee is the kind of admin that eats an afternoon it doesn’t need to. Delta Infotech’s business systems work automates exactly that kind of calculation, and it’s priced openly on the pricing page.