The Federal Government has introduced legislation that will make further amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) to strengthen access to unpaid parental leave and complement recent changes to the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010.

What are the changes to parental leave?

The changes will amend the National Employment Standard (NES) dealing with unpaid parental leave to:

• allow employees to commence unpaid parental leave at any time in the 24 months following the birth or placement of their child;
• make it easier for employee couples to take unpaid parental leave at the same time;
• allow pregnant employees to access flexible unpaid parental leave in the 6 weeks prior to expected birth of their child; and
• allow parents to request an extension to their period of unpaid parental leave, regardless of the amount of leave the other parent has taken.

Currently, the NES allows employees to access up to 30 days of their unpaid parental leave entitlement as flexible days, which may be taken a day at a time within the first 24 months of the child’s birth or adoption placement. However, once an employee takes a day of flexible unpaid parental leave, they forfeit any remaining entitlement to take continuous unpaid parent leave.

The new provisions will allow employees to take up to 100 days of flexible leave before and after a period of continuous leave.

The new provisions will also allow all employees to take up to 12 months’ unpaid parental leave and request a further 12 months of leave, regardless of how much leave their spouse or partner takes, up to a total of 24 months each. Moreover, two employees who are the spouse or de facto partner of each other can take unpaid parental leave at the same time.

Other changes in employment law

Other changes include:

• inserting an entitlement to superannuation guarantee superannuation in the NES;
• expanding the circumstances in which employees can authorise employers to make valid deductions from payments due to employees, where the deductions are principally for the employee’s benefit; and
• ensuring that casual employees working in the black coal mining industry are treated no less favourably than permanent employees in the accrual, reporting and payment of their long service leave entitlements under the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Scheme.

Separately, the income and compensation caps for unfair dismissal claims increased on 1 July 2023. The high-income threshold for unfair dismissal applications rose from $162,000 to $167,500, while the maximum compensation increases from $81,000 to $83,750 for post-1 July dismissal claims.