Australians will be entitled to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave from today, after a federal law was passed in October. Previously, Australians could only access five unpaid days of family and domestic violence leave. The leave will be available to most employees from today, but will kick in for small businesses (those with under 15 employees) in August.
The leave package
From today, employees will be able to access paid time off work to deal with family and domestic violence. It’ll be available upfront to employees from their first day of work, and will renew on their yearly anniversary. It won’t accumulate over years, so an employee will never have more than 10 days available for this type of leave.
Who can access it?
All employees, including casuals, full-time, and part-time are entitled to the leave. Casual employees will be paid at the full rate of their rostered hours for the period they took leave. Full and part-time employees will also be paid their normal base rate.
The protections
To protect the employee from safety risks, employees who take family and domestic violence leave will not have the period documented on their pay slips. Businesses, however, will still need to record leave information taken by employees.
Pm’s statement
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the leave package was “overdue”, and will make dealing with family and domestic violence a “little bit better” for Australians. “Our goal can never be anything short of true equality… let us hope that in putting in place this measure, it is used less and less in the future.”
The context
Inserting 10 days of paid family or domestic violence leave was a priority for the Federal Government following their election win in May. They introduced legislation for the leave package on the first week of the new Parliament. It passed the House of Representatives in September, and passed Parliament in October. While it was agreed upon last year, the entitlement only came into effect this year.
