Portable long service leave exists to solve a problem that traditional long service leave never could. The old model rewards a decade of continuous service with a single employer, which works well enough for a stable workforce and almost never pays out in industries where workers change employers every year or two. Portable schemes flip the logic: instead of tracking time with one business, they track time within one industry, so a worker who has spent ten years across four construction companies, three cleaning contractors, or two community services employers still builds a real entitlement. As the Fair Work Ombudsman explains, an employee covered by a portable scheme keeps their long service leave entitlement even if they work for one or more employers in different workplaces.
More Australian businesses are caught by these schemes than most people assume. Every state and territory now has legislation providing portable long service leave in at least one industry, and coverage keeps expanding. If you employ construction workers, contract cleaners, community services staff, security officers, or coal miners, a portable scheme may already apply to you whether or not anyone in your office has heard of it. This guide explains how the schemes actually run: who the players are, how service is reported and funded, the thresholds that trigger entitlements, and the traps that cost employers money.
The cast: who does what
Every portable scheme is built from the same four components, no matter which state or industry it covers.
- The worker: an eligible worker accrues service credits for every day worked in the covered industry, regardless of which employer they worked for on that day.
- The employer: registers with the scheme authority, reports each worker's service, and pays a levy into a central fund. Employers are required to report the service of eligible workers, so the scheme only works if businesses do their part.
- The scheme authority: a statutory body that keeps the registers of employers and workers, collects the levies, tracks cumulative service, pays benefits when entitlements mature, and resolves disputes about how the scheme applies.
- The legislation: a state or territory Act that declares the covered industry, defines who counts as a worker, sets the qualifying period, and fixes the rate of accrual.
The tension in the scheme sits between the employer and the authority. Workers want their service captured accurately. Authorities want employers to register and report on time. Employers carry the administrative cost and the levy. The interests mostly align, because a scheme that workers trust also makes an industry more attractive to skilled labour, but the burden of making it work falls squarely on the employer's payroll and HR functions.
Which industries are covered, and where
The national picture is broader than the handful of schemes most people have heard of.
- Building and construction: the oldest and most widespread portable scheme. Every state and territory runs one, administered respectively by ACT Leave, the Long Service Corporation in NSW, NT Build, QLeave, SA Portable Long Service Leave, TasBuild, LeavePlus in Victoria, and MyLeave in Western Australia. A national portable long service leave scheme also covers the coal mining industry, administered by the Coal Mining Industry LSL Funding Corporation.
- Contract cleaning: schemes operate in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
- Community services: schemes operate in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. The NSW scheme is brand new, having commenced on 1 July 2025.
- Security: schemes operate in the ACT and Victoria.
Coverage is also a moving target. Victoria's construction scheme, for example, extends to the repair and maintenance of lifts, elevators and escalators from 1 July 2026. If you are in or near one of these industries, the question is rarely "does a scheme exist" but "does my particular work fall inside the definition".
How the entitlement builds: the lifecycle
Registration
The trigger for the whole scheme is an employer in a covered industry taking on a worker. The employer must register with the scheme authority and, in most schemes, register each eligible worker. Victoria's construction scheme shows how broad the net can be: employers, workers, working subcontractors, working directors and apprentices must all be registered. If your business engages subcontractors rather than employees, the construction schemes in particular may still capture you.
Reporting and levies
Once registered, the employer reports each worker's service on a regular cycle, quarterly in Victoria's case, and pays a levy calculated on the wages paid to eligible workers. The levy is the scheme's funding source: the authority pools the contributions and pays benefits out of the pool when entitlements mature. The levy is paid by the employer, not deducted from the worker's pay, which is one reason these schemes have broad appeal in industries where margins are thin.
Tracking
The authority records every reported day of service against the worker in a central register. This is the heart of portability: the register, not any single employment relationship, is what accumulates the entitlement. Workers in most schemes can check their own credits through worker portals, which is worth doing, because a quiet error in reporting can sit unnoticed for years and surface only when someone tries to claim.
Claiming
Once the worker reaches the qualifying threshold, they apply to the authority for long service leave, or for payment of the benefit in cash. In Queensland's construction scheme, for example, a registered worker applies to QLeave for leave or payment under s 56 of the Building and Construction Industry (Portable Long Service Leave) Act 1991 (Qld), and payment in lieu is available where the relevant award or agreement allows it.
How much leave, and when: the thresholds
The qualifying periods are not uniform, and the differences matter.
- Queensland construction: under s 57 of the Building and Construction Industry (Portable Long Service Leave) Act 1991 (Qld), a worker with ten years of service recorded in the register is entitled to 8.67 weeks, with leave continuing to accrue at the rate of 8.67 weeks per ten years.
- Western Australia construction: under s 21 of the Construction Industry Portable Paid Long Service Leave Act 1985 (WA), 8⅔ weeks after ten years of service, then 4⅓ weeks after each subsequent five years. Service is not required to be continuous, and 220 days of work counts as a year.
- Victoria (community services, contract cleaning and security): under the Long Service Benefits Portability Act 2018 (Vic), a registered active worker becomes entitled after seven years of recognised service to an amount equal to one sixtieth of their total recognised service.
The arithmetic converges neatly. One sixtieth of service per year is the same rate as 8.67 weeks per ten years, so a Victorian community services worker and a Queensland builder who each work ten years in their industries end up with the same sized benefit. A worker with seven years of recognised service in a Victorian portable scheme has accrued 7/60 of their total period, roughly six weeks. The real difference between the schemes is when the entitlement first becomes available: Queensland and Western Australia hold the line at ten years, while Victoria's portable schemes start paying at seven. NSW's Long Service Corporation describes the traditional model as a ten-year single-employer threshold and positions its portable schemes as making the entitlement more accessible to workers who move between jobs.
Where the scheme bites: common traps
The mechanics sound straightforward, but the edge cases are where employers and workers get caught:
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The "we only use subcontractors" assumption: Construction schemes in particular define "worker" far beyond employees. In Victoria, working subcontractors and working directors are covered and must be registered. A business that assumes its labour hire and subcontractor arrangements sit outside the scheme can accumulate a significant unpaid levy exposure before anyone notices.
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Unreported service quietly erodes entitlements: The register only grows when employers report. If a worker's service is not reported, their credit does not accrue and their entitlement is delayed or reduced. Victoria's Portable Long Service Authority runs a missing service process for workers who believe their hours were under-reported, and allows anyone to report an employer that is not following the rules.
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The industry definition can bite at the edges: What counts as covered work is defined in the legislation, and the definitions carry exceptions. Under the Long Service Benefits Portability Act 2018 (Vic), for example, "cleaning work" includes pool cleaning but excludes the removal of waste from commercial receptacles, gardening work, and cleaning performed on a building under construction. A contractor whose work straddles the line needs to know which side they are on, because the levy obligation follows the definition.
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Interstate moves: Workers who shift between states risk losing service continuity unless the schemes recognise each other. Queensland's construction Act expressly lets a worker who has served time in a reciprocating state or territory count that service when claiming in Queensland, and NSW's regulator flags interstate portability as something workers should understand before they move.
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Leaving the industry early: The benefit usually matures only at the qualifying threshold, but there are partial protections. Under Queensland's construction Act, a worker with between five and ten years of service who permanently stops work in the industry can, in limited circumstances, receive a proportional entitlement.
When a lawyer helps
None of this requires a lawyer to operate day to day, but several points in the lifecycle are worth professional input.
The first is coverage. Working out whether your business is "in" a scheme can require close reading of the industry definitions and their exceptions, and the cost of getting it wrong is retrospective levy liability. A lawyer can map your workforce against the scheme definitions before an auditor does it for you.
The second is dispute and enforcement. The authorities investigate and enforce compliance, and their decisions can be appealed. If an authority has raised a levy shortfall or an audit finding against your business, early advice on the appeal options and the strength of your position is usually worth far more than it costs.
The third is contracts. If you engage subcontractors or labour hire, your commercial agreements should deal with who bears the levy, who reports service, and what happens on a dispute, so that a scheme liability does not quietly become a commercial dispute between you and the people you work with.
The fourth is restructures and exits. Selling a business, closing a site, or changing how you engage workers can trigger questions about accrued service and outstanding reporting. Getting the record keeping right at the start of a project is much cheaper than reconstructing years of service history at the end of one.
Register early, report accurately
The point where value and risk concentrate in portable long service leave is the register. For workers, the entitlement exists only to the extent that service is reported, so the practical habit that protects you is checking your credits through the authority's portal and keeping your own record of every employer, period and pay. For employers, the exposure builds from your first worker in a covered industry: registration, regular reporting and levy payments are not optional overhead but the price of the scheme, and the authorities do pursue non-compliance. A business that registers on day one, reports accurately, and takes advice the moment coverage becomes unclear is the one that treats the scheme for what it is: a funded promise to workers that their time in the industry counts, whichever employer they happened to work for.